Bard-Rockefeller Programs

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Curriculum

The BRSS academic program is centered on an intensive laboratory experience, but also features science and non-science courses. Students must take at least 12 credits, but may take as many as 16, constituted as follows: Lab research experience (4 credits)
The core of the program is an intensive internship in a Rockefeller University laboratory. Each student in the program is assigned to a Rockefeller University scientist and performs substantial independent research in his/her laboratory. The student spends at least 20 hours per week in the lab. Students also work with their supervisors on a research paper on the student’s research. The paper is presented publicly at the end of the semester and is evaluated by the supervisor together with faculty from Bard’s Annandale campus. This course is mandatory.

Advanced topics course (4 credits)
A course on an advanced topic in biology will be offered by one, or a team of, Rockefeller post-docs. The course will meet twice a week and the subject matter to be covered will be determined by the post-docs. This course is mandatory.

BGIA courses (4–8 credits)
BRSS students will be eligible to take courses offered as a part of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program. In order to ensure that there is overlap, BGIA will commit to offering a regular course at the nexus of international affairs and the sciences, with particular reference to global issues and public health.
BGIA Courses

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Research Opportunities

The BRSS program is centered on an intensive laboratory research experience. Students work 20–25 hours per week doing research in a laboratory at Rockefeller University. Ahead of the program, students will receive information about investigators who will host students that semester. Dr. Junyue Cao 
Development and function of mammalian tissues and organs depend on the behaviors and dynamics of individual cells. The Cao lab investigates how a cell population in a mammalian body maintains homeostasis and how it is disrupted in cancer and aging-related disorders. They develop genomic techniques to profile and perturb cell dynamics at single-cell resolution.

Dr. James Hudspeth
The majority of the hearing-impaired suffer from sensorineural hearing loss, which results from damage to the sensory hair cells of the inner ear. The human cochlea contains about 16,000 of these cells, which do not regenerate after damage. In an effort to prevent or reverse deafness, Hudspeth’s group is working to better understand the normal hearing process, the causes of hearing deterioration, and possible means to regenerate hair cells. 

Dr. Ali Brinvanlou
Brivanlou uses in vitro attached human embryos and genome-edited “synthetic embryos” derived from human embryonic stem cells to unveil the molecular, cellular, and embryological basis of early human development. His studies employ high-resolution quantitative approaches, and span both theoretical physics and molecular embryology. The lab is particularly interested in the emergence of the human brain and modeling neurodegenerative diseases. 

Dr. Winrich Friewald
Faces are our primary source for recognizing people and reading their emotional and mental states. Freiwald studies how the brain’s visual system extracts social meaning from a face and then influences other circuits to generate emotional reactions, activate memories, direct attention, and guide social actions. He aims to uncover how facial recognition circuits drive cognition and how alterations of these circuits lead to psychiatric disorders. 

Dr. Li Zhao
Recent evidence suggests new genes can emerge from ancestrally noncoding sequences. These de novo genes acquire functions and, if they provide a selective advantage, spread within a population until they become fixed. Zhao studies the origin and evolution of de novo genes, as well as their contribution to adaptive evolution, in both flies and humans.

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Applying and Tuition

BRSS is designed for Bard students in their third or fourth year of study. In exceptional cases, second-year students are accepted into the program. Participation must not coincide with a semester in which the student is conducting the Senior Project.

Applications are now closed. They will reopen in the summer. We will accept application starting from June 1 up until September 30, 2024. Applications will be considered individually on a rolling basis. Costs for BRSS are largely covered by regular tuition at Bard College and are the same as those for BardNYC. The cost of housing in New York City is slightly higher than that in Annandale. Please see the following link for more details:

Tuition and Fees

BRSS Application Form