Trainees, scholars and pilot award recipients presented their work at CTSI Research Day recently and heard from an NIH official about how to alleviate a major barrier to research that’s never far from their thoughts: Student loans.
NIH Division of Loan Repayment Director Ericka Boone, PhD, wants early-career researchers to know that the agency has $68 million to distribute every year, and that more people should apply for it.
“That’s $68 million up for grabs,” she told the crowd at the June 19 event. “You can get your loans repaid if you do research that is considered to be mission-critical for the NIH.”
Boone met with Loan Repayment Program Ambassadors from UF, and had lunch with TL1 Trainees, predoctoral students interested in translational research careers, and KL2 Scholars, junior faculty, who presented at Research Day. CTSI Translational Workforce Development Program trainees and scholars presented 18 posters: five TL1 trainees, five TL1 teams, five KL2 scholars, one non-TL1 CTS PhD student, and two faculty members in the Training and Research Academy for Clinical and Translational Science (TRACTS) program. Thirteen additional posters illustrated research supported by CTSI pilot project awards.
As they start their careers, many of the trainees and scholars will face loan debt. It’s is the No. 1 barrier to starting and sustaining a research career, Boone said. Loan debt can stymie research, innovation and development of treatments for disease.
When the average graduate faces $160,000 in debt, it becomes difficult to justify a lower-paying research career over clinical work. The Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs), which have a 50 percent success rate, award up to $70,000 for a two-year research commitment. The money goes to a student’s loan servicer and can be used to pay off undergraduate loans as well.
“It’s life-changing,” Boone said. “You can go from having hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt to having a sizable portion, if not all paid off.”
Trainees and scholars also face a changing landscape as they begin their careers, with greater emphasis on team science and collaborative, interdisciplinary work. To better prepare trainees and scholars, the TL1 Program shifted this year to a new TL1 Team format, supporting groups of PhD students from different programs and colleges who collaborate with other to complete team specific aims. This unique aspect of the program sets UF apart and has generated interest from other institutions. Carrying through the collaborative concept in the Research Day poster session, groups of trainees and faculty rotated through formal presentations and discussions of their posters.
The NIH Loan Repayment Programs helped awardees like KL2 Scholar Natalie Silver during a critical time as she’s starting out in her career, just as the programs helped CTSI Director David Nelson stay in research early in his career, two decades ago.
“I applied because I had excessive student debt,” said Silver, who received her award while a fellow at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and plans to reapply now that she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery in the UF College of Medicine. “It helped me through my fellowship, when I incurred additional debt moving my family. This allowed me to pursue an extra year of research, which was instrumental in beginning my career as a surgeon scientist.”
At Research Day, Silver presented her research using personalized RNA nanoparticle vaccines to treat human papilloma virus-related throat cancer.
Nelson received his award in 1996 while a junior faculty member at UF.
“It allowed me to stay in research,” he said. “I was a poor kid, first in my family to go to medical school, the first doctor. It allowed me to make a choice that was not dependent on dollars.”
The program benefited not only Nelson, but also the NIH.
In the two decades following his loan repayment award, Nelson became an internationally recognized expert in liver research and clinical and translational science, with more than $40 million in funding. His liver research led to new treatments for hepatitis C, and he oversees more than a dozen clinical trials.
“The NIH is not just being altruistic,” Boone said. “We are getting something out of this. The nation, if not the world, is getting the benefit of your research.”
Find more information about the NIH Loan Repayment program here, including tips on a successful Loan Repayment Program application here.
For additional assistance, call or e-mail the LRP Information Center at 866-849-4047 or lrp@nih.gov, Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST. You can also follow the NIH Division of Loan Repayment on Twitter and Facebook for more information and cycle updates.
The CTSI Translational Workforce Development Program also has a toolkit to guide applicants.
The 2018 CTSI Research Day included the following presenters:
CTSI Trainees and Scholars |
Poster Title |
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Predicting Age-Related Macular Degeneration Diagnosis, Progression, Severity, and Potential AMD Therapies: A Machine Learning Approach |
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TL1 Team Approach to Social and Genetic Determinants of Blood Pressure |
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A TL1 Team Approach to Evaluating Novel Antimicrobial Compounds against Mycoplasmas and their Interaction with Drug Metabolizing Enzymes |
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Therapeutic Fasting to Treat Chronic Pain and Symptoms of Autoimmunity in Adults: a Scoping Review |
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Untargeted Metabolomic Analysis in Non-fasted Diabetic Dogs |
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Characterization of Single Autoantibody Positive Non-Diabetic Organ Donors in the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes (nPOD) |
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Assessing the Willingness of Individuals with Acute Pain to Accept Alternatives to Opioids in the Emergency Department |
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What Happens After Calling 911: Understanding Prehospital Pediatric Asthma Treatment |
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Effects of Bilateral Frontal tDCS on the Working Memory Network: an fMRI-tDCS Study in Healthy Older Adults |
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TL1 Team Approach to the Motivational Spectrum in Parkinson’s Disease |
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Role of Gut Microbiota in Dopaminergic Neuron Vulnerability |
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Magnetic Nanoparticles Facilitate Tracking of Dendritic Cells for Treatment of Malignant Brain Tumors |
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Remodeling Host Immunity in Human Papillomavirus Positive Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Using Personalized RNA Nanoparticle Vaccines |
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Exploring Differential microRNAs Expression in Head and Neck Squamous Carcinomas from Black and White Patients
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Structure-Guided Drug Design of Carbonic Anhydrase IX Selective Inhibitors as a Breast Cancer Treatment |
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TL1 Team Approach for Cancer Cell to Dendritic Cell Conversion |
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Cell Surface Markers for Immunoaffinity Osteosarcoma Circulating Tumor Cells Isolation |
Pilot Awardees |
Poster Title |
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Bioactive ssDNA Polymers for Directed Stem Cell Differentiation |
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Volatile-Enhanced-Sweetness |
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Fructose Consumption Unmasks Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) |
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The Development and Use of a Murine Aerosol Challenge Model for Influenza Infection to Optimize Anti-Influenza Therapeutic Regimens |
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Chondroprotective Nanoparticles for the Treatment of Osteoarthritis |
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The Effects of Experimentally Manipulated Social Status on Energy Balance in Youth: A Randomized Controlled Trial |
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A Multi-Disciplinary Exposure Therapy Approach to Treating Auditory Sensory Over-Responsiveness |
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Parental and Family and Neighborhood Factors and Secondhand Marijuana Exposure in Young Children |
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Investigation of Free Radical Scavenging Nanocomposite Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Regeneration |
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Development of Text Messages to Facilitate Proper Disposal of Prescription Opioids to Prevent Diversion or Misuse |
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Children’s Uptake of Tobacco-related Toxicants while Living in Vaping, Smoking, and Non-tobacco Using Homes |
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Utilization of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells to Develop a Novel Screening Method of Hypertension Therapeutics |
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Hypertension FACTS: Florida Annotated Corpus for Translational Science A Gold Standard Corpus of Case Reports for Hypertension |