Research Rotations
What does cutting-edge cancer research look like?
Students in the Knight Scholars Program will receive up to four research rotations in their Immersion year (2nd year of the program). Scholars will be able to pick area of interests and will be paired with specific research groups offering virtual shadowing opportunities with their team.
The Knight Cancer Institute supports four core cancer research programs:
Each program offers multiple laboratories and centers that offer deeper dives into cancer research.
Cancer Biology, including how cells talk to each other, impairments with cancer, and tumor microenvironments.
Quantitative Oncology, including computational biology, statistics, imaging, omics, and systems biology
Translational Oncology, including cancer early detection and cancer precision medicine
Cancer prevention and control, including prevention, risk reduction, screening, and cancer survivorship
Research Learning Objectives
At the end of the research rotations, the scholar will:
Construct a list of research skills and scientific fields that are used by the research team to study cancer
Describe different settings in which cancer research can be done.
Describe how the research team thinks about cancer early detection and precision medicine in their work
Help scholars see the bigger picture
Include the following frames when showing scholars your work:
Process
Research process questions:
How is research conducted?
What research ethics are in place to protect humans and animals in research?
What models are used to make predictions?
Context
Research context questions:
Who are the people on a research team? What degrees or schooling is needed?
What are the settings where research happens?
Where in the cancer continuum is care being provided?
Have students think about
Who are the vulnerable populations in research?
How does cancer research or clinical trials differ for adult and pediatric populations?
What disparities or inequities are observed in this research field? (e.g., age, racial/ethnic, gender, geographic)
What research advancements are you most excited about in your field? What is still needed?
How have virtual conferences and online science meetings changed the way that cancer research occurs?
What do cancer research rotations look like?
Example Activities
Attend lab meetings
Experiment shocking reveals! (can you show outcomes of an experiment?)
How is research done in your lab? What methods are used?
Participate in journal clubs
How are data collected in your lab? Clinical visits? Surveys? Data repositories? Electronic health records? Animal models? Cell cultures?
What skills would someone learn in your lab if the scholar were to do a multi-week rotation with you the subsequent year?
So many more!
