Katherine Roche, Ph.D., Senior Investigator in the Receptor Biology Section, served as the NIH-Brown Graduate Partnership Program (GPP) Director from 2005 to 2022, retiring from the position this past fall. In those 17 years, Dr. Roche welcomed neuroscience students into eight different NIH institutes to partner with NIH faculty on their predoctoral research. Initially, she was drawn to the reward of guiding young scientists in their early careers, but throughout her time leading the program, she herself became inspired by the phenomenal caliber of Brown students and faculty.
Dr. Roche credits the NIH-Brown GPP partnership with seeding important inter-institute interactions at NIH, and she emphasizes that working collaboratively with co-directors and the Office of Intramural Training and Education (OITE) has been essential for the partnership’s success. Since the inception of the program, Brown students have made a large impact on the neuroscience community at NIH and beyond—in academia, industry, policy, and more.