Brains for hire: Bio21 supports undergraduate lab-jobs program

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) has been re-launched as a Bio21 initiative following the receipt of $90,000 over three years from the Victorian State government Department of Industry, Innovation and Regional Development's Office of Science and Technology for the program.

UROP provides second and third year undergraduate students to participate in a laboratory research project alongside their undergraduate coursework, giving them a real-life experience of biomedical research, providing them with contacts and a network of potential colleagues, supervisors and mentors for further study. The students spend about eight hours a week on the project during semester and about six weeks full time during vacation periods, and are paid an hourly casual rate of pay for their work.

The program was initially started five years ago as a joint initiative of the CRC for Cellular Growth Factors (CRC-CGF) and the Gene CRC, and was the brainchild of Prof Doug Hilton, then the director of the CRC-CGF. According to WEHI director Prof Suzanne Cory, Hilton believed that instead of earning money through part-time work in the pub, undergraduate science students would be better off earning it in a lab, and learning at the same time. His ideas, she said, were based on his own experiences as a student in Australia and later as a postdoc in the US, where undergraduate students commonly work in the lab, gaining experience and earning money.

While Cory said she was initially sceptical, the program has been an outstanding success.

"We had more than 150 applications for the first round. It was immediately apparent that this was an opportunity that students had been waiting for," said Andrea Douglas, CEO of the Gene CRC.

"I continue to be astonished at the enthusiasm of students participating in UROP."

Of 106 students that have since gone through UROP, 77 have completed the program, with 38 going on to do Honours degrees, 10 in PhD programs, 14 finalising double degrees or going on to medical degrees, and five working as research assistants. Another 29 UROP students are still completing the program.

Ten research institutions are currently participating in UROP, and involvement has not been confined to Victoria, with UROP students at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research and at Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience. Students have also been placed with CRC industry partners Amrad and Cerylid. And while most projects have been lab-based, some students have followed less traditional paths of research through the program.

Rony Duncan, a UROP student who is now completing a PhD in the ethics of genetic testing at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, said her UROP project in ethics of genetic testing provided her with an alternative to a lab-based application of her science degree.

Another UROP student, Jai Yu, who is completing Honours with David Vaux at WEHI, said he had two very exciting opportunities through the program to work on a project at Amrad, and later at WEHI.

"It's a real life science experience. You're not just listening to lectures telling you what science is like, you're doing it in a hands on way," he said. "You learn that [your experiment] doesn't always work the first time."

Bio21 Australia executive director Dr Stella Clark said that the organisation was delighted to take over the management of UROP as both of the CRCs ended their terms this year. She said it supported one of the major tenets of Bio21, to create an environment for research and research education.

Bio21 plans to expand the program, and is in discussion with a number of additional research institutions. They will also seek corporate and philanthropic support for the program in addition to the State government funding.

According to Dr Elizabeth Johnson, Bio21's UROP program manager, this year has seen more than 120 students apply for about 30 places.