The first, with Abbott Laboratories, offers students direct exposure to pharmaceutical careers, develops joint research and training opportunities, and enhances Abbott's ability to recruit outstanding BSD graduates. Through the new partnership Abbott funds undergraduate and medical student internships, postdoctoral fellowships, and joint symposia.

Biological sciences undergraduate students completing summer internships at Abbott in the first year of the program include rising fourth-years Karen Tam (pictured at right), who worked with Abbott's Immunology Global Project Team and who will also receive a full tuition scholarship from Abbott during her final year in the College; Robert Nedved, who worked in Cancer Discovery; and Robert Thorne, who worked in Neurosciences. Two rising second-year Pritzker medical students —Edward Gometz and Kweku Grant-Acquah—completed summer internships with Abbott's

Oncology and Antiviral Teams, respectively. Kulandaivelu Vetrivel, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Gopal Thinakaran, Ph.D., will receive a one-year postdoctoral fellowship that contains an embedded three-month internship in Abbott's Neurosciences Research Unit.

Finally, Elizabeth McNally, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Cardiovascular Research, will use funding from Abbott to develop a scientific symposium on “Building and Rebuilding the Heart” to be held later this academic year.

The second initiative creates the Interdisciplinary Scientist Training Program and features a new partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The new program, directed by Harinder Singh, Ph.D., will focus on recruiting advanced graduate students with an aptitude and demonstrable interest in interdisciplinary approaches and training in the analysis of biological systems and processes.

The new program's structure will be fleshed under the aegis of a Steering Committee chaired by Dr. Singh that also includes Conrad Gilliam, Ph.D., Steve Goldstein, M.D., Ph.D., Steve Kent, Ph.D., Dan Margoliash, Ph.D., Keith Moffat, Ph.D., Nancy Schwartz, Ph.D., and Neil Shubin, Ph.D.

The ISTP will also focus on creating strategic training partnerships with other research institutions that share BSD's academic values and high quality. Most notably, a subset of ISTP's first students will be part of a new partnership between the University of Chicago and HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus (JFRC). Through this partnership, the University of Chicago joins Cambridge University as one of only two primary training sites for the JFRC worldwide. The ISTP plans to launch student recruitment in late Fall 2006 with the earliest cohort of regular ISTP and JFRC students arriving in Fall 2007.

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