Research in biomedical and bioengineering careers increasingly relies on rapidly evolving domain-specific data analysis skills and the expert management of information and knowledge. The need for such preparation is most acute among urban students who are multicultural, multilingual, and low-income; who persistently underachieve academically compared to their majority culture peers. This underachievement is a key factor in dissuading high school students from considering college education. Hence, there is an urgent need to prepare the future research workforce in biomedical informatics. One of the primary reasons for the Department of Biohealth Informatics (DBI) at the School of Informatics and Computing (SoIC), Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus to be hosting this R25 education program is the recently approved Biomedical Informatics (BMI) baccalaureate degree program, which is the only such program in Indiana and the third in the nation, to educate students in a rapidly growing field, to address the shortage of informatics-trained research workforce in biomedicine. Since we also have a highly successful accelerated BS+MS program that allows students to complete both a baccalaureate and master’s degrees in five years, the students will be encouraged to participate in this degree pathway that will prepare them for higher-paying job opportunities in the fields of bioinformatics and health informatics. Along with this, our campus represents the amalgamation of two of the leading research-focused universities in Indiana - Indiana and Purdue Universities, and hosts the largest medical school in the nation. Long-term industry collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly and company, faculty joint appointments with leading research sites, like the Regenstrief Institute and an extensive existing network of interactions with numerous Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), make the SoIC/IUPUI an appropriate site to host this NLM R25 research education program - whose goals are to reduce gender and race disparities in the biomedical, behavioral and clinical research workforce by targeting academically talented students who come from economically disadvantaged (ED) and/or underrepresented minority (URM) populations. The objective here is to provide hands-on research experience during summer in their junior, senior undergraduate and first-year graduate years and keep them motivated to pursue research careers while taking advantage of access to accelerated degrees available on campus. Since informatics in biomedicine impacts a wide variety of interdisciplinary fields, proposed summer research experiences will benefit undergraduate and graduate student population in a multitude of NLM-supported research careers.

Research in biomedical and bioengineering careers increasingly relies on rapidly evolving domain-specific data analysis skills and the expert management of information and knowledge. There is a critical need for such preparation among urban students to fill the growing workforce requirements in biomedical informatics. This proposal’s goal is to reduce gender and race disparities in the biomedical, behavioral and clinical research workforce by targeting academically talented students who come from economically disadvantaged (ED) and/or underrepresented minority (URM) populations by providing them hands-on research experiences during summer and keep them motivated to pursue research as well as academic careers.