The Summer Undergraduate Research Program at Emory (SURE) will offer four new positions this summer because of a grant issued by the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute (ACTSI). A total of 70 positions will now be offered.

The ten-week summer program is for students at Emory and across the nation. Each student in the program works under a faculty member or graduate student and conducts research alongside the mentor in a specialty area in math and science labs.

Working 40 hours each week in SURE provides students not only with time for research, but also instruction on application processes for graduate schools, formal and informal mentoring and an ethics session related to the research.

Emory partnered with Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Institute of Technology, Kaiser Permanente of Georgia and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to form the city-wide ACTSI in 2007.

According to Thomas Ziegler, co-program director of ACTSI’s research education, training and career development core, ACTSI aims to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. He said ACTSI is one of 38 medical research institutions that attracts students to consider careers in clinical and translational research.

According to Pat Marstellar, director of Emory College Center for Science Education and director of the Hughes Science Initiative, ACTSI’s contribution affirms Emory’s long history as a clinical and translational research center of excellence.

SURE began with a grant from Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1990, sponsoring 10 students who wanted to pursue research-intensive careers.

Although Howard Hughes Medical Institute is the primary contributor for SURE, there will also be five positions geared toward AIDS research, funded by a $100,000 grant from Concerned Parents for AIDS research, a group of parents from upstate New York.

At summer’s end, there is a formal poster symposium, in which each student’s research is displayed as part of an exhibition marking their summer’s conquest.

“By the end of the summer, these students sound like grad students. They’re ready for their PhDs,” Marstellar said.

— Contact Anum Mohammad.