CTSI welcomes doctoral student NCATS awardees

Two University at Buffalo doctoral students have been awarded 2022 Research Supplements to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research as supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) of the NIH. These administrative supplement awards will provide two years of funding to support graduate student trainees in their health-related research career trajectory as they join the CTSI community of scholars.

Receiving 2022 supplements are:

• Schuyler C. Lawson, MA
  PhD student, Department of Community Health and Health Behavior, School of Public Health and Health Professions
  Project Title: “Understanding Racial Differences in Smoking Cessation App Utilization and Smoking Behavior”
  Faculty Mentor: Gregory G. Homish, PhD, Chair and Professor, Department of Community Health and Health Behavior, School of Public Health and Health Professions

• Dayron M. Leyva Rodriguez
  PhD student, Department of Oral Biology, School of Dental Medicine
  Project Title: “Bacterial Derived Aortic Endothelial Calcification to Promote Atherosclerosis”
  Faculty Mentor: Michelle Visser, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Oral Biology, School of Dental Medicine

“The funding provided by these prestigious diversity supplements to our scholars, Dayron and Schuyler, is a bridge to their next careers stage,” says CTSI Workforce Development Core Director and CTSI K Scholars Program PI and Lead Margarita L. Dubocovich, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology and Senior Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “We are all contributing to the mentoring and research training of these talented scholars, and future members of the next generation of leaders in clinical and translation research.”

Lawson’s award is supported by NCATS and the NIH Office of the Director (the Office of Disease Prevention and the Office of Data Science Strategy) of the National Institutes of Health. Leyva Rodriguez’s award is funded by NCATS. Both awards are under award number UL1TR001412 to the University at Buffalo.

Learn more about past UB recipients of diversity supplements in this 2021 Jacobs School feature. Letters of intent for the 2023 NIH-funded supplements are due on August 19; selected LOIs will be invited to submit full proposals based on the criteria outlined in the RFP.

More information about the NCATS CTSA Diversity Supplement and Re-Entry Supplement programs can be found on the CTSI website.