Johns Hopkins Summer UndergraduateProgram in Kidney Science

Kidney disease represents a significant growing threat to public health. Unfortunately, efforts to find effective prevention strategies and innovative new treatments have been hampered by a paucity of kidney disease researchers. Traditional workforce recruitment methods are drying up, and low awareness of kidney disease has made it difficult to attract talented scientists outside of nephrology and medicine from other spheres of science, despite major technological and conceptual advances in the kidney science field. We propose a new program to address this need, focusing nationally on talented undergraduate students broadly interested in biomedical sciences and biomedical engineering. This new program, Johns Hopkins Summer Undergraduate Program in Kidney Science (SUPerKS), will leverage the unique resources of a preeminent university to provide trainees with innovative research opportunities, mentoring by leaders and rising stars in the field, exciting didactic and problem-based training experiences, clinical immersion, intellectual enrichment activities, team-building and social events over the summer. SUPerKS will operate within the Kidney Physiology and Precision Medicine Center, which brings together a highly dynamic group of investigators from clinical and basic science departments within the JHU Schools of Medicine, Public Health, and Engineering to work on kidney science challenges. Other innovations include a kidney-focused curriculum, mentorship training, and an institutionally funded administrative office that is devoted to supporting summer internship programs. At the end of the training cycle, the trainees and their projects will be celebrated in a summer programs event at Johns Hopkins. Students will also travel to present their work and meet participants in the other programs funded by this mechanism. SUPerKS trainees will exit the program with an appreciation for the value of research, improved interpersonal-communication skills, and a more sophisticated understanding and appreciation of the kidney. After 5 years of operation, the SUPerKS program should train 40 talented students advancing toward careers in the biomedical sciences, especially in the kidney science fields.