Nancy Lurie Marks Clinical and Research Fellowship Program in Autism

The Nancy Lurie Marks (NLM) Clinical and Research Fellowship Program in Autism provided nearly $5 million over six years to support HMS faculty and students interested in autism and related neurological disorders. The program funded autism-focused basic and clinical research in a range of fields, including genetics, genomics, neurology, neuroscience, psychology, informatics, developmental pediatrics, endocrinology and molecular biology.

In addition, it integrated participants across researcher levels, providing funding for junior faculty and postdoctoral trainees, as well as medical students in the new Scholars in Medicine and HMS-PRIME (MD–MMSc) programs. As such, the Nancy Lurie Marks Clinical and Research Fellowship Program in Autism builds on HMS initiatives that enhance opportunities for student research and promote translational science.

This initiative provided research and training opportunities in autism for two groups of students.  Two NLM Clinical and Research Fellows were selected each year.  These fellows were drawn from multiple fields—from medicine as well as from pharmacy, nursing, or allied health fields.  Most had completed an MD degree as well as one or two years of clinical sub-specialty training.  Each Nancy Lurie Marks fellow (junior faculty member or postdoctoral trainee) and scholar (medical student) worked with an expert mentor and laboratory in autism research at HMS.

To expose a greater number of students to work in autism, four NLM Summer Scholars in Medicine were selected each year, two of whom could continue on at a later stage in their medical school careers to become NLM Scholars in Medicine during the academic year.  These fellows and scholars then became part of a community of autism researchers across the HMS community and  interacted with parallel groups of young researchers throughout HMS.