Two medical students chosen for NIH Medical Research Scholars Program

HWCOM students Nicole Colwell and Jason Alvarez

Nicole Colwell and Jason Alvarez –classmates at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine– not only share a passion for medicine and research, they now share the honor of being selected to the prestigious Medical Research Scholars Program (MRSP) at the National Institutes of Health.

The third-year medical students are two of only 55 students chosen nationwide to spend a year working with some of the best clinicians and scientists in the world doing cutting-edge biomedical research at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“When I heard I’d been chosen, I was ecstatic,” Colwell says. “I had a final that day, and I was the only one taking the final with a smile on my face.”

Although she was an English literature major in college, Colwell knew she wanted to be a doctor, and when she did a neurosurgery rotation at Baptist Hospital under Dr. Sergio Gonzalez-Arias, chairman of the HWCOM’s department of neuroscience, she found her calling. Colwell, Gonzalez-Arias and HWCOM researcher Jeremy Chambers founded the neuro-oncology lab at the College of Medicine and started studying brain cancer. That’s the field of research she’ll be pursuing at the NIH National Cancer Center.

Alvarez, who was born in New Jersey but grew up in the Philippines, hopes to do research in ophthalmology at the NIH National Eye Institute under world-renowned retina specialist Dr. Emily Chew. He met her during the interview process and was in total awe.

“I was pretty star-struck. It’s amazing to even think that I will be able to work with her,” he says.

Alvarez says his younger brother –who suffers from several eye conditions, including optic nerve hypoplasia, a disease that can cause blindness – is who first inspired him to study ophthalmology.

“I am really excited about the opportunity offered to our medical students. This experience will probably determine their career paths,” says Dr. Carolyn Runowicz, executive associate dean for academics affairs, and the head of research for the College of Medicine. “I am very proud of their accomplishments and hope they will become clinician-scientists. The experience to work with world-class scientists in an environment like the NIH is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,“ she says.

Colwell and Alvarez will spend a year in the NIH Medical Research Scholars Program

Because they are taking off a year to do research, the students will have to delay their medical school graduation, but neither seems concerned. First of all both are young. Alvarez is 24; Colwell is 27. And they believe being an NIH Medical Research Scholar will help their chances of landing a great residency program in very competitive fields.

The students each get a $34,000 stipend for the year to defray the cost of living, which they agree isn’t much in today’s economy, but both admit they would have gladly done it for free.

It is a priceless experience.