Call for Applications for Nursing Undergraduate Research Assistants
The BeaLab is seeking pre-medicine and nursing undergraduate students to work with Dr. Peñalver Bernabé and her team on ongoing research studies. This clinical research could increase you communication skills with patients and can expand careers in healthcare & beyond. A key focus of our team is mental health in pregnant and postpartum women, as well as other perinatal conditions (e.g., preterm birth) with special emphasis in the relationships between hormonal, immune and neurological systems, and the gut microbiome. These complex interactions have been coined as the “brain-gut axis”. The brain-gut axis is a new promising avenue to treat mental health disorders using probiotics.
URAs will assist with:
- Patient recruitment, screening, consenting, and compensating research participants in clinical settings
- Processing blood samples for immune, metabolomics and proteomics assays
- Processing stool samples for next generation sequencing, i.e., 16S rRNA and shotgun metagenomics analysis, and metabolomics analysis.
- Processing urine and other biological samples
- Perform electro-encephalograms using a portable device
- Perform behavioral tests
- Managing participant and sample tracking in both REDCap and UIC BOX
- Data entry and database management
Eligibility
- Pre-medicine and nursing sophomores or juniors enrolled at UIC (exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis for seniors).
- Outstanding communicator and bedside manners- demeanor & confidence is essential
- eagerness to recruit women
- Comfortable with EPIC for navigating patient appointment schedules and medical records.
- The student should be in good academic standing with a strong GPA (3.0 or above) and have an interest in women’s health.
- Preference may be given to students in the Honors College and/or students who have completed courses in research methods or statistics.
- Student should be self-motivated, well organized and display a high attention to detail.
- Able to commit to a minimum of 10 hours per week.
- Able to be on campus at least one day a week.
- Ideally trained phlebotomies.
- Students that qualify for Federal Student Aid will be compensated
If you are interested, please send your resume, to Beatriz Peñalver Bernabé at penalver@uic.edu and Elizabeth Wenzel (ewenze4@uic.edu).
