Research at Dalhousie Medical School

Faculty of Medicine

Summer Research Program for Non‑Medical Students

Enrollment requirements

Summer Research Program for Non-Medical Students is available to those living in Nova Scotia of African descent and Indigenous students who have completed at least two years of a health and/or science-related undergraduate program, other than medicine, at Dalhousie University or another Canadian university.
 

Contact information

Medical Research Development Office
Email: mrdo@dal.ca

Deadline for applications

Summer 2024 Application Deadline TBA

Opening new doors to medical research

Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine’s Summer Research Program for Non-Medical Students aims to open new doors of opportunity to Black Maritimers/Canadians, African Nova Scotians, and Indigenous students interested in medicine and/or health research. The program is open to undergraduate students from these communities who are confident that health research will be part of their professional careers.

Eligible students may apply for studentship funding, established through a partnership of The Imhotep’s Legacy Academy (ILA), Keknu’tmasiek Ta’n Tel Welo’ltimk - We are Learning how to be Well (KW) and Promoting Leadership in health for African Nova Scotians (PLANS). Participants will gain valuable experience in the design, execution and evaluation of research studies, which will aid and inspire them as they pursue careers in medicine, allied health professions and/or research. 

Program overview

Choose from a wide array of research areas

Participants in this program may choose a research project in any medical research discipline—from basic science research in the lab, to clinical research at the point of care, to population health and health services research involving databases, to name just a few of the possibilities.

Projects students have completed in the past:

Relationship between exposure to violence and drug/alcohol use in Mi’kmaq NS youth: resilience as a buffer

Sleep in children with ADHD: a spectral analysis study

Creating a culturally relevant mechanism for Aboriginal children to convey their pain

The influence of a preconception counselling clinic for patients with pre-gestational diabetes on blood glucose control at the time of conception and on subsequent pregnancy outcomes.

Management of ruptured intracranial aneurysms in a Canadian tertiary care centre: clinical outcomes for coiling and clipping over a five-year period post-ISAT

Therapist-delivered distance-based cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety disorders in adults: a meta-analysis

Structural properties of apoB sequences that lead to rpe-secretory degradation of apoB

Therapeutic targeting of chemerin/CMKLR1 for obesity and diabetes

Purification of a bacterially expressed fragment of human apolipoprotein B

Food allergies and their effects on the immune system

Choose your supervisor

Once interested students know what research area interests them, they can contact the Medical Research Development Office for help in finding a supervisor who works in this area. Students can then contact potential supervisors to explore what research projects they may want to pursue together over the summer.

A full-time job for the summer

Participants in the Summer Research Program for Non-Medical Students receive at $9,000 stipend over a 12-week period. They're required to work on their research projects full-time for 10 weeks in this period. They may negotiate up to two weeks off over the summer.

 

Requirements for completion

In order to successfully complete the Summer Research Program for Non-Medical Students, participants must:

  • work full-time on their research projects for 10 weeks in the summer
  • submit a written report of their work in October; download guidelines [PDF - 69 KB]
  • submit completed student evaluation form and faculty evaluation form (see Program Manager for forms)
  • present their research (virtually) at a local and/or national/international conference or research day

Students are urged to begin writing their papers during the summer, as other time commitments place a strain on available writing time in September. 

Students who complete all of the requirements will receive a notation on their transcripts or a certificate of completion (external to Dalhousie University) and are eligible for future funding through the program if they choose to re-apply.

Funding

Funding for the Summer Research Program for Non-Medical Students is provided by the Imhotep Legacy Academy and Dalhousie Medical School. Successful applicants receive a stipend of $9,000 over a 12-week period in the summer, and conference related expenses like registration fees (if any) may be reimbursed to a certain amount (pending abstract submission and acceptance to present virtually at a national/international conference). 

How to apply

Students who wish to take part in this program must submit their applications electronically, on or before the deadline.

The next deadline for applications is Monday, March 11th, 2024.

Download SSRP non-medical Handbook [PDF - 152 KB]

Download Self-ID Questionnaire [ PDF - 179 KB]

Download SSRP non-medical application package [PDF - 333 KB]

Electronic application: Email the completed application, saved as one PDF file, to mrdo@dal.ca