Pitt to Host Ethics Forum for Undergraduate Researchers

PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences, Undergraduate Studies will host an Ethics Forum from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. June 30 for students conducting undergraduate research at the University this summer. Registration and the introductory and closing remarks will be held in the William Pitt Union (WPU) Ballroom, 3959 Fifth Ave., Oakland.

Attorney Debra M. Parrish, president of the Parrish Law Offices and formerly with the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, will speak at the plenary closing session at 12:30 p.m. in the WPU Ballroom. Her presentation is titled "Research Ethics: Of Mice and Congressmen."

The forum comprises breakout sessions from 9:45 to 11:45 a.m. in various campus locations. Included in the program are breakout sessions titled: "Gender differences in science"; "Should our employers be privy to our medical histories?"; "Human Stem Cell Research"; "Cryonics"; "Xenotransplantation"; "Should we be able to choose our children?"; and "We've sequenced the human genome—now what?"

Forum participants include more than 200 college undergraduates from 60 colleges and universities across the country who are at Pitt this summer to conduct research. Of this number, 75 are Pitt students. During the summer, student researchers work in labs and investigate ethical issues related to their research. All the students are housed in Pitt's Brackenridge Hall.

In addition to the Pitt group, undergraduate researchers from Duquesne University and the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative will participate in the forum.

While summer research programs for undergraduates have been around since the 1970s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been funding hundreds of them at campuses across the country since the early '90s. The purpose of these programs is to attract the best and brightest students to the sciences by providing stipends for them to attend educationally enriching seminars and to work full-time in college labs with help from faculty mentors.

This summer, Pitt is providing funding for research opportunities through the Brackenridge Scholars program, USS and Toretti fellowships, and the Jean Hamilton Walls scholarship program. Other funding agencies include NSF, the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Merck. Pitt departments offering summer research programs include chemistry, physics, neuroscience, and biological sciences, as well as the University Honors College.

For more information, contact Margaret Heely at 412-648-7927 or meh33@pitt.edu.

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6/25/04/tmw