URNCST Journal Mentored Paper
The URNCST Journal team prides itself on its commitment to advocate for undergraduate STEM research. In our endeavours to promote undergraduate research, we have published a number of papers from undergraduate research competitions and case competitions. From these ventures, we have identified a couple of themes that were found to recur independently as follows: 1) undergraduate students are extremely keen to use their critical thinking skills to participate in research endeavours that recognize their valuable work and 2) there exists a subset of students who desire to contribute to undergraduate STEM research but due to one reason or another are unable to take part in such research or feel as if they may need closer guidance during the writing process. Despite this, many thousands of undergraduate students across the globe play crucial roles in making new discoveries every single year.
In an effort to provide undergraduate students with the opportunity to contribute to STEM research literature, we have established our novel Mentored Paper Initiative. Students that are selected to participate will have the opportunity to be partnered with a graduate student as they write a manuscript that is of peer-reviewable quality in the URNCST Journal. The topic of the manuscript will be in the graduate student’s area of expertise to allow them to more effectively guide the students throughout the writing process. Students will be mentored from the design stage to write up, and the final manuscript will be peer-reviewed by another graduate student, to allow the students to experience external-feedback. This opportunity provides undergraduate students with the chance to improve their scientific writing skills and experience the entire process of writing an academic manuscript, while working under the supervision of a graduate student. Those wishing to learn more about how the URNCST Journal Mentored Paper initiative was developed can read our published editorial.
Eligibility to Participate: The mentored paper is open to students who are enrolled in an undergraduate (i.e. BSc, BEng, BA, etc.) or professional-undergraduate (i.e. MD, DDS, PharmD, OD, RN, etc.) degree program.
About the Initiative: Undergraduate students participating in the URNCST Journal Mentored Paper are required to draft and submit an abstract on a topic that is of interest to them based on the questions provided below. This abstract must be in the format of either 1) a research protocol (i.e. a plan to conduct a study) OR 2) a review (i.e. a review of the currently existing literature); it is not acceptable to simply summarize a single study already published in the literature by an academic journal. Students may submit an abstract alone or in teams of up to 3. These abstracts will be reviewed for suitability (i.e. understanding of topic, writing ability), and accepted students will be paired with the graduate student who proposed the topic and will mentor the undergraduate (team) in drafting a manuscript that is of suitable quality to undergo peer-review by the URNCST Journal. As participants will be under the guidance of a graduate student, they are not required to have a complete understanding of the topic, but should have done their due diligence in reading about the topic online and have the motivation and dedication to learn from the mentoring graduate student.
Topics Available: Please see below for a complete list of the available research topics for the manuscripts. Please note that these are the only questions accepted students should write on and they are not subject to change.
Deadline to Submit Abstract for Consideration: Sunday, March 09, 2025 @ 11:59PM EST
Mentorship Period: Summer 2025 (May-August)
Update: The URNCST Journal's call for abstracts for the 15th Mentored Paper Initiative is now closed. Those who applied in advance of the Sunday, March 16, 2025 @ 11:59pm EST deadline should expect to receive an outcome on their submission by late-December/early-January. Should you have any questions about participating, please contact us at competition@urncst.com. For those who did not have the chance to participate, please stay tuned for the 16th Mentored Paper Initiative (Fall 2025) for which we anticipate our call for abstracts will open in Summer 2025.
For Graduate Students: We are always interested in identifying new mentors who are able/willing to help keen undergraduate researchers design, develop, and write a full-length study protocol or review. Eligible mentors must be enrolled in or a graduate of a graduate program (a Master's level degree at minimum) in any natural or clinical science or technology discipline. Please apply to be a mentor here.
After selecting a topic, please click "Learn More & SUBMIT ABSTRACT" below and follow the instructions provided.
Topics
MPI 15.1: What are barriers and facilitators to nutritional management pre/ post metabolic bariatric surgery?
MPI 15.2: What is the role of histone modifications in regulating skeletal muscle gene expression to acute exercise and exercise training: A literature review.
MPI 15.3: Examining the role of the histone modification tri-methylation on lysine 27 of histone 3 (H3K27me3) in the induction of VEGFA to acute hypoxia and exercise in human skeletal muscle: A research proposal.
MPI 15.4: How do environmental dimensions (ie. childhood adversity, socioeconomic status) interact with biological indicators (ie. inflammation, gut dysbiosis) of suicide risk or Major Depressive Disorder?
MPI 15.5: Can alterations in functional brain activity or connectivity serve as a biomarker in the prediction of suicide risk?
MPI 15.6: How does psychological and/or physical pain influence suicide risk, and how does it intersect with other related behaviours, like non-suicidal self-injury?
MPI 15.7: What are hypothesized the multiscale mechanisms of depression, and how do they relate? (literature review of gene, cell, circuit, network, and symptom levels)
MPI 15.8: What are the current state- and location-specific EEG/ECOG/MEG biomarkers for depression diagnosis and successful treatment?
MPI 15.9: What is the intervertebral disc, and what role does it play in the presentation of back pain?
MPI 15.10: Is exercise beneficial or detrimental to the health of joint tissues?
MPI 15.11: There are several different screens that can be employed for cancer gene discovery. What are the benefits and limitations of each approach?
MPI 15.12: Discuss the role of ESR1 alterations in breast cancer.
MPI 15.13: Studies on plakoglobin function in the context of cancer have been conflicting, with some labeling it as an oncogene, and others as a tumor suppressor. Discuss the roles of plakoglobin in tumorigenesis and tumor suppression.
