Training Opportunities
Students, graduate students, combined degree students, postdoctoral fellows, and residents have a range of research opportunities available to them in basic, translational, and clinical research at Penn Vet.
Offerings
Clinical Training Opportunities
There are numerous training opportunities at Penn Vet, depending on where you are in your professional journey. Here are some options:
Offerings
Clinical Training Opportunities
There are numerous training opportunities at Penn Vet, depending on where you are in your professional journey. Here are some options:
Externships for Veterinary Students
Due to changes in our clinical year schedule, Penn Vet will no longer accept externship applications for the fall semester. Beginning January 2025, we can only accommodate requests for rotations 1–9 of our school’s schedule.
Applications for Summer 2025 will begin to be accepted January 31, 2025; please make sure to submit all application materials by March 1.
The School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania offers externship opportunities at the Matthew J. Ryan Veterinary Hospital, the New Bolton Center Large Animal Hospital, and the Working Dog Center to senior students from other (U.S.) veterinary institutions. Preference goes to students from AVMA-Accredited Veterinary Colleges. Applicants are required to complete the equivalent “core” material at their own institution prior to the Penn Rotation(s). Externships are only available in the SUMMER rotations 1–6 of our school’s schedule. Exceptions include the externships for the Working Dog Center and the Large Animal Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Giving our team flexibility in scheduling (dates and/or desired rotations) will increase the likelihood that we can schedule you for an externship Your rotation(s) must correspond exactly to our school’s schedule — no exceptions. When requesting a rotation, list preferences for first, second, and third choices, if possible. We will accept students for no more than one (1), three-week rotation. Although the application portal is open year-round, the Office of Admissions and Student Life will only schedule extern students after we know the clinical scheduling needs of our Penn Vet clinical students.
Extern students are responsible for many aspects of patient care and will be required to provide treatment for hospitalized patients, including on weekends. Please be aware that these are participatory externships and not merely “shadowing” experiences. You will be expected to honor and complete your externship commitment and must have the ability to read, write, and speak in English.
Although Penn Vet does offer externship slots to international students from AVMA-accredited institutions, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship to foreign national participants looking to apply for our externships. With regard to a visa, the Type B visa would apply to international students looking to do an externship in the U.S. Students would apply for it directly, rather than the University issuing. Applicants should fill out the form associated with B visa and then schedule an interview with the local U.S. embassy or consulate — Visitor Visa (state.gov).
Additional Externship Information
Diagnostic Services
Send a current CV and letter of intent to Charles Bradley, VMD at cbradle2@upenn.edu.
Lab Animal
Send a current CV to James Marx, DVM, PhD at marx@upenn.edu.
Large Animal Theriogenology
Interested parties can read more information here and send an email of interest to Dr. Tamara Dobbie at tdobbie@upenn.edu.
Working Dog Center
Interested applicants should send an email to Cynthia Otto, DVM, PhD at cmotto@upenn.edu.
Shelter Medicine
Send a current CV to sheltermedicine@vet.upenn.edu
If you need further information about externships at Penn Vet, please email externships@vet.upenn.edu.
Thinking Forward
Want to see where you might get a job after you graduate from Penn Vet?
Internships for Small and Large Animal Hospitals
The Ryan Veterinary Hospital
The Ryan Veterinary Hospital is located on the main campus of the university in West Philadelphia. Location in a major urban area provides a large, diverse caseload, with 24-hour emergency service. The staff of Ryan Hospital consists of approximately 120 veterinarians, and the hospital is part of a large biomedical complex that includes the nation’s oldest medical school.
Duties include diagnosis, treatment, and care of clinical cases and instruction and supervision of veterinary students. There are night and weekend duties on a rotating basis. A Pennsylvania veterinary license is not required. Rental housing and parking are readily available within walking distance of the hospital.
Please contact Victoria Cramer: cramerv@vet.upenn.edu
Please note: At this time we are unable to accept applicants that are not citizens or permanent residents of the United States, Canada, or Mexico.
New Bolton Center
New Bolton Center, located in rural Southern Chester County, PA, offers a 24-hour emergency service that provides interns with a diverse caseload, from simple emergencies to complex referral cases. The staff consists of approximately 90 veterinarians. The 12-month internship includes rotations in Medicine, Surgery, and Emergency/Critical Care. Duties include diagnosis, treatment, and care of clinical cases and instruction and supervision of veterinary students. There are night and weekend duties on a rotating basis. A Pennsylvania veterinary license is not required.
Rental housing is available; however, transportation is required as there is no public transportation. The Center is centrally located, one hour from Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Baltimore, 30 minutes from Delaware, Maryland, and Lancaster.
For more Information
Please contact Patricia Antes: antes@vet.upenn.edu.
Residency Options at Ryan and NBC
Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital for Companion Animals offers a variety of residency options, including Emergency and Critical Care, Dermatology, Small Animal Internal Medicine (both Clinical and Clinical and Research Tracks), Oncology, Laboratory Animal Medicine, Veterinary Dentistry and Oral Surgery, Anatomic Pathology, Clinical Pathology, Research Associate Positions in Pathobiology (focusing on Controlled Transgene Expression and the Role of B cell subsets), Maddie’s Residency in Shelter Animal Medicine, Small Animal Surgery, Neurology, Radiology, and Medical Genetics/Pediatrics/Reproduction.
Additionally, the New Bolton Center Hospital for Large Animals provides residencies in Field Service/Food Animal, Internal Medicine, Ophthalmology, Large Animal Theriogenology, and Large Animal Surgery.
Fellowships and Visiting Practitioners
If you are interested in fellowships at Penn Vet, please visit the Biomedical Postdoctoral Postings at the University of Pennsylvania to check for availability and to apply. Additional fellowships offered at Penn Vet include the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Translational Orthopedic Research, the Cardiology-Ultrasound Fellowship, and the Boehringer-Ingelheim Fellowship.
Visiting Veterinarians — Philadelphia (small animal)
For more information on Penn Vet’s unique program for qualified veterinarians from around the world seeking to broaden and deepen their skills in specific areas, please contact us at suejenks@vet.upenn.edu.
Visiting Veterinarians — New Bolton Center (large animal)
For information on clinical training opportunities at New Bolton Center, contact the Section or Service Chief in the area in which you are interested or the clinician with whom you wish to work.
Veterinary Internship & Residency Matching Program (VIRMP)
If you are interested in applying for the upcoming cycle, applications are accepted beginning in October. Please apply through the Veterinary Internship & Residency Match Program site
Innovative
Research Training
Penn Vet’s many research centers and initiatives (RCIs), and 30+ faculty laboratories, serve as a hub of discovery where scholars, students, and members of Penn’s biomedical community accelerate veterinary medicine’s impact on animal, human, and environmental health worldwide.
Penn Vet’s RCIs generate courses, academic programs, community outreach, peer-reviewed research, and partnerships among academics, government, and industry. In addition, Penn Vet’s veterinarian hospitals allow students to get hands-on experience with small and large animal care.
VMD | PhD Program
The goal of the VMD-PhD Program is to train veterinarian-scientists who will make outstanding contributions to their field by advancing science and medicine.
Biomed Post-Doc Programs
The office of Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs provides biomedical post-docs with the highest quality training in and outside of the labs.
Graduate Groups at Penn
Learn about graduate programs and graduate opportunities at the University of Pennsylvania.
Boehringer-Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Program
Since 1990, the Penn NIH/Boehringer Ingelheim Summer Research Program has exposed students in their first or second year of veterinary school to all phases of biomedical research. This includes developing research ideas, preparing research proposals, performing biomedical research, and presenting research in written, poster, and oral formats.
Students in the program perform full-time biomedical research during June, July, and August, and participate in weekly seminars on career opportunities and career development. Students attend the annual Veterinary Scholars Symposium (VSS), where they present their work to hundreds of students in similar programs at other vet schools. Approximately 20 students receive funding each year.
Who Is Eligible
Any veterinary student who has completed one semester of veterinary school is eligible to apply. Students can be from the University of Pennsylvania or any other veterinary school.
To apply to the program, students interested in performing biomedical research should discuss research ideas with faculty. All faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania are eligible to accept a student in the program; thus, students are not restricted to faculty within the School of Veterinary Medicine.
Program Directors (See contact information below) can assist students in identifying faculty with compatible interests. Alternately, students can identify a faculty mentor through information available at the various Penn graduate group web pages and departmental web pages.
The next step is for the student and their faculty mentor to fill out an application package and write a short research proposal — approximately three pages — which is due on February 1 each year.
Please contact possible faculty mentors at least two months prior to the deadline.
The research proposal should define the questions the student seeks to pursue and explain the experimental approaches to answer those questions.
The advisory committee reviews the applications with respect to the student’s academic standing, quality of the research proposal, and training potential of the mentor’s laboratory. The committee will notify students whose applications it will fund by late February.
Directors
Michael Atchison, PhD
Program Co-Director
(215) 898-6428
atchison@vet.upenn.edu
Michael May, PhD
Program Co-Director
(215) 573-0940
maym@vet.upenn.edu
Jenni Punt, VMD, PhD
Program Co-Director
(610) 389-1782
punt@vet.upenn.edu
Staff
Ameena Atif
Coordinator
Phone: (215) 898-3800
vmstp@vet.upenn.edu
University of Pennsylvania
School of Veterinary Medicine
NIH/Boehringer Ingelheim Summer Research Program
3800 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6046
- Decide on a general area of research interest (i., microbiology, genetics, neurosciences, virology, gene regulation, molecular biology, cell biology, etc.).
- Consult the Penn Biomedical Graduate Studies website for graduate groups that encompass those disciplines. The BGS groups are:
- Consider faculty at the Vet School and contact one of the Academic Departments.
- Contact the faculty members whose work most interests you — at least two months in advance of our February 1 application deadline — and set up a time to meet with them. Learn about the type of work they do and explore possible summer projects. Some questions to ask include:
- What research are they currently performing?
- What summer projects might they have available?
- What do they hope to achieve over the summer?
- What would they expect of you in the lab?
- What would be your role on the project?
- Will they be available to mentor you during the summer months?
- Will another member of the laboratory serve as your supervisor?
- Will there be an opportunity to continue your research beyond the program end date?
- Do they have sufficient funds to support your research supply needs? (NOTE: the program provides your stipend, but the mentor pays the research costs.)
- Is it acceptable to arrange vacation time (10–14 days) during your project?
- Once you have identified a faculty mentor, you are ready to prepare your application. Draft your research proposal, and give it to your mentor for feedback and approval no later than four weeks before the deadline.
- Provide other information requested on the online application form. Submit your application no later than February 1. Good luck!
The projects undertaken in the past have encompassed a diverse range of topics, including the development of the COVID vaccine, humoral and cellular responses in Rituximab-treated MS patients, the examination of tumor heterogeneity, the investigation of calcium-calmodulin kinase II’s influence on potassium-channel isoform expression in diabetic mice, an analysis of Clostridioides difficile in hospital environments, and research into telomere attrition as a biomarker for animal welfare in sows, among other areas.