Program Update
Our program is transitioning to a new model, PROPEL, allowing us to continue serving biomedical workforce training needs at OHSU. With the support of Solving For Science, National PROPEL, and OHSU's Research and Innovation Office, we launched our first PROPEL cohort in Fall 2025. Learn more about our current cohort.
We provide educational and professional development for research assistants (RAs) currently employed at OHSU who seek independent research experience before entering biomedical PhD programs. Through structured programming and mentorship, we help trainees strengthen their research abilities, expand career awareness, and build communication skills essential for success in doctoral training. Faculty mentors host postbac scholars in their labs, where scholars are employed as RAs and receive salary and benefits.
Slots for our Fall PROPEL program are now full. We will be hosting a Matchmaking Event in January 2026 for interested recent or soon-to-be college graduates and OHSU research faculty who are interested in hiring an RA in their lab. Learn more by visiting our Matchmaking Event page.
Please contact preptograd@ohsu.edu with any questions.
Scholar Testimonials
PREP helped me gain the "confidence to speak about myself in a way where I didn’t feel I needed to be someone else or become someone different. PREP empowers you to be yourself in these [academic] spaces."
- 2021 PREP Scholar
"Integrating us into the graduate student community, helped me see [grad school] was something I could do too.”
-Alumni, Focus Group Session 2024
Congratulations!
Rachel de la Torre successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, "Remodeling neurons engage compartment-specific death and pruning mechanisms" in June 2025. Dr. de la Torre was a 2019 NPBI scholar and later was a graduate student in Dr. Marc Freeman's lab in OHSU's Vollum Institute. NBPI was a pilot postbac program supported by the Vollum Institute and OHSU's Research and Innovation office.