Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Center for Computational Psychiatry

This grant will support the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s Summer Program in Computational Psychiatry Education (SPICE) which will introduce high school students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM to cutting-edge research methods at the intersection of computational science and mental health as it relates to society and their everyday lives. The funding will support five scholarship recipients, named Dana Scholars, to alleviate the financial constraints that can pose a barrier to participating in the program, allowing students to fully immerse themselves in the experiential learning and mentorship opportunities provided by SPICE. 

By engaging high school students in their comprehensive computational psychiatry curriculum and hands-on experiential research projects, SPICE is committed to training the next generation of scientists while simultaneously providing students with first-hand experience and dialogue surrounding the field’s ethical and societal implications. Based on student’s individual interests, 12-15 accepted students are matched into laboratories within the Center for Computational Psychiatry and paired with mentors from each lab where they will engage in an eight-week summer program with a full curriculum and independent research projects that culminates in a center-wide presentation to faculty and staff. During the first two weeks of the program, students take a short course on neuroscience and computational psychiatry composed of intensive lectures, discussions, journal clubs and hands-on computer programming tutorials relevant to the mentor-supported individual research projects they will engage in for the next six weeks. In alignment with the Foundation’s mission of neuroscience and society, the 2024 cohort of students will have a guest lecture with an ethicist and engage in a new course module, Social and Ethical Implications of Computational Psychiatry. This module will offer a unique opportunity for students to explore computational psychiatry’s impact, promise, and responsibility for society, engage with leading experts in neuroscience and ethics, critically evaluate published studies and research approaches, discuss how their findings impact society, and develop their skills as responsible future scientists and science communicators. Beyond the course, each SPICE student engages in an individual research project focused on a specific mental health condition or set of psychiatric symptoms. 

This grant supports the Dana Education objective to engage K-12 students in learning about neuroscience and its relevance to society through structured education opportunities (formal and non-formal) that capture their interest and inspire continued study.