School of Medicine

Joe W. and Dorothy Dorsett Brown Foundation Grants $100,000 to STEM Internship

Kelly Jean Sherman, Ph.D., Principal Investigator

The Joe W. and Dorothy Dorsett Brown Foundation recently awarded $100,000 to an exciting new program at the School of Medicine. 

The grant will provide stipends and resources for six high school students during the summer months and two during the fall and spring semesters. The high school interns will carry out approved research projects over the fall and spring semesters under the mentorship of Drs. Dennis Paul and Harry Gould. The interns will be trained to work independently on applied research to better understand and treat cancer with a focus on advancing cancer treatment with Targeted Osmotic Lysis (TOL), a novel approach to treat advanced cancers without the negative side effects of many current treatments. The approach was discovered by Drs. Paul and Gould. 

This long-term mentoring opportunity will provide students from local schools with experience in biomedical research and hands-on laboratory training, while contributing to the field. 

Kelly Jean Sherman, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, coordinates the program.

“Brown Foundation-funded student participants will join professional development activities with high school, undergraduate, and medical students from the Science Youth Initiative (SYI) and other research internship programs on campus,” said Dr. Fern Tsien, SYI Director and Assistant Dean of Medical Student Research. “We are excited to partner with Drs. Paul, Gould, and Sherman. All of us are enormously grateful to the Brown Foundation for understanding the need to provide high school students with opportunities to explore STEM careers in real-world settings. These internships help the students understand future college and career choices, build better college and scholarship applications, and prepare them for the rigors of college, medical, and graduate school.”