Graduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (G-RISE) Program

The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded G-RISE training grant program provides doctoral students with a full stipend, tuition, and mentored laboratory research experience at Rutgers University-Newark for students who are underrepresented in behavioral and biomedical science research careers. The program supports doctoral students supervised by faculty in the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Physics, Psychology, and the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience. This NIH initiative, now in its 36th year of continuous funding at Rutgers-Newark, addresses the underrepresentation of men and women in the fields of research relevant to the above academic departments. The Program provides student participants with an intensive laboratory experience that includes mentoring to design and carry out a research project that they develop with the guidance of their faculty mentor, present their findings at bi-weekly G-RISE seminars and at professional scientific conferences, and ultimately publish their research as coauthors in professional scientific journals.

G-RISE students are expected to work a minimum of 15 hours a week supervised by a faculty mentor, and to interact in research seminars presented by visiting national and international minority scientists. In addition to a doctoral student-level full stipend and full tuition, students in the Program receive annual financial support for their research, which includes supplies for their laboratory, in addition to expenses for travel to participate in scientific conferences.

The 62 Rutgers-Newark students in our Program who have earned the PhD, then continued their career development at leading universities, e.g., through funded postdoctoral positions at Harvard, Yale, and Rockefeller Universities; and the Mayo Clinic. Others among our Program graduates have proceeded to graduate or medical schools, including Boston University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Yale; others now hold tenured faculty positions at leading universities.

The application to the G-RISE Program can be downloaded from the Graduate School website and e-mailed or delivered in person at the Psychology office on the Newark Campus in Smith Hall, Room 301.