The Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences is an umbrella program. That means that students apply to the program and are admitted, and they can move between disciplines. This includes epidemiology, biostatistics, and population health, as well as more traditional wet lab sciences such as cell biology, cancer, biology, biochemistry.
Having a life of discovery in science, is really a tremendous privilege. And what we hope to do is to train all of our PhD students to really experience the joy and passion of discovery. And here we have the opportunity to think about that discovery in the context of medicine.
And really being at an academic medical center like NYU Langone perfuses a sense of purpose in the research that goes on here, because we're so closely tied to what's happening on the clinical side. And we're able to draw from that inspiration to really ground and drive our basic research here.
Our students are working on a whole host of different kinds of questions. "What's happening in a particular protein complex at the very end of a chromosome? What happens to cells when we age? And how are cells communicating with each other during the process of aging? How do certain cells know where to go? And how do they find their path and get from one place to another, as a group?"
You want to have good research. You want to have a great mentor. But you also want to have an environment that allows you to grow. I want to be a scientist, but I also want to have a social life. There's nothing wrong with doing both. And when things get tough and difficult in graduate school, which they will like Realistically speaking, it's always nice to have a community and people who are there to support you.
And that was one of the main things I personally was looking for. So it's not like I'm the only one like we all do it together. And when those times get tough, we can rely on each other.
Our graduates have gone on to really high successful careers across all disciplines, including running their own academic labs, careers in industry. Students who have started their own companies as well as students who've gone into things such as teaching, as well as academic publishing.
