RCMI December Newsletter 2025

Yo RCMI December Newsletter

2025 Year in Review:

Growth, Connection, and Impact

The Ultimate Homecoming Health Fair 2025

Your Voice Your Health

Your Voice Your Health is a virtual learning community launched in September 2024, an idea initiated by Leatrice Martin, Team Lead of RCMI CEC, to bring HBCU students, researchers, and community members together for meaningful conversations about health and to share best practices and insights from across the country.

To date, the CEC team has conducted over 20 sessions and has reached over 1000 participants, learning together to explore various topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Community Engaged Research, Norovirus, Telehealth, Bird Flu, Nutrition and Fitness, Maternal Child Health, and much more.

These sessions have connected participants from across the globe, reaching as far as India, Germany, Great Britain, and Poland. This signature initiative from the CEC team will continue to serve as a platform for communication, networking, and exploring diverse topics related to community engagement research.

NCCU Summer Programs

During the summer, High school students of Science and Research Summer Program (SRSP), which is organized by Dr. Yongan Tang, worked across the NCCU campus.

This summer boot camp was over the course of five weeks, where students worked in different labs under NCCU researchers and got hands- on experience in research, learned fundamental bench techniques, and gained firsthand experience in how scientific research is conducted and later presented their final research projects, showcasing topics ranging from mathematical modeling and neurobiology to 3D cell printing and in vivo models such as zebrafish.

We hope to continue meeting and inspiring future scientists through our summer camp programs.

WISE (Wednesdays in Science Exchange)

Scientists at the Julius L. Chambers Biomedical and Biotechnology Research Institute (BBRI) organize the WISE (Wednesdays in Science Exchange) seminar series, held on the second Wednesday of each month. Co-led by Dr. Alex Gómez and Dr. Zainab Afzal, the series features researchers presenting work across diverse disciplines, including developmental biology, neuroscience, substance use disorders, and social sciences. Speakers during their presentations share their latest findings, provide insights into their fields, and then also get to engage with NCCU researchers and trainees through discussion and informal networking opportunities, including lunch with trainees.

These seminars are aimed at fostering scientific exchange, encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue, and sparking potential future collaborations. Open to the NCCU community, the seminar series draws students, staff, postdocs, and principal investigators. The WISE seminar series will continue to serve as a vibrant platform for scientific exchange and learning. Please stay tuned for next year’s programming, with an exciting lineup of speakers presenting their latest findings.