Find a Mentor

Our medical school curriculum includes the Focused Individual Research Experience or FIRE module. It is a two-year student research course that runs concurrently with the pre-clinical curriculum. Students are required to present a final poster in March of the second year. Some students continue their research afterwards, but it is not required.

For students that have research experience, this is an opportunity to continue their research, to pursue a different aspect of the same problem, or to explore a completely different area of research. If this applies to you, you may already have a list of topics, questions, or project ideas and need only the right research mentor.

For others, as well as for some students with a research background, the task of developing a research topic and finding a research mentor to match can be time-consuming. In the weeks before you actually join us, we hope for you to start think about a topic you are particularly interested in, something you may call your passion.

We would like to help you jump-start that process. You can start by learning more about the research interests of our research mentors. The Research Mentors List contains information about the research mentors who expressed interest in mentoring medical students, including their specialties and research interests.

Feel free to take a look as you think about the topics of interest, or reach out to Dr. Diane Jacobs with any questions you may have at Diane.Jacobs@ucf.edu.