• Launched in 2024, the monthly student research newsletter is an emailed resource for Warren Alpert Medical School students, faculty, and collaborators to have an updated and curated guide to student-related news, opportunities, kudos, resources, and more!
• All current medical students and PLME students are automatically included in the email list-serv (no need to request access).  Brown-affiliated faculty, staff, and collaborators can email Dr. Stephanie Garbern to be added to the list-serv.
• If you have research findings, publications, news, events, opportunities, etc. you would like to share in the newsletter please contact Dr. Stephanie Garbern, Director of Medical Student Research to have your posting listed in the next newsletter!

Didactics

• Lectures, workshops, and other events related to student research are currently being planned for 2025-2026 academic year.
• If you are interested in hosting or collaborating on an educational session directed towards medical students (can include other audiences), please contact Dr. Stephanie Garbern, Director of Medical Student Research to discuss more. 

Research Curriculum

• An asynchronous Canvas-based course in Fundamentals of Research for Medical Students is currently in the works.

Brown University is home to an incredible diversity of innovative and cutting edge research conducted by faculty who may act as research mentors for students.

To find potential research mentors, students may connect with potential mentors during their coursework, clinical experiences, as well as by finding mentors through Brown University's Researchers @ Brown vivo website, which hosts profiles of all of Brown's many faculty who conduct research.

For Brown PLME and first-year medical students interested in doing summer research supported by one of Brown's summer research funding programs, a project list of nearly 100 projects submitted by faculty seeking a summer student for Summer 2025 is posted here (must login with Brown credentials, this list should only be used by PLME and first-year students).  A new directory for Summer 2026 projects will be available in October/November 2025.

Another place to browse for student projects that. may be of interest is to look at the Brown Digital Repository Academic Symposium directory (make sure to login to the Brown VPN as some projects are visible only when logged into the network) - hundreds of student posters over the past 10 years are listed here.  It's a great place to take a look at areas of interest and find faculty that are very supportive of mentoring medical students!

For PLME and first-year medical students interested in research in global health and/or infectious disease-related research:

• The Global Health Initiative (GHI) and the Emerging Infectious Disease and HIV Scholars Program (HEIDS) are piloting a research mentor-mentee matching process that will connect students in the Division of Biology and Medicine to faculty mentors and faculty-mentored research projects in the areas of global health and/or infectious disease. Visit their webpage for more information. Deadline to submit an interest form is TBD.

Guidance for contacting potential faculty mentors about opportunities 

Students often find mentors through a direct connection such as upper year students, faculty lecturers, Doctoring or Mary B Arnold mentors, peer mentors, specialty advisors, the Director of Medical Student Research, Deans, Careers in Medicine panelists, Student Senate, PCE advisors, or many others who can bridge a connection, but sometimes there may not be a direct connection. It is completely acceptable for medical students to contact faculty directly which might lead to a great collaboration, and unique or new opportunities. 

Want to send a cold contact email to a potential faculty mentor?

• Have no fear - sending a cold email is less daunting than it may seem.  See this guidance sheet about contacting faculty including an email template to get started!

Warren Alpert Medical Students and PLME students have access to the assistance of a Master's level student (student of public health or biostatistics or related field) who works at the medical school on a part-time basis to support and give guidance to students on statistical questions.  

Contact information for the current student (Mallory Go 2025-2026) can be found in the Warren Alpert Medical School Research Newsletter (see above, all medical students should automatically receive this newsletter). Be advised that there is only one student supporting the school, so plan well in advance for support you may need, make sure you have discussed with your mentor beforehand, and have a well formulated question for maximal efficiency.  The role of the statistical support student is not to conduct any statistical analysis themselves, but to consult and give guidance, check statistical code, plans, etc. Students may also reach out to the Director of Medical Student Research for additional questions and support.

The Warren Alpert Medical School Support for Scholarly Achievement & Leadership: 

• The Warren Alpert Medical School has a limited pool of funds to help support students attending national and international academic conferences either to present scholarly work or to represent the Medical School in a leadership capacity. The Medical School may be able to reimburse students for reasonable (coach) travel and lodging expenses directly related to conference participation, and conference registration fees (including membership fees directly related to conference registration).
• Reimbursement does not cover the cost of meals.
• Reimbursement does not cover the cost of abstract submission fees.
• Please understand that this funding is limited.  Awards are given up to $750 for conferences in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada, and up to $1000 for conferences elsewhere. In order to ensure the greatest amount of equity possible across a large student body, an individual student will only be eligible for two financial awards (total $1,500) in any given fiscal year (conference date July 1 through June 30). Any unused funds will not roll over to the next fiscal year.
• See the attached informational guide regarding:
  • What the funding can cover
  • Other conditions of the award
  • Instructions for how to apply
• All application materials must be received and the award approved prior to the start of the conference. Retroactive submissions will not be eligible for funding.
• Contact Patty Vescera with questions.

Warren Alpert Medical School Support for Scholarly Achievement & Leadership: 

• Students will be able to opt to use their allocated annual Support for Scholarly Achievement & Leadership (see conference funding above, up to $1,500 per fiscal year) alternatively for article publication charges / open access fees to support publication of manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals.  This fund is managed by Office of Student Affairs. Contact OSA for questions or more information.

Student Publication Award

• The school supports a limited number of awards to help defray the costs of publishing student-led manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals.  Awards are limited to $2,000 per student and these are competitively awarded. Students must be first, co-first, or last author on the publication. Students and their faculty mentors (if any) must confirm they have requested waiver, discount, and exhausted all other funding options to be eligible for this award. The next cycle will be announced in Fall 2025.

Brown University Open Access Agreements and Discounts

As members of Brown's community, students can take advantage of Brown’s Read-and-Publish agreements which are open access publishing arrangements which cover the entire cost of fees for publishing immediate open access in journals from these publishers:

• Elsevier Journals (>200 journals!)
• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
• Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
• Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (CSHL)
• The Microbiology Society (MS) 

Other Memberships and Discounts

• Brown University community members currently receive a 15% discount on open access fees charged to authors by BioMed Central (BMC) and SpringerOpen. Read more about author process here.
• Brown has an institutional fellowship with BMJ Case Reports. Faculty, staff, and students do not have to pay individual fellowship fees when submitting case reports to the journal (n.b., there is an additional optional fee for authors opting into open access after submission). Read more about the process here. Contact open@brown to get the fellowship code for free submission.

For core resources and to learn more about services for the health and biomedical research community, go to https://go.brown.edu/HBLS, or reach out to HealthSciences@brown.libanswers.com.

Academic Poster Templates

Poster templates for the annual Academic Symposium are below - note the maximum dimensions for these posters is 34" x 22".

• Poster Template 1 (.pptx)
• Poster Template 2 (.pptx)
• LaTeX Poster Tempaltes with instructions (courtesy of MD28 Student Venkatsai Bellala!)
  • gemini-brown poster theme
  • metropolis-brown presentation theme
• For the symposium, all student presenters also need to upload their poster to the Brown Digital Repository - see instruction guide here.  This will allow your poster to have a digital link to share on your CV, or other researchers!

Brown's Library has an excellent webpage of guidance on creating visually captivating and informative academic posters. There are also examples of poster templates for research conferences and other poster sessions below. These will open in your browser as Google Slides; you can download them from the File / Download menu in PowerPoint format.

• Brown Library "Make a Better Poster" with tips and advice
• Poster preparation tips presentation from Dr. Thais Mather
• Example Biomedical/Lab Poster Formats
• Example Public Health Poster Format
• MIT Communication Lab's #BetterPoster and #EvenBetterPoster templates and tips
• Free PosterNerd templates (external site)

Poster Tips

Poster sessions allow for greater audience engagement than traditional papers or lectures. On a poster, your questions, methods, and conclusions can be highlighted and therefore absorbed at every person's individual pace. Posters also promote conversation between researchers and audience members. Guests will walk around the hall to view each of the posters. Students should be prepared to give brief (one-minute) talks about their research, to engage audience members, and to answer their questions.

• Avoid jargon. Use language that is as clear as possible so you can reach a broad audience.
• Use visuals. Provide images and figures that will draw your audience in.
• Use large font and colors that are easy to read. Your audience should be able to read your content while standing at a comfortable distance from the poster. This also means you'll have to limit the amount of text on your poster.
• Short text pieces are easier to understand than long stretches of text. Remember that your poster should not stand in for you! It should highlight key concepts, questions, and findings. You should still be counted on to expand upon your research.

The Brown Health and Biomedical Sciences Library 

The Health and Biomedical Library Services department at Brown University Library offers a variety of services to help students and faculty mentors with research.  The librarians office is located in the Champlin Memorial Medical Library on the first floor of the Warren Alpert Medical School (222 Richmond Street).

Librarians can assist with:

• Research planning
  • Finding funding
  • Writing a data management plan
  • Finding data
• Conducting research
  • Locating/identifying critical data sets
  • Providing rapid evidence searching and synthesis services
  • Conducting a comprehensive literature review / identifying appropriate review methodologies
  • Organizing citations
  • Analyzing and visualizing data
• Publishing and sharing research
  • Compliance with funders' public access policies
  • Depositing research products into a repository
  • Getting a Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
  • Measuring the impact of your research

To find out more information, or schedule a consultation, please contact our team at HealthSciences (at) Brown.libanswers.com  For upcoming library workshops, see the Brown Library calendar.

For core resources and to learn more about services for the health and biomedical research community, go to https://go.brown.edu/HBLS.

Ethical review of research involving students at Brown conducting research at Brown or an affiliated clinical site usually go through one of the Institutional Review Boards (IRB) listed below.  Mentors are an excellent source of information on the IRB process, and the specifics for your particular project. Additional resources can be found at the following links:

• Brown University Health
  • Research at Brown University Health Getting Started PDF
  • How to submit an application
  • Submission process
  • Common mistakes
• Brown University IRB
• Care New England

Newly created role at Warren Alpert Medical School as of January 2024. 

Dr. Stephanie Garbern's role is to support:

• Enrich and coordinate student research endeavors
• Oversee the Summer Assistantship (SA/SRA) program
• Provide research support for medical students
• Serve as a point-of-contact for medical student research
• Liaison with other student research programs (BTR, H-EIDS, PC-PM, etc.), BioMed’s clinical and research departments, IRB, etc.

A great way to get a sense of projects possible for students is to look at past year's student posters which were presented at the annual Academic Symposium.  Brown keeps copies of the posters in the Brown Digital Repository.  Click here to access.

Login to the VPN to see all the posters and browse through recent years to find topics of interest or potential mentors!