[ NIH Graduate Partnerships Program (GPP) ]

The Department of Biochemistry of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of The National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA jointly offer a Graduate Partnerships Program (GPP) leading to a Doctor of Philosophy degree awarded by CUHK in Hong Kong.

The NIH is the world's premier biomedical research location. Thousands of investigators at the NIH conduct research in basic, transnational and clinical biomedical sciences in more than 23 NIH Institutes and Centers. They work in unparalleled research facilities on cutting edge projects.

The aim of the GPP is:
(1) to combine the educational excellence of CUHK in the Biochemistry with a variety of research possibilities available at the NIH and
(2) to bring to qualified students the benefits of working with leading researchers in the biomedical life sciences.

Students enrolled in GPP will spend roughly one year at CUHK to do course work and three years at NICHD for research. Students in this program will have a wide variety of fields for choice of a research topic. After satisfying all the requirements, students will get a PhD degree from CUHK.

In the past few years, we have a number of students enrolled in the GPP and performed very well at NICHD. For example, they published papers in high impact journals [1-3] and received FARE (Fellows Award for Research Excellence) awards at NIH.

[1] Ito I, Ong RC, Raman B, Stopfer M. Sparse odor representation and olfactory learning. Nature Neuroscience, 2008 Oct;11(10):1177-84.

[2] Ho MT, Pelkey KA, Topolnik L, Petralia RS, Takamiya K, Xia J, Huganir RL, Lacaille JC, McBain CJ. Developmental expression of Ca²⁺-permeable AMPA receptors underlies depolarization-induced long-term depression at mossy fiber CA3 pyramid synapses. Neurosci. 2007 Oct 24;27(43):11651-62.

[3] Cheung YN, Maag D, Mitchell SF, Fekete CA, Algire MA, Takacs JE, Shirokikh N, Pestova T, Lorsch JR, Hinnebusch AG. Dissociation of eIF1 from the 40S ribosomal subunit is a key step in start codon selection in vivo. Genes Dev. 2007 May 15;21(10):1217-30.


Detailed information can be browsed from NIH (http://gpp.nih.gov/) and NICHD (http://www.nichd.nih.gov/) homepage. Students enrolled in the Program will be supported by studentships from CUHK while in Hong Kong and a living allowance from NICHD while they are in United States.

Updated on 14 Nov 2008