A proposal put forth by two BME students, Iraj Hosseini, a 4th year PhD Candidate in the Institute for Computational Medicine lab of Dr. Feilim Mac Gabhann, and Shiva Razavi, co-president of the BME PhD Council, was awarded $150,000 from the Office of the Provost, as part of its PhD Innovation Initiative (PII) to support bold, creative, culture‐changing ideas for transforming PhD education at Johns Hopkins.
The winning proposal, titled “BME Transition Generator” was the result of multi-faceted teamwork between BME PhD students, the faculty and the staff. Iraj Hosseini and Shiva Razavi led the efforts that shaped this proposal. Dr. Elliot McVeigh and Dr. Youseph Yazdi served on the advisory panel, while Hong Lan, Chuck Montague and Catherine Schoonover from the BME staff played an instrumental role. The valuable feedback received from surveying the BME PhD student body was a critical basis for their success.

From the proposal abstract:

“Traditionally, the mission of the doctoral programs has been to train future university faculty; however, there is increasing enthusiasm among PhD students to pursue careers in industry, entrepreneurship and consulting. As of 2012, about 26% of biomedical PhDs have tenured or tenure-track faculty positions, compared to 34% in 1993. It is therefore essential for our educational institutions to accept this shift in the academic market and offer our students additional mentorship and training that will make them competitive.

The gap between current training objectives and career outcomes brings into stark relief the need for a proactive role that universities need to pursue in preparing PhD students for both academic and alternative career paths. The JHU Department of Biomedical Engineering proposes to achieve this additional training by establishing a new departmental center, the BME Transition Generator. This center will serve two primary functions: (i) facilitating internships for the current PhD students; (ii) providing additional training opportunities to address the need for developing professional skills.”

Congratulations to the BME PII team on their outstanding achievement!