PROVIDENCE – For the second year in a row, six students will be paid to spend the spring semester interning at the Slater Technology Fund as part of a program aimed at highlighting local career opportunities in the life sciences and biotechnology industries.
The EPSCoR Entrepreneurial Fellows Program is sponsored by the Slater Fund and the federally funded Rhode Island Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).
It is designed to show talented upper-class undergraduate and graduate students from local schools the range of opportunities available at companies engaged in cutting-edge scientific research, Richard Horan, senior managing director of the Slater Technology Fund, told Providence Business News when the program was unveiled in December 2008.
“There is great deal of interest among students in entrepreneurship as a career-development option,” Horan said Tuesday in a news release. “Our goal with the fellowships is to provide pathways for entering the field that will increase the likelihood that graduates from our colleges and universities will choose to commence their careers in Rhode Island after completing their academic studies.”
This year’s fellows – four from Brown University and two from the University of Rhode Island – are:
- Arjun Bansal, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Brown who earned his undergraduate degree in computer science at the California Institute of Technology.
- Naside Gozde Durmus, a first-year Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Brown and Fulbright Scholarship recipient who earned her undergraduate degree in molecular biology and genetics from Middle East Technical University in Turkey.
- Anup Mohanty, a senior at URI studying biological sciences.
- Vince Siu, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Brown who earned her undergraduate degree in biological engineering at Cornell University.
- Steven Surrette, a third-year candidate for a Ph.D in pharmacy and a master’s in business administration at URI degrees at URI who earned his undergraduate degree in biology at URI.
- James Vecchione, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in chemistry at Brown who earned his undergraduate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Clark University.
Additional information is available at stac.ri.gov/epscor.
