The School of Health Sciences at UTB-TSC has received a four-year grant totaling $1.03 million to continue a program to motivate and train Hispanics to become biomedical research scientists.

The grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health is for $258,675 for each of the next four years. It funds a program in which undergraduates at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College help conduct biomedical research during their junior and senior years as preparation for admission into Ph.D. programs at the nation's top research institutions.

Eldon L. Nelson, dean of UTB-TSC's School of Health Sciences, said the program already has seen its students accepted for both internships and doctoral programs at UT Health Science Centers in Houston and San Antonio, the Baylor College of Medicine, University of Wisconsin and other nationally recognized research institutions.

"They're doing a breadth of research in medicine," Nelson said, citing research involving Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

The program pairs undergraduates with biomedical research professors, of which UTB-TSC has eight, as faculty mentors. It includes paid work in an active research laboratory, as well as an internship at the end of the junior year at a medical research institution, Nelson said.

This summer, students in the program will do internships at the National Institutes of Health, University of Virginia, UTHSC-San Antonio and other universities, he said.

The grant comes under NIH programs known by the acronyms MBRS and RISE, which mean "Minority Biomedical Research Support Program" and "Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement." Their intent is to encourage minorities to become research scientists and minority institutions to develop biomedical research programs.

At UTB-TSC, the program has made participants aware of a career path that many did not know existed, Nelson said.