Dear ImmInst,

As already mentioned on the forums here, the Methuselah Foundation is starting an Undergraduate Research Initiative (MFURI), spearheaded by Kelsey Moody. The Initiative aims to provide undergraduates with opportunities to conduct SENS research both individually and in teams, and to provide them with academic and networking resources in the field of life-extension.

We'd like to enlist the help of ImmInst in order to build up our student resources in the form of FAQs, reading lists, course recommendations, and notices of networking opportunities through conferences or other organizations. ImmInst has accumulated a large amount of content on these issues, in the form of topic discussions. We're asking the members and directors of ImmInst for help in collecting and collating this content for use on the MFURI website. The easiest way to do this may be to just have people post content into this thread, but we're open to suggestion on other ways to organize this. We'd also like to invite you to make comments and criticisms of the MFURI website design at www.mfuri.org.

Please note that the site is under construction, and we plan to merge it with the MF's main website at some point in the future. So we're looking for comments on the content and organization of the website, rather than the style.

Cheers,

Kelsey Moody
Interim Director of Undergraduate Affairs

Mark Hamalainen
MitoSENS Researcher

This post has been edited by Mark Hamalainen: May 24 2008, 08:24 PM

I should also mention that the site is very much under construction, and will be changing in response to suggestions made here. Make sure to refresh often when you're viewing it!

This post has been edited by Mark Hamalainen: May 24 2008, 08:24 PM

this is an excellent opportunity for undergraduates to get involved

So if I am reading this correctly, you would like Imminst membership and leaders to find some of the most informative and useful threads regarding the science of life extension and SENS so that this information can be integrated with the new MFURI. And you would like Imminst members to help guide the creation of the new website. It all sounds good to me.

Brilliant. This is exactly what ImmInst is here for IMO. To have a large collection of people ready to get a job done when someone needs help.

Hi Mind,

Yes, but we're most interested in information that is directly oriented towards students. We particularly want content for this page of our site: http://www.mfuri.org/resources.htm

A lot of people come to ImmInst with questions about what to study in their undergraduate, what books/journals to read, what careers are possible in life extension, etc. We want to answer those questions for them as best we can.

How can we mobilize members to help with this effort? Some ideas of mine:

• Pin the topic
• Have one or more active members or leadership members volunteer to promote the project
• Have the leadership send out a PM notification to all members

I thought this was the case too, but it doesn't seem like there's much interest in the effort.

Wrong Mark.

It has been a busy time and I have not been able to contribute to this organization the way I want , let alone have an opportunity to formulate a proper response but basically as a director I am interested in creating a one time grant award that would help promote this process, However I want it to go through our organization but perhaps we could work together and your panel could help provide the judges for the entries.

I have been looking at the grant process for my own children lately and there is a place where we could create a portal of interest by creating the award framed with an essay of intent for how to focus one's undergraduate studies or in some other manner to be developed.

As a director I now have a certain amount of discretionary funds to apply to this endeavor and if any other directors would participate in the plan we could accumulate a larger fund to work with but I think we could offer a non-renewable award of $500 easily.

great idea laz

It would be good to add this to the ImmInst front page under a header such as "research" , "student research opportunities", or something similar.

I thought so, I was just trying to provoke some movement

Has anybody looked at the site? Any comments??

This is very exciting to see, and I support a portion of the Director's fund going towards it.

I liked the site, but are there any current researchers? I didn't see any listed or profiled.

I think perhaps that the picture on some of the other pages, were more professional than the home page picture.

The parameters of the scholarship are well detailed, and this is a great way to get students involved. I did not see the amount of money given, but may not have read through enough.

We can certainly help with this by promoting it within ImmInst, and in other ways. Bravo for all your work Mark! My appreciation, and many others

I have now looked at the site and I think we are on similar tracks though we want to see all forms of legitimate longevity research promoted, not just SENS.

I liked the presentation on this page a lot.

http://www.mfuri.org/for_researchers.htm

I would like this organization to be fostering a similar idea but I would be willing to examine how we could collaborate. I certainly think having a more professional scientific and academic review board is important for determining the annual award ( I see this as a one time grant more than a true scholarship, which is usually renewable in subsequent years BTW).

Perhaps we could also work together on establishing criteria for the grant proposals.

Here is an example of one science oriented scholarship listing, however once established I believe the grant could be cross listed on numerous sites that offer undergraduate funding searches for grants and scholarships.

http://www.collegescholarships.com/scholar...igh_school.html

Don't give me the credit, Kelsey Moody has done all the work, I've just been advising him as best I can!



Well, this is an Methuselah Foundation project... we are not limiting the projects strictly to SENS, but we are only going to promote research on the engineering approach to aging. ImmInst could provide a complementary program for other areas of research if it decides to, but that should be a separate thread/discussion. Given the level of interest in this idea, I think a "Student Research Programs" subforum should be opened in projects, where this thread and threads on other ideas could go. That way, we can keep each thread focused. Can one of the directors do this right away? There's another topic by Kelsey here that could be moved as well.

In any case, I think we should take things one step at a time. If we can collate information relevant to students including: FAQs, reading lists, course recommendations, and notices of networking opportunities through conferences or other organizations, that would be a good start that we could build off of...

*bump*

This is a great way to get research rolling. Like you say. I mean, if we can publicize it right, and get it to catch fire in the minds of some sponsors and get a huge trust fund allocatated to it it would... its just starting to fully dawn on me now. That would be a whole f'ing lot of research, and from bright creative less restricted minds at that.

Ide like to see this "Student Research Programs" sub forum open up too. Maybe some donors would be more willing to donate if they would sponsor the projects they felt were most promising.

Im going to try to raise at least $1,000.00 through imminst by the end of the year for this. If anybody wants to help me with that then let me know. We have a strategy and a small group of people ready to work on it now.

How do we effectively, at this stage, get the information to the students who might be most interested right now though?

I think you guys might have cut the Gordian knot on getting research going with this idea.

This post has been edited by brokenportal: Jul 31 2008, 03:57 PM

Meet us at the MFURI monday 4pm cst time meeting in the ustream.

Get in on the AMEX contest to help win 1.5 million for MFURI team.

Go ad free, join ImmInst as a Full Member.