LSUHealthNO Medical Student to Spend a Year Doing Research at NIH

Russ Guidry, a student at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, is one of only about 50 medical students in the country chosen to participate in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Medical Research Scholars Program.

According to the NIH, the Medical Research Scholars Program is a comprehensive, year-long research enrichment program designed to attract the most creative, research-oriented medical, dental, and veterinary students to the intramural campus of the NIH in Bethesda, MD. Student scholars engage in closely mentored basic, clinical or translational research projects on the main NIH campus in Bethesda or nearby NIH facilities that match their research interests and career goals.

"It's an honor to have the opportunity to represent LSU Health Sciences Center at the NIH,” says Guidry. “I can't wait to discover all that this experience has to offer.”

Guidry is a third-year LSU Health New Orleans medical student originally from Baton Rouge. For the past couple of years, he has worked on angiogenesis inhibitors in the lab of Dr. Euguene Woltering, the James D. Rives Professor of Surgery and Neuroscience and Section Chief of Surgical Endocrinology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.

“Russ Guidry is the fifth LSU student to participate in this prestigious program,” notes Dr. Paula Gregory, Director of Faculty Development at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.

The NIH Medical Research Scholars Program is a public-private partnership supported jointly by the NIH and generous contributions to the Foundation for the NIH from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the American Association for Dental Research, the Colgate-Palmolive Company, Genentech and alumni of student research programs and other individual supporters via contributions to the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.

Guidry will begin the program in July 2017. While he’s there, he’ll also have the opportunity to take graduate courses and engage in activities like seminars and journal clubs with top experts in a variety of fields.