Two “golden ticket” awards per year will be granted by the Vollum Director/Co-Director to Neuroscience Graduate Program (NGP) applicants that are URM students. Vollum Scholar offers will be made to qualified prospective students during the recruitment process. The award will cover five years of graduate education costs (tuition and overhead, ~$38,000 per year for each student), thereby allowing the student considerable freedom to join any NGP-associated laboratory, and making that student highly attractive to faculty due to cost coverage. At other institutions this has proven extremely helpful in the recruitment of URM students. We envision a mature Vollum Scholars program having 10 enrollees, with approximately two incoming students per year, allowing time for the program to ramp up.

Total cost: ~$200,000 per student for the five-year window

Vollum Fellowships are $5,000 per year awards to each Neuroscience Graduate Program student who successfully obtains independent funding (e.g. NRSA, NSF Fellowship) to cover at least $22,000 of their costs. This award is meant to promote excellence and efforts in grantsmanship — something all trainees will require moving forward — and to reward success. On average, half of the NGP students obtain external funding.

Total cost (for 25 students): $125,000 per year 

Many URM students are at a disadvantage when they emerge with undergraduate degrees based on sub-optimal training programs. Postbaccalaureate programs offer the opportunity for a 1–2 year ramp-up in preparation for applying to graduate school. Training includes full-time research opportunities in an established lab, along with augmented coursework and mentoring customized for each student’s specific needs. The overall goal of this program is to make these students highly competitive for graduate school. The OHSU Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) is directed by Letisha Wyatt, PhD and Gary Westbrook, MD; André Walcott, PhD is the program coordinator.

Approximate cost is commensurate with that of a starting lab technician — roughly $48,000 per year in salary and benefits for each trainee. Total number of trainees will vary, but optimally the postbaccalaureate program will have 2–4 trainees per year to help establish a sense of community.

Total cost (for six trainees): $288,000 per year

Postdoctoral scholars are often the most productive members of research groups and can provide essential help in mentoring and training graduate students. Postdoctoral researchers are particularly impactful for junior faculty launching a laboratory who are in need of highly productive and experienced support. This program will fund postdoctoral scholars in Vollum Institute laboratories. Support will be allocated on a year-by-year basis at the discretion of the Director. The goal is to use this mechanism to provide additional support for young faculty, leverage faculty recruitments, and potentially jump-start exciting new research projects for which funding is not available.

Total cost (for one postdoctoral scholar): ~$60,000 per year

Endowing a Chair to support Vollum Institute Faculty is one of the best ways to provide long-term support for our research programs. Endowed Chairs provide flexible funds in perpetuity that can be used by faculty to directly support their research, students or their own salary, depending upon the need. While a range of sizes is possible, a good starting point (assuming a ~5% return per year) is approximately $1 million.

Basic biomedical research evolves at a rapid pace, and we must constantly embrace emergent technologies to stay at the cutting edge of our fields. Most of our current funding mechanisms do not provide support for purchasing large equipment, so we must find other ways to keep our faculty equipped to compete with other top institutions. We need support at a range of levels — from smaller dollar items like electrophysiology rigs ($50,000–100,000) to specialized microscopes ranging from $300,000–750,000.

Vollum Institute faculty are creative scientists and leaders in their fields because they take risks and push their research in new directions. NIH is surprisingly conservative in how it supports scientific research — the most daring projects are shunned — so we continue to search for alternate ways to fund the most innovative, and potentially most impactful, research.

Your generous gift to support a specific research project can be transformative in its impact by enabling the formative work that often leads to NIH funding and significant scientific breakthroughs. The amount of financial support needed varies widely, and depends on the individual research projects, but the Vollum Director can provide you with examples at many levels.