In 2020, the Graduate School of Medical Sciences (GSMS) of the University of Groningen (UG) and the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Universidad de Antioquia (UdeA) in Colombia officially established the international MD-PhD program for medical students & graduates of UdeA. The international MD-PhD is a complementary modality within the Abel Tasman Talent Program for Sandwich PhDs of the GSMS, and the result of an increasingly close collaboration between UdeA and Groningen, which kicked off nearly a decade ago, with the establishment of the Double Degree PhD in Basic Biomedical Sciences. This has now resulted in the admission of the first MD-PhD candidate!
The first admitted MD-PhD candidate is Manuela Yepes Calderón, who will work work with the UG supervisor Stephan Bakker of the Department of Internal Medicine on the project "Post-transplantation oxidative stress and its association with long-term outcomes in kidney
transplant recipients". The UdeA co-supervisor is Juan Camilo Calderón of the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry. Manuela will start her project early 2022 for a period of 24 months. Her stay will be concluded with a PhD thesis to be defended at UG.
Research internship
Manuela, before submitting her application to the MD-PhD program, first came to Groningen in 2018 on a 5-month research internship with a scholarship from the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility program.
Unfortunately, we do not always have such external scholarships at our disposal, however, if you are interested in doing a short research internship to explore whether the MD-PhD or Double Degree program is something for you, we welcome you to review the ATTP Research Voucher.
More information
In case you require more information, feel free to contact the program coordination at UdeA and Groningen.
- UdeA: Julián Franco
- UG: Joyce Fongers