Financial Support

CMB students in good standing receive full financial support throughout their training. This includes student tuition, stipend (living allowance) and health benefits. CMB also provides funds toward student travel to present their research at national meetings.

Stipend: Stipends for CMB students are competitive with top-ranked research institutions nationwide. For the 2008-2009 academic year, the annual stipend provided to students will be $26,500.

Health Insurance: The University of Michigan Health System is renowned for the quality of its health care. CMB students receive health care insurance through the unique GradCare Student Health Insurance Plan, which allows students a full range of health care coverage. GradCare is provided to students and spouses, including a family allowance, and are thus insured without having to make co-payments.

The major emphasis of graduate training in the CMB Program is on laboratory research. By providing financial support, CMB ensures that students do not have to teach to support themselves, although all students are teaching assistants for one term for the purpose of gaining teaching experience.

Financial support is typically provided by PIBS in the first graduate year, then by CMB Training Grant funds, individual fellowships, or research grants from the student's dissertation laboratory, as follows:

First year – PIBS

Second year – CMB Program

Third year and beyond - Sources of support include:

• Mentor ’s research funds

• External fellowships: Examples of fellowships for which CMB students have successfully competed have been awarded by: NIH (individual NRSA), NSF, DOD, NDSEG, various professional societies and foundations.

• Specialized training grants: CMB students can compete for training support in a variety of specialized areas pertinent to their training, including Training Grant programs such as: Cancer Biology, Microbial Pathogenesis, Organogenesis, Systems and Integrative Biology, Tissue Engineering.