Round of “three-minute theses” showcase program to develop minority scientists

By Tina Shelton

They spent weeks abroad (in India, Cameroon and Thailand) and when they returned to Hawai’i, they had made strides in their education and research, and made new friends, too.

The eight college students selected for the 2016 Minority health and Health Disparities International Research Training (MHIRT) program (based at the UH medical school) presented the results of their research projects at the annual E Hoʻoulu Haumāna (“The growth of students”) event on August 11.

The “Three Minute Thesis” concept is encouraged as a way for the young scientists to focus on communicating their research outcomes in a concise, conversational way, one which is not too complex for non-scientists to grasp. It is harder than it sounds to boil-down into simplified terms the hefty research they have immersed themselves in. But it stretches them in new ways, and helps them learn that the goals of biomedical research (and sometimes the public support and funding for science) can be hampered unless people understand the benefit scientific inquiry brings to their everyday lives. Never fear, however, the science itself remains at the heart of the MHIRT program. At another venue, the students (who attend the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and Leeward Community College) also present abstracts and write a paper about their research.

In these short clips below, videotaped at JABSOM, the MHIRT researchers describe their work and its goal. Mahalo to the students, their mentors in Hawaiʻi and abroad, and the MHIRT grant (T37MD008636-03) principal investigators Dr. Vivek Nerurkar and Dr. Diane Wallace Taylor of the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology. And, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institutes of Health; Mahidol University; University of Yaounde I, the Biotechnology Center and the Institute of Medical Research and Medicinal Plant Studies; Centre Pasteur Du Cameroun; the Thai Red Cross Society; Jawaharlal Nehru University; and the South East Asia Research Collaboration with Hawaiʻi/Thai AIDS Research Center.