MPI 15.14: How does skeletal muscle develop insulin resistance in the metabolic syndrome?
MPI 15.15: How do platelets survive and exert their functions without a nucleus?
MPI 15.16: How do treatment advances in sarcoma differ between pediatric and adult patients, and what are the implications for clinical outcomes?
MPI 15.17: What mechanisms enable fusion proteins to drive oncogenesis, and how can they inform therapies?
MPI 15.18: How have CRISPR knockout screens advanced drug discovery, and what challenges remain in applying this technology to cancer research?
MPI 15.19: What is the impact of epigenetics on cardiometabolic and cardiovascular diseases?
MPI 15.20: Does low socioeconomic status influence the risk of developing cardiometabolic or cardiovascular diseases?
MPI 15.21: How feasible is the integration of AI into the healthcare system?
MPI 15.22: Discuss the differences between hormone responsive and hormone unresponsive breast cancer.
MPI 15.23: Discuss the role of dormant tumour cell (DTC) in breast cancer metastasis. How does breast cancer metastasis differ from other cancer types?
MPI 15.24: Mechanobiology is the study of how the mechanical environment affects biological systems, with implications in both physiological and diseased conditions (examples: fibrosis, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis, metastasis). In particular, mechanobiology is studied in endothelial cells (vasculature), bone cells, cancer, and embryogenesis. Select a biological system (vasculature, bone, cancer, etc.) of interest and propose a literature review on how mechanical forces shape normal versus pathological conditions during disease.
MPI 15.25: Cancer nanomedicine has the potential to provide crucial roles in cancer detection and treatment, however, many challenges remain. What are some advantages of cancer nanotherapies based on preclinical studies, and their current bottlenecks towards clinical translation? (or) How might the delivery of nanoparticles be improved based on current knowledge of where nanoparticles travel in the body before reaching their targeted destination?
MPI 15.26: Primary breast or prostate cancer patients previously deemed to be cancer-free can undergo metastatic relapse several years after remission due to the presence of dormant disseminated cancer cells, particularly in bone. What signaling pathways are responsible for cancer cell dormancy in the bone microenvironment, and how might the effects of cancer cell dormancy be manifested in clinical studies? Propose a literature spanning both pre-clinical and clinical studies of cancer dissemination to bone.
MPI 15.27: How does nutrition and/or changes to the gut microbiome contribute to chronic gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS and IBD? Be specific: maybe you want to look at the changes to microbiome composition due to a high-fat vs mediterranean diet in IBS/IBD; maybe you want to look at the correlation between early life acute infections/antibiotic use and later IBS/IBD onset; maybe you want to take a look at just the immune side of things; maybe you want to take a socioeconomic take and look at how poor access to healthy foods may alter the microbiome and contribute to IBS/IBD; does the maternal microbiome and nutrition in pregnant mothers impact the later risk of developing IBS/IBD for the child? This is an incredibly broad question, narrow it down to what best interests you and do not try to answer the question as it is.
MPI 15.28: How might the gut-brain axis contribute to certain neurological and/or neurodegenerative diseases? Be specific: maybe you want to look at only the neurotransmitters produced by bacteria; maybe you want to only look at the connection between intestinal inflammation and neuroinflammation; maybe you want to only look at damage to peripheral neurons caused by bacteria. This is an incredibly broad question, narrow it down to what best interests you and do not try to answer the question as it is.
MPI 15.29: How might the gut microbiome play a role in psychiatric comorbidities observed in IBS/IBD patients? Narrow the question down and narrow the psychiatric co-morbidity down. For example, how a certain specific molecule bacteria produce may contribute to anxiety and/or depression.
MPI 15.30: How do microglia influence brain homeostasis in neurodevelopmental disorders?
MPI 15.31: How do microglia impact neurogenesis?
MPI 15.32: How does attentional bias differ when using the dot probe paradigm with faces of different races or emotions?
MPI 15.33: What factors influence how people categorize ethnically ambiguous faces?
MPI 15.34: How to examine the implicit attitudes toward transgender identity and homosexuality?
MPI 15.35: What are the effects of tirzepatide on metabolic health?
MPI 15.36: Discuss the differences between white and brown adipose tissue and discuss how brown adipose tissue can be activated.
MPI 15.37: How can immunotherapies targeting the immune system's role in type 1 diabetes improve beta cell preservation and insulin production?
MPI 15.38: How can lipid nanoparticles be used to improve drug delivery in autoimmune diseases?
MPI 15.39: How do we use nanomaterials for biomedical applications or for the treatment of complex diseases, such as cancers being treated with gold nanoparticles, and nanomaterials used in pharmaceutical applications in drug delivery system.
MPI 15.40: How can 3D printing of medicines during a pandemic help hospitals reduce the shortage of medicines and keep administering essential treatments.
MPI 15.41: How can we use lean six sigma in palliative care, and reduce wastage, and increase precision in the care for patients?
MPI 15.42: How to use nanomaterials in forensic or postmortem investigations to assess biological evidence?
MPI 15.43: How is manufacturing of pharmaceutical products (medicines) is influenced by the use of nanomaterials or nano-catalysts?
MPI 15.44: What is the impact of urbanization on mental health outcomes in Canadian cities?
MPI 15.45: How do experiences of maternal health care differ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in Canada, and what are the implications for health outcomes and healthcare delivery?
MPI 15.46: How does inflammation impact recovery post trauma?
MPI 15.47: What is the role of immune cells in the pathophysiology post injury?
MPI 15.48: What therapies can be used to modulate inflation or prevent inflammatory cell recruitment?
