Education Resources at Markey
At Markey, there are a variety of resources available for advancing education and expertise. Learn more by exploring the opportunities offered by the Oncology Career Enhancement Program below. For more information, please contact the Associate Director of Cancer Education and Mentoring, Dr. Kathleen O’Connor or the Cancer Education Coordinator, Dr. Erin Oakley.
Check the MCC Trainee Calendar online to stay up-to-date with all of the latest events.
Markey Cancer Trainee Network
If you would like to stay in the loop about training-related networking opportunities and resources, please contact the Education Coordinator Erin Oakley and ask to join the Cancer Trainee Network.
Individual Fellowship Resources
Individual resources are available to help you as you work toward submission.
The Markey Cancer Center’s Office of Education and Mentoring hosts a grant writing boot camp for graduate students and postdocs who are interested in submitting individual fellowship and career development proposals. The boot camp consists of a series of didactic lectures and small group discussions outlining the scientific, organizational, and administrative aspects of preparing a competitive application. With the support of Markey mentors and reviewers, trainees are able to prepare complete, well-reviewed applications that are ready for submission. For more information about the boot camp, contact Dr. Erin Oakley.
The Markey Cancer Center’s Research Communications Office (RCO) was created to help cancer researchers secure grants and publish their findings. The RCO staff offers a variety of services including grant and presentation editing, graphic design, web development, and event planning.
The Proposal Development Office (PDO) is a support unit at the University of Kentucky focused on the pre-award stage of funding. They provide a wide range of support to faculty, staff and students across all stages of their grant and fellowship applications.
For assistance identifying funding sources, obtaining fellowship examples, or learning about our Fellowship Boot Camp, please contact Cancer Education Coordinator Dr. Erin Oakley.
Trainee Travel Resources
Markey offers $500 competitive cancer-specific travel awards for trainees to attend scientific meetings to present their work, attend workshops, or travel to other laboratories to learn about their best lab skills and practices.
Travel Award application and details can be found below.
Funds are available to doctoral graduate students for assistance with expenses relating to travel to present research at professional meetings only.
Several Colleges offer funding for undergraduate research opportunities and research travel grants for students accepted to present their research at conferences and professional meetings, including:
Junior Faculty Resources
This program offers research training and funding opportunities for junior faculty to foster a career in clinical/translational research.
The key to this program is the interaction between the awardees and their mentorship team. The goal is to help awardees obtain an individual career development award (i.e. K) or an independent investigator (i.e. R01) award.
Several pilot funding opportunities are offered directly through the cancer center.
The CCTS program at UK provides multiple types of pilot funding opportunities to stimulate collaborative, translational research. These funding mechanisms prioritize multidisciplinary research and projects that focus on health disparities, particularly in Appalachia.
The COCVD at UK offers pilot project grants through the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE). These grants assist investigators in generating research data on the relationship between obesity and cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer or neurodegenerative diseases to be competitive for extramural funding. Junior faculty members are especially encouraged to apply.
MCC Journal Clubs
MCC offers several journal clubs to support transdisciplinary collaborations among MCC faculty and trainees. Trainees are encouraged to attend to increase their knowledge and promote communication and dialogue among MCC programs.
- For Cancer Biology journal club information, please contact Jessica Blackburn.
- For DNA Repair journal club information, please contact Eva Goellner.
- For Metabolomics Forum journal club information, please contact Erin Oakley.
- For Stem Cell Meeting journal club information, please contact Tianyan Gao.
General Education Resources
In addition to visiting our programs and fellowship opportunities, we recommend taking advantage of the following resources.
Shared Resource Facility
In publications, always be sure to acknowledge a shared resource facility (SRF) if their services were used in any way for your research. Learn more about each SRF by visiting the webpages below.
- Patient-Oriented and Population Sciences
- Biospecimen Procurement and Translational Pathology
- Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
- Cancer Research Informatics
- Flow Cytometry and Immune Monitoring
- Oncogenomics
- Redox Metabolism
Weekly research email
The UK College of Medicine’s weekly research email offers the latest highlights and opportunities available within the College of Medicine. Contact Cancer Education Coordinator Erin Oakley to subscribe to the weekly email.
Individual Development Plan
The University of Kentucky College of Medicine has created an Individual Development Plan (IDP) for use with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The IDP is a tool that helps students and mentors define academic and scientific progress, identify professional development needs, and establish career objectives.
- Visit the ScienceCareers webpage to develop your myIDP plan and explore career possibilities.
UK Society of Post-Doctoral Scholars
The Society of Postdoctoral Scholars (SOPS) is an organization of postdocs at the University of Kentucky. SOPS assists current, past or incoming postdocs with career advice, professional development, and networking opportunities. SOPS is a UK student organization and has wide variety of members from colleges across campus and are always looking for postdocs who want to participate in SOPS leadership roles.
Visit their website to learn more about their mission and the resources they provide.
National Postdoctoral Association
The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) is a non-profit organization providing a unique, national voice for postdoctoral scholars.
Visit their website to learn more about their mission and the resources they provide.
Interested in cancer research education at Markey?
Contact Cancer Education Coordinator Erin Oakley to be matched with researchers, mentors and/or clinicians.
