TY - JOUR
T1 - U-Hack Med Gap Year—A Virtual Undergraduate Internship Program in Computer-Assisted Healthcare and Biomedical Research
AU - Daetwyler, Stephan
AU - Mazloom-Farsibaf, Hanieh
AU - Danuser, Gaudenz
AU - Craig, Rebekah
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2021 Daetwyler, Mazloom-Farsibaf, Danuser and Craig.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The COVID-19 healthcare crisis dramatically changed educational opportunities for undergraduate students. To overcome the lack of exposure to lab research and provide an alternative to cancelled classes and online lectures, the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics at UT Southwestern Medical Center established an innovative, fully remote and paid “U-Hack Med Gap Year” internship program. At the core of the internship program were dedicated biomedical research projects spanning nine months in fields as diverse as computational microscopy, bioimage analysis, genome sequence analysis and establishment of a surgical skill analysis platform. To complement the project work, a biweekly Gap Year lab meeting was devised with opportunities to develop important skills in presenting, data sharing and analysis of new research. Despite a challenging year, all selected students completed the full internship period and over 30% will continue their project remotely after the end of the program.
AB - The COVID-19 healthcare crisis dramatically changed educational opportunities for undergraduate students. To overcome the lack of exposure to lab research and provide an alternative to cancelled classes and online lectures, the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics at UT Southwestern Medical Center established an innovative, fully remote and paid “U-Hack Med Gap Year” internship program. At the core of the internship program were dedicated biomedical research projects spanning nine months in fields as diverse as computational microscopy, bioimage analysis, genome sequence analysis and establishment of a surgical skill analysis platform. To complement the project work, a biweekly Gap Year lab meeting was devised with opportunities to develop important skills in presenting, data sharing and analysis of new research. Despite a challenging year, all selected students completed the full internship period and over 30% will continue their project remotely after the end of the program.
KW - bioinformatics
KW - peer-mentoring
KW - science education
KW - undergraduate research
KW - virtual experience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139113014&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85139113014&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fbinf.2021.727066
DO - 10.3389/fbinf.2021.727066
M3 - Article
C2 - 36303739
AN - SCOPUS:85139113014
SN - 2673-7647
VL - 1
JO - Frontiers in Bioinformatics
JF - Frontiers in Bioinformatics
M1 - 727066
ER -