For Prospective Students

Undergraduate Students

As part of our teaching mission, we provide limited research opportunities for highly motivated and qualified undergraduate students. Students will be able to experience the operation of a research lab in a team-based environment and acquire hands-on training. Depending on the project, students will be supervised by a graduate student, post-doctoral fellow or staff member. All projects are part of the on going research endeavor and are designed to match the capabilities of interested applicants. As part of the training experience, students will be expected to read relevant scientific literature to acquire a working knowledge of the project and to complete required URMC safety training classes (Lab safety and Human blood borne pathogen safety courses) before starting the project.

Students will be expected to give two presentations to the lab, one in the beginning to introduce the proposed experiments, and one at the end to present and discuss the results obtained. All students must be enrolled in a college or institution of higher learning which will provide academic credit for Undergraduate Research work. Undergraduate training positions are non-paying internships. Limited grant opportunities may be available through third-party agencies, such as REACH Career Internship Funding, XEROX Engineering Research Fellows and the URMC Summer Scholars Program.

Interested students should e-mail Prof. Mayer-Pröschel to inquire about available projects. Inquiries should include a letter of interest, explaining why you would like to conduct research in the Proschel lab, a resume and a copy of your most recent transcript.

Graduate Program Affiliations

• Neurosciences Graduate Program (NGP)
• Genetics, Genomics and Development Graduate Program (GGD)
• Pathways of Human Disease Graduate Program (PWD)

Hands-on, in-depth training

The lab utilizes a wide variety of techniques to manipulate neural cell populations in vitro, and to measure the effect of cell therapeutic interventions in animal models of CNS disease. Besides the commonplace molecular methods (QPCR, Western blot, cloning, lentiviral gene delivery, etc), we have specialized protocols for the isolation and culture of different neural cell populations, including fetal and post-natal neurons, glial precursors, neural stem cells and inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and hESCs. Chemically defined culture conditions are used to grow cells, and induce the directed differentiation of precursors. These in vitro methods allowing us to study the behavior and functions of these cells in culture, and to generate specific cell populations for transplantation into the injured CNS. For this purpose we use several different injury models, in particular rodent models of spinal cord injury, and Parkinsonian neurodegeneration.

Functional readouts include common tests of motor skills (Footplacement, forepaw usage, gaitscan, grip strength, pellet reaching), as well as sensory assays (Hargraves, von Frey) and electrophysiological measures (EEG, MEP, SSEP). Post-mortem analysis uses immunohistology and stereological analysis of tissue sections. Because of the large number of techniques, students and post-docs are strongly encouraged to collaborate. However, to ensure a firm grasp of experimental design, and a sound foundation in methodological experience, PhD students are expected to master all the methodologies required to address their specific project needs, ranging from cloning to in vivo work. Projects available to rotation students can include any of these methods, typically however do not involve surgical procedures. All rotation students will be expected to give a brief presentation at the start and end of their rotation. The first presentation is intended to introduce them and their project to the lab. This ensures students have understood the theoretical background of their project and that they can quickly integrate into the lab. The second presentation will take place at the end of the rotation and will include data presentation and Q & A. An overview of research projects can be found here.

Research Opportunities