Grants and Writing Resources for Meharry Medical College

Three biomedical data science doctoral students from Meharry's School of Applied Computational Sciences held 2026 Novartis Beacon of Hope Fellowships, Meharry reported in October 2026. Two were returning fellows. One applied machine learning and molecular docking to a drug-discovery project that ties in with cancer research, one built a clinician dashboard for managing Type 1 diabetes from glucose monitor data, and one moved from cardiac CT segmentation to lesion tracking. Fifteen SACS students have received the fellowship since 2023.

Research Day

The Office for Research and Innovation hosts Research Day each spring, with poster and oral presentations and awards for students and postdoctoral fellows.

The 70th Research Day ran March 4 and 5, 2026, with work from students, staff, residents and postdoctoral associates. Only one student from each Meharry school is invited to the session called Oral Presentations of Outstanding Abstracts. In 2026 the School of Applied Computational Sciences also held an in-person poster competition, and data science Ph.D. students took first, second and third place.

Industry and Community Fellowships

The Novartis Beacon of Hope Fellowship places students from historically Black colleges and universities at Novartis Biomedical Research for ten summer weeks. Each fellow runs an independent project guided by a Novartis scientist and attends weekly training on drug development, clinical trials and patient safety.

A SACS data science Ph.D. student is one of about 75 fellows in the Google Data Center Community AI Fellowship, which runs from September 1, 2026, to January 14, 2027. The program is fully funded and managed by the Watson Institute. Fellows receive entrepreneurship and AI skills training and technical mentors, then pass the training on through local workshops called Basecamps.

Ph.D. Funding, Grant Writing and the Dissertation

The School of Graduate Studies has offered the Ph.D. since 1972. Under the Ph.D. student handbook revised in May 2025, the school funds students during their first two academic years, and the mentor is responsible for support after that. Grant writing is built into the curriculum. One course, Biomed IV, focuses on writing grants for National Institutes of Health funding. The curriculum also includes an F31 grant writing boot camp on specific aims and the NIH biosketch, and second-year students prepare an F31 submission.

The dissertation committee has at least five members. Candidacy comes through a written and oral exam based on the proposed dissertation project. Before graduating, a student must be first author of a full-length manuscript from the dissertation research, published or accepted in a peer-reviewed journal indexed in PubMed. The defense consists of a 35- to 45-minute presentation by the student, and the approved dissertation is published by ProQuest Dissertation Publishing.

Tutoring and Study Skills

The Center for Academic Success and Achievement (CASA) in D. T. Rolfe Hall serves students in all five Meharry schools. It offers free small-group peer tutoring and individual sessions on reading comprehension, critical thinking and time management. Students, faculty and campus partners can request workshops; past topics include writing skills. On-demand study strategies and workshop materials sit on the Virtual Academic Success Resource Hub, reached through Blackboard.

For a dissertation, an F31 draft or a scholarship essay that needs one last pass for grammar, consistency and format, our editors are available. See our Meharry Medical College dissertation and thesis editing and Meharry Medical College essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• How to Avoid Academic Dishonesty: Citing and Quoting Sources
• The Results Chapter: Presenting Data with Forensic Clarity
• From Dissertation to Publication: The Final Scholarly Synthesis