printable versionHigh school students learn to be summertime scientists in top research labs
BY CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN
Akachimere Uzosike from San Leandro is one of the high school students in the SIM Summer Research Program.
In the lab, high school student Jessica Ye works with graduate student Nicole Hanick giving advice and support.
Akachimere Uzosike excