Medical Students

Medical Students: Kidney TREKS

Tutored Research and Education for Kidney Scholars

Applications for the 2025 program will open on Monday, December 16, 2024, and will close on Wednesday, January 22, 2025.

Kidney TREKS (Tutored Research and Education for Kidney Scholars), an initiative established by the American Society of Nephrology (ASN), is designed to foster interest in careers in nephrology and research through a week-long research course retreat and long-term mentorship program.

There are two TREKS program sites available:

Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) in Bar Harbor, ME

This course is organized around several research modules that examine all aspects of kidney function. Modules typically include water homeostasis, salt homeostasis and secretion, acid/base homeostasis, glomerular function, and personalized medicine and genetics. In each module, classical experiments using model systems (toad, zebrafish, roundworm, shark, Xenopus oocyte) are combined with modern molecular techniques.

Check out a vlog created by Nathan Kudlapur, MD, a participant in the 2022 MDIBL TREKS Program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vAkZoTAhYc

University of Chicago (UChicago) in Chicago, IL

The ASN Kidney TREKS course at UChicago hosts a group of trainees for a week in the Windy City. There will be academic work focused on modules that examine human renal physiology, health care disparities and outreach, and nephrology procedures. Within each module, participants engage in hands-on activities including scientific experiments, patient care, and procedural simulations.

The Kidney TREKS program offers participants the opportunity to:

1. Attend a week-long course at either the MDIBL or the UChicago site. Tuition, travel support to Maine or Illinois, and room and board are provided by ASN.
2. Connect with a nephrology mentor who will interact with the participant over the course of medical school training, residency, graduate school, or postdoctoral fellowship.
3. Attend ASN Kidney Week with travel support as part of the ASN Kidney STARS Program within two years of completing the ASN Kidney TREKS program.
4. Receive complimentary ASN membership, including access to website resources for trainees.

Eligibility

1. Must be:

• a medical student who has completed at least one year of medical school,
• a graduate student pursuing a PhD,
• a postdoctoral fellow within their first year of training,
• or (new for this year) a first-year resident in an ACGME-accredited internal medicine, medicine-pediatric, or pediatric residency.

2. Must reside in North America.

3. This program is not for fellows already pursuing nephrology.

Application and Program Details

Applicants, please note: you are only required to complete one program application, even if you would like to be considered for both sites. If you would like to be considered for both program sites, please complete the application to the program of your first choice and select the option to be considered for the second site through your application. Again, only one application is required. ASN will do its best to accommodate student preferences. Students are only eligible to attend one site.

Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory

Application Deadline: Wednesday, January 22, 2025

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University of Chicago

Application Deadline: Wednesday, January 22, 2025

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TREKS Mentors

A big "thank you" to all the faculty who have served as mentors for participants in the TREKS program!

For questions or more information about the Kidney TREKS program, please contact workforce@asn-online.org.