All applications for Brown medical student summer funding will be submitted through Brown's Ufunds application system this year.  There will be a unified application for the SRA, SRA-EM, BTR program, H-EIDS programs.  Requests for additional international global health travel funds will also use this form.  Students can only submit one application for summer funding per year (note: applications not selected for special programs like BTR/HEIDS will still be reviewed under the general SRA award process).  

This year's SRA Application is currently being revised, it will be released in December 2024 and posted here.

As SRAs are competitive, it is important to note that students who are not selected for an SRA award are still encouraged to conduct their projects with their mentors, although we make all efforts to fund as many awards as possible. SRA funds are not meant to directly support research costs, and are meant as stipends to offset living costs.  For Summer 2025, all students who are awarded an SRA will receive a stipend of $3,750. Funds will be disbursed in June.  

It is strongly suggested that:

• you meet with your potential mentor to begin planning as early as possible
• you review your application and project overview with your mentor prior to submission.

For more information please contact:

Dr. Stephanie Garbern, Director of Medical Student Research

Letters of Support

Please see application for details on letters of support.

Faculty Conflict of Interest Form

The Warren Alpert Medical School is committed to pursuing its mission and conducting its affairs in accordance with the highest professional and ethical standards. This commitment includes the avoidance and management of potential conflicts of interest. This policy applies to all persons who serve as a mentor to a medical student as part of the Summer Assistantship Program.

Policy: Persons who agree to serve as a mentor to a medical student under the auspices of the Summer Assistantship Program should not use their positions, or the work of the medical student mentee, for personal gain or for the benefit of an entity in which the faculty member has a financial interest.

It is the policy of Warren Alpert Medical School to require that mentors disclose business practices or conduct that could constitute a conflict between their research interests and the interests of the medical student mentee and Warren Alpert Medical School. As part of the Summer Assistantship application, faculty must complete and submit a Faculty Conflict of Interest form.

Applications for SRAs will be reviewed by a faculty panel and awarded based on the merit of the proposed project. Visit the funding page for examples of high quality funded applications. Applications will be rated on the following criteria:

• the extent to which the proposal is clear and well organized.
• the extent to which the proposed work is educationally important and valuable to the student.
• the extent to which the proposed work is important and valuable to the community at large.
• the extent to which the proposed work involves creative and/or rigorous thought on the part of the student.
• the extent to which the proposed work is reasonable and achievable within the 8- to 10-week period.
• The extent to which adequate faculty supervision, mentoring and support appear to be in place.

The committee will look for the following in student applications:

• organized, clear and detailed explanation of the proposed project and the student's specific role in it;
• clearly stated project goals;
• evidence of faculty-student collaboration and appropriate mentorship; and
• evidence of higher order thinking and creative problem solving appropriate to medical student level of training.

Applications tend not to be as highly rated if they:

• are unclear, unorganized or poorly written;
• do not indicate that the student has taken steps to meet with appropriate faculty members and plan the summer experience prior to the application deadline;
• involve only basic processes such as data collection or data coding without any analysis, synthesis or creative process such as study design, survey development, etc.
• involve scholarly work at another established institution of higher education that should be able to provide the student with funding.

Previously funded projects include:

• "Community Health Workers (CHWs): The Secret Ingredient in Medical Education"
• “Infusion of Sound: Personalized Receptive Music-Based Intervention (rMBI) during Infusion Sessions”
• “Incidence and Zygosity of Multiple Births Following a Natural or Programmed Single Frozen Blastocyst Transfer Cycle”
• “Leveraging Machine Learning to Predict Pediatric Sepsis Mortality in Bangladesh”
• “Perceived healthcare needs in the community for incarcerated men in Rhode Island”
• "Medical Poetics: William Carlos Williams and the Art of Becoming a Doctor"
• “Women and Infants Sexual Assault Handbook”

Additionally, most of the Academic Symposium projects posted on the Brown Digital Repository here were part of the SRA or SC program and are a great place to start looking at general scope/topics for projects.

If your summer project involves human subjects or animal subjects, you must provide documentation that you have begun the approval process of the Brown University / Brown University Health (Lifespan) / Care New England IRB or IACUC with your application. Due to the time required for IRBs to review applications currently, it is imperative that ethical review applications begin at least 3-4 months in advance of planned project work (for this reason we are now requiring that IRB application must be submitted [approval not required] at time of application in early February).  For human subjects, this includes data collection from living individuals through interaction or intervention, or data collection of identifiable, private information through secondary data analysis. Alternatively, you must provide documentation that verifies approval by the respective IRB of the institution where the research will be carried out, if other than Brown University. Final approval must be in place prior to the commencement of your summer project.

All students who are awarded an SRA will receive $3,750 for the summer, dispersed in June.  The funds are meant to offset living costs, and are not mean to directly support research costs. The SRA stipends are non taxable in that this type of fellowship funding is not reportable by the University to the IRS, and students will not receive a W2 for these payments. According to the IRS, these funds are not taxable as long as they are used for "qualified tuition and related expenses" (tuition, books, fees, required supplies and equipment) associated with enrollment for degree seeking candidates. The SA program expects students to use their discretion in determining if this is taxable income to him/her based on personal circumstances.

All students receiving a SA must submit a brief (1-page) report on their summer work at the end of the summer, and also prepare and present a poster or oral presentation on their work for the annual fall Academic Symposium (November each year).

A compiled list of projects submitted by Brown faculty members is available here (must login through Brown email to view).  While this list is an excellent place to start, it is not an exhaustive list, and many students find their SRA mentors outside of this list each year.

We are seeking faculty who are interested in mentoring and partnering with students for the 2025 Summer Research Assistantships (SRA) programs, sponsored by the Warren Alpert Medical School and Brown University Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME).

 We invite proposals for projects involving clinical research, basic and translational research, public health research, medical education, advocacy, medical humanities, and more; all projects must be related to health or medicine. We are also seeking faculty who are open to mentoring student-initiated projects.  

Deadlines:  Faculty proposal forms are due by Friday, November 1, 2024. Project information will be included in a list of research opportunities available for our students to review.  Students’ project applications are due Monday, February 3, 2025, and awards announced in March 2025.

Medical Student SRA Description:​​​​​​ The Warren Alpert Medical School SRA / Scholarly Concentration projects should be suitable for a rising Year 2 medical student (summer between Year 1 and Year 2), and allow the student to exercise creativity, initiative, and independence to the fullest extent possible within the context of a summer experience. Medical students who opt to also apply into the Scholarly Concentrations Program are available to continue work on a more in-depth or longitudinal project spanning years 2-4. Scholarly Concentration students are required to have a Brown faculty mentor for the duration of their project. 

SRAs provide faculty with many benefits - including the dedicated and full-time summer assistance of motivated students to support their research, medical education, or scholarly projects, and also a unique opportunity to mentor and shape the next generation of physician scholars in their fields.  .  Many faculty find these experiences highly rewarding and are energized by the fresh perspectives and ideas students bring - while students often report research as being one of their key priorities for medical school, and SRAs as one of the most impactful experiences during their medical school years.

You must be a faculty member in the Division of Biology and Medicine, School of Public Health, or affiliated clinical faculty to be a primary mentor a student for an SRA. Residents, fellows, and other Brown-affiliated faculty (from related fields in humanities, sciences, engineering, etc.) can serve as a secondary mentor, however there must be a Brown BioMed, clinical, or SPH faculty named to serve as a primary mentor.  Primary mentors should complete the submission form.

While most faculty have only one SRA student per year, faculty members may sponsor more than one medical student for an SRA per year.  However, we advise thoughtful consideration and planning to ensure that faculty mentors have the bandwidth and availability to provide strong mentorship for each student, and that SRA mentees working with the same mentor have distinct projects to allow them to exercise their independence.