Research Abroad

Many of you go back to Canada and the US for your breaks, and I know that  many of you will be very busy with your families and friends, but this is also a great time to make some "progress" on your thesis.  Use your summers off wisely. Rest up, but get a good start on your project.

Many of you have worked in research settings in North America prior to starting in the TeAMS program. In many cases you can continue with this research or rework and beef up previous work to meet the Thesis requirement guidelines. 

You must get permission from your previous lab/PI/supervisor to do this and ask them to act as your mentor. 

You can also find a new mentor or project at home. To find a supervisor at home, try to connect with physicians either through people you know, or through clinics you have worked in, or perhaps even past advisors. When explaining the project to them, you can show them the thesis description in the handbook as well as explain the following:

1. You are looking for a project with a tangible hypothesis or question that you are going to either prove, or disprove, or show is not possible as you had initially postulated (this is ok too). 

1. The project will require background research and reading, but having appropriate support and a mentor is helpful in this part of the process.

1. The project should be enough for you to write a 20 page paper on (including background, methods, results, conclusions, references), and so will likely NOT be sizeable enough for a solo publication, but can be part of one. If you write a paper, you will need to be the first author to have it count, and very likely this will not be the case. Being first author is still a possibility, but don't make that the priority, especially not when trying to find a supervisor. 

1. Note you will automatically have the Thesis committee to act as your "phantom" Israeli PI (they have no active role in your project). This should  pose no problem once you have the ball rolling at home.

If there is any Helsinki approval needed-and this is critical-the Rambam Helsinki Committed may decide that they do not automatically accept the Helsinki from the other site-they may need to review that here as well which would is a pain but doable. NOT A BIG DEAL! KEEP PLUGGING AWAY AT IT!