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Brain Research Apprenticeships in New York at Columbia

NCT04728022 · Status: RECRUITING · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 180

Last updated 2026-02-20

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The objective of the BRAINYAC program is to prepare high school students for, and deliver, the experience of working in a neuroscience research laboratory over a summer. Our program goals are to prepare local students from Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx with the skills necessary to enter a working research laboratory over a period of 8 months, and support them in learning key laboratory skills and communicating them to an audience.Our hypothesis is that students' self-reports of scientific effectiveness and science identity will improve over the course of the 8-month long program. Self-reported efficacy measures predict academic performance in science, so an improvement in these self-report measures may indicate a higher likelihood to succeed in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) studies or careers. Likewise, science identity has a positive impact on a student's likelihood of entering a science career, particularly in populations that are under-represented in science.Over a 4-year period we will track students' self-reports of (1) scientific efficacy, including their level of confidence in scientific writing, oral presentation, library and literature search, conducting research and general academic skills, and (2) science identity. We will adopt a mixed-methods approach combining survey data with focus groups and interviews to present a full picture of these changes. We also propose to track students after they leave the program, to measure whether the changes in scientific self-efficacy translate into STEM studies at the level of higher education or career choices. We will also obtain data from scientific mentors in the program to inform us whether we are adequately supporting them in providing the students with training.

Conditions

  • Educational Activities

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Education program

Mentored high school summer research program

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)

    collaborator NIH

  • Columbia University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Daphna Shohamy, PhD · Columbia University

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
OTHER
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
15 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-12-30
Primary Completion
2026-08-31
Completion
2026-08-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04728022 on ClinicalTrials.gov