Weill Cornell Art and Photo

Cindy Parra, a sophomore on a premed track at Columbia University, spent 10 weeks at Weill Cornell doing research as part of the annual Gateways to the Laboratory Program. Here, Parra poses with an MRI scanner designed for children at one of Weill Cornell's pediatric facilities.

For some, summer is a time to recuperate from a stressful academic year. For others, it's a chance to build upon one's studies and further the path to academic success.

The annual Gateways to the Laboratory Program invites a select group of minority and disadvantaged college students to participate in 10 weeks of research at Weill Cornell Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Sloan-Kettering Institute and Rockefeller University, granting them a unique opportunity and boosting their odds of getting into an M.D. or Ph.D. graduate program after college. Nowadays these students compete for admission on a far more level playing field, thanks to strides made by Gateways and similar programs over the past decade.

Gateways first evolved under the auspices of the Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. Program, which encompasses the laboratories and research staff at the three universities. All three institutions fund the Gateways program, which began as a challenge grant with seed money from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Since then, a slew of other donors have stepped forward to support the initiative.

"The Gateways program is an essential component of the M.D.-Ph.D. Program, as we enable new generations of students to experience the excitement of modern biomedical research and enable them to become outstanding applicants to M.D.-Ph.D. programs around the country," said Dr. Olaf Andersen, director of the Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. and Gateways programs. "When our 'alumni' go back to their home institutions, they will bring knowledge and expertise with them, which they use to enrich the academic milieu. They become sought after as research and teaching assistants, and they become role models for other students."

In 1993, the Gateways program began with four students. Ever since, the number has grown, and many alumni return to the three institutions as full-time students. Gateways alumni keep in touch with Andersen and Ruth Gotian, the M.D.-Ph.D. Program manager, who sustains a maternal affection and vigilance toward them.

"Their energy and curiosity truly are contagious," Gotian said.

The Gateways program has a rich history of alumni who have gone on to make important contributions in research, both on their campuses and at national conferences, said Andersen. "This experience will help them open doors that might not otherwise be open," he said.

Out of a pool of 100 students this year, only 15 were accepted. One was Cindy Parra, a sophomore on a premed track at Columbia University who has an acute interest in neuroscience.

She arrived on campus with the other chosen students in late June, looking forward to 10 weeks brimming with learning opportunities. Besides laboratory work, the Gateways students observe surgeries at such affiliates as NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and the Hospital for Special Surgery; attend ethics seminars, clinical workshops and journal clubs; and meet weekly with Andersen, Gotian and their "big sibs," current M.D.-Ph.D. students at the three institutions -- all in preparation for a final presentation of their research on Aug. 12, attended by family, friends, mentors and colleagues. The Gateways program flies one family member in and provides lodging for the occasion.

Parra was matched with her first-choice lab, the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Cornell. The lab's focus on brain imaging analysis aligned perfectly with her interest in neuroscience.

Right away, Parra dove in, recording and analyzing data from fMRI scans of children's brains, work that would prove crucial to an ongoing study.

In the lab

The Sackler Institute extends through a maze of rooms with MRI scanners, some covered with cartoon-filled bed sheets for children. Parra joined the lab's study, designed by Weill Cornell Ph.D. student Adriana Galvan and principal investigator Dr. B.J. Casey, co-director of the Sackler Institute. The study seeks to examine how children, adolescents and adults react to reward stimuli by studying neural activity preceding and following the promise of rewards. The goal was to discover a possible explanation for the marked attraction or aversion to risk during certain developmental periods and to seek to explain the adolescent thirst for instant gratification, beyond social or cultural factors like peer pressure -- which, Parra believes, cannot alone account for such behavior.

She hypothesized a dramatic change in the brain's reward circuitry during the heightened risk-seeking period of adolescence. Understanding the functional changes in the relevant brain regions -- such as the nucleus accumbens, a region linked to sex drive and drug addiction -- during development could be key to understanding the relationship between neural mechanisms and risk-seeking behavior. A previous study had shown that the accumbens shows increased activity before subjects make financially risky decisions.

A special award

The night before Parra's final presentation on her research, the Gateways program held a dinner for the students and their families. Preparing to hand out awards of special recognition, Andersen announced that the 15 Gateways summer students had done "exemplary work."

"It's been a great experience for students and faculty alike," he said. "We get young, bright, enthusiastic students who ask the questions nobody else thinks to ask, to think about lab work in different ways. It's a privilege for the grads and postdocs and PI's to have them, and we appreciate the trust they have placed in us. We hope to have impressed upon students to excel, to deliver a superior product; that's what people will expect from you for the rest of your lives."

"In June I had 15 nervous students looking at me," Gotian recalled. "Now they will lead a discussion of their work to a huge audience. The student efforts have encouraged and inspired fund raising; those efforts will go on till there's no more need for this program."

An endowment supported by a challenge grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation raised more than $1 million for the program.

The genial dinner conversations paused as Andersen presented the award certificates. Parra received the Martin L. and Sarah F. Leibowitz Fellowship "in recognition of the outstanding achievements in 2005 Gateways."

'The culmination'

Aug. 12 arrived at last. Research posters tacked to partitions formed a series of neat rows in the Rockefeller Research Laboratories at the Sloan-Kettering Institute. Parra led her family to her poster, which stood proudly in the third row: "Developmental Differences in Nucleus Accumbens Response to Increasing Reward Value: An Event-Related fMRI Study." Her name appears along with those of Galvan and Casey, reflecting her command of the material and the collaborative nature of research projects.

"This is the culmination of all our efforts," Gotian said, beaming at the students with unabashed pride.

"The Gateways program has been fabulous in the sense that stars have been coming through this lab every year," Casey said. "By the end of the summer, they're giving talks that are so good, they scare me. The program succeeds in giving students the confidence that they can get into any research program they want -- though of course we hope they'll choose ours," she added, laughing.

Parra listened attentively as her Gateways colleagues gave presentations on an array of topics, from neuropeptides' role in prostate cancer to neurological responses to threat in schizophrenic subgroups, nodding and asking questions after the conclusions.

When Parra's turn came, she waited on the podium for the screen to flash on, calmly keeping her composure.

The first slide beamed on: a Time magazine cover with a story on the adolescent brain. "The adolescent's brain is famous, or infamous, for being extremely mysterious," she began, her voice calm and clear. "Adolescence is known as an impulsive, risk-seeking period with increased drug and alcohol use. Is this due to social, cultural and biological impulses and expectations -- or is there a biological underpinning?" She glided through the key points she'd rehearsed and recited countless times before. She outlined her experiment, reviewed the biology of reward processing and identified key brain regions. She explained the power of the fMRI to gauge regional brain activity.

In a dulcet voice of complete authority, Parra commanded the attention of her audience. Her agile presentation, peppered with witty real-world examples, made the implications of her research compellingly clear.

"Do adolescents respond differently to rewards?" she asked her audience. "Adolescents show the greatest accumbens activity in anticipation of a large reward. They are keenly sensitive to reward outcomes." There are, she concluded, striking differences in adolescent brains, which go a long way in explaining the might of peer pressure.

"You can think of this in relation to your first crush," she said, to appreciative laughter. "Any little development is a big deal. A positive reaction can make you feel elated, and a negative reaction seems like the end of the world."

The auditorium erupted with applause. Parra stepped down with an easy, relieved smile, having passed through the "Gateways" into a future as bright as that August day.