Focus
Spotlight
November 20/27, 2000
MD—PhD Retreat Marks First Year of Revised Program
MD–PhD students Michelle Lee and Thanh-Nga T. Tran during the retreat's poster session. Lee presented her poster "Regulation of Activin-like Signaling in Early Development of Xenopus Laevis."
The 18th annual MD–PhD Program retreat was held at the Waterville Valley Resort in New Hampshire from Oct. 20 to 22. Keynote speaker Daniel Lowenstein, HMS dean for medical education, presented the talk "Network Changes During Epileptogenesis: Developmental Deja Vu?". His address was dedicated to the memory of Eva Neer, who died last spring. Neer had been an HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an active participant in the program.
Students in the HMS MD–PhD program used to spend their first two years as medical students, then complete a PhD program, and resume as third-year medical students. Under the new program, students will at times take medical and doctoral classes simultaneously, allowing a better understanding of what physician–scientists do and cutting down the time it takes to complete the degrees from nine years to about seven years.
The annual retreat is the program's largest event dedicated to student research. It provides an opportunity for MD–PhD students to exchange ideas with other students and faculty from diverse disciplines and research areas.
This fall's incoming students are the first to experience right from the start changes made to the program to more fully integrate the two degree tracks and to reduce the number of years to completion from nine to about seven. Nancy Andrews, director of the MD–PhD program since last December, also hopes to set up an endowment for the program and double its size.