Search bioRxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2023.07.13.548912

Development and Assessment of a Sustainable PhD Internship Program Supporting Diverse Biomedical Career Outcomes

Brandt, P. D.·Whittington, D.·Wood, K. D.·Holmquist, C. E.·Nogueira, A. T.·Gaines, C. H.·Brennwald, P. J.·Layton, R. L.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

A doctoral-level internship program was developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the intent to create customizable experiential learning opportunities for biomedical trainees to support career exploration, preparation, and transition into their post-graduate professional roles. We report the outcomes of this program over a five-year period. During that 5-year period, 123 internships took place at over 70 partner sites, representing at least 20 academic, for-profit, and non-profit career paths in the life sciences. A major goal of the program was to enhance trainees skill development and expertise in careers of interest. The benefits of the internship program for interns, host/employer, and supervisor/principal investigator were assessed using a mixed-methods approach, including surveys with closed- and open-ended responses as well as focus group interviews. Balancing stakeholder interests is key to creating a sustainable program with widespread support; hence, the level of support from internship hosts and faculty members were key metrics analyzed throughout. We hypothesized that once a successful internship program was implemented, faculty culture might shift to be more accepting of internships; indeed, the data quantifying faculty attitudes support this. Furthermore, host motivation and performance expectations of interns were compared with results achieved, and this data revealed both expected and surprising benefits to hosts. Data suggests a myriad of benefits for each stakeholder group, and themes are cataloged and discussed. Program outcomes, evaluation data, policies, resources, and best practices developed through the implementation of this program are shared to provide resources that facilitate the creation of similar internship programs at other institutions. Program development was initially spurred by National Institutes of Health pilot funding, thereafter, successfully transitioning from a grant-supported model, to an institutionally supported funding model to achieve long-term programmatic sustainability.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

scientific communication and educationPreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Brandt, P. D., Whittington, D., Wood, K. D., Holmquist, C. E., Nogueira, A. T., Gaines, C. H., Brennwald, P. J., Layton, R. L.. 2023-07-15. Development and Assessment of a Sustainable PhD Internship Program Supporting Diverse Biomedical Career Outcomes. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.07.13.548912

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

Perceived Risk and Barriers to Open and Responsible Research Across Fifteen UK Universities

Open research practices are increasingly promoted to improve research transparency, reproducibility, accessibility, and societal impact. Despite growing support from research funders, institutions, and policy initiatives, adoption remains uneven across disciplines and research communities. This study examined perceived risks and barriers associated with 14 FORRT Guideline areas using qualitative responses from the UK Reproducibility Network Open and Transparent Research Practices Survey (N = 2,567), conducted across 15 UK higher education institutions. Free-text responses describing risks and barriers were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. A total of 3,951 relevant comments generated 3,433 coded references to barriers and risks. Three interconnected clusters emerged. Individual concerns included lack of motivation, fear of losing intellectual credit, and concerns about exposing mistakes and criticism. Systemic and institutional barriers included lack of time and resources, inadequate infrastructure, insufficient training and support, lack of incentives and recognition, unclear guidance, disciplinary and methodological challenges, and tensions between open practices and intellectual property requirements. Ethical and quality-related concerns included risks to participant confidentiality and privacy, challenges associated with sensitive data, concerns about inappropriate application of open research practices across different research traditions, perceived impacts on research quality and innovation, and potential effects on public trust in research. Lack of time and resources was the most frequently reported barrier. Across responses, barriers were commonly described as interdependent, with shortcomings in funding, infrastructure, institutional support, incentives, and training reinforcing one another. Respondents largely supported the principles underpinning open research but highlighted substantial practical, professional, and ethical challenges to implementation. These findings suggest that increasing open research adoption requires more than policy mandates or awareness-raising activities. Sustainable uptake will depend on aligned incentives, adequate infrastructure and support, recognition of methodological diversity, and approaches that enable openness to be implemented responsibly across different research contexts.

scientific communication and education↗
bioRxiv2026

Evaluating Large Language Models as Tools to Navigate Researchers in Rapidly Evolving Research Landscapes: A Case Study in Cancer Drug Response Prediction

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as promising tools for assisting researchers in automating and accelerating the synthesis of literature reviews. However, their reliability is a significant concern due to issues like factual inaccuracies and hallucinations. The key question is whether LLMs can reliably provide comprehensive, up-to-date overviews and analyses. This study evaluates the performance of three leading LLMs (OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and DeepSeek) on the complex task of generating a comprehensive survey paper on deep learning for cancer Drug Response Prediction (DRP). By testing both standard and Deep Research (DR) / Deep Think (DT) modes of LLMs with prompts of varying detail, this paper assesses key academic dimensions, including reference management, content quality, and analytical depth. Key findings reveal that while DR modes of LLMs significantly improve reliability by eliminating hallucinations, performance variations exist across models and prompts. A trade-off between reference quantity and integration quality was observed, and even the best-performing models lacked the analytical depth of human experts, often requiring extensive human supervision. The study concludes that LLMs currently serve as powerful assistive tools but still cannot replace the critical validation and synthesis provided by human researchers. Choosing the best LLM to use depends on the task in hand, while several strategies can be implemented to improve the produced output.

scientific communication and education↗
bioRxiv2026

Undergraduate Biophysical Chemistry Series: Teaching through a Combination of a Purpose-built Textbook, Research-derived Biomolecular Samples and Computer Labs

Biophysics is a rapidly advancing field with an incredible breadth of topics. Thus, undergraduate biophysics instructors have to strategize and decide what topics they will cover in their courses. Educational institutions utilize a variety of biophysics textbooks. A common deficiency of each of the existing texts is that it serves well a given set of topics (theory, illustrations, practice problems) and leaves out other areas. A typical example includes good theory and problems for thermodynamics and kinetics while presenting molecular dynamics and various spectroscopic methods in a lacking or outdated way. The authors of this manuscript teach a capstone Biophysical Chemistry three-quarter series (Western Washington University/WWU, Bellingham, WA) which ideally should resonate with the general and major-specific courses the students take within their major at WWU. To achieve this goal and to enrich the traditional lecture-based delivery, the instructors have developed and brought together key pedagogical elements: purpose-built online textbook with a uniform structure of the academic content and practice problems, a study sample (oligopeptide) of biophysical significance with a growing set of experimental and computational data and student-centric in-class activities including computer labs. Our Biophysical series emphasizes concepts and methods of computational structural biology (Molecular Dynamics) and spectroscopic approaches (IR, UV and NMR). Here we describe the details of our integrative approach, summarize key outcomes and chart ways to advance the biophysical chemistry series further. Our textbook can be found through LibreText.

scientific communication and education↗