Mentoring at Upstate
Graduate Student Kathryn Beuler (left) works with Jennifer Moffat, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, who uses a mouse model to study the genes required for chicken pox virus to cause disease.
George Ring, PhD, Director of the Center for Bioresearch Imaging, advises graduate student Qin He on the use of the confocal microscope.
She uses the microscope to visualize the distribution pattern of nerves in transgenic mice that lack GAP-43, a nervous-system-specific protein.
The student/mentor relationship is the essence of graduate training at Upstate. Our graduate students and principal investigators interact daily "There are significant advantages to taking graduate training at an academic medical center. The interactions between graduate and medical students in courses and research laboratories lead to a much greater knowledge and understanding of the medically relevant issues that need to be addressed by basic research. This interaction is simply not available in a non-medical university."
José Jalife, MD, FACC
Professor and Chair, Pharmacology
Professor, Medicine and Pediatrics
"One of my goals in establishing my research group was to build a cohesive unit. Every member of my group is crucial."
Karen Vikstrom, PhD,
Assistant Professor of Pharmacology,
studies the diseased heart at the molecular level.
"You have a lot of one-on-one interaction with your mentor, the PhD who runs the lab. At a lot of other institutions with larger labs, you work mostly with senior graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, but you don't work with the professor very much. Here, you're treated as a colleague."
Mike Laiosa, Graduate Student
"It's easy to talk to professors. No appointments are needed. You just walk in and talk. I did three totally different lab rotations in the departments of Microbiology and Immunology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Cell and Developmental Biology, before I chose a lab."
Dave Tumberello, Graduate Student
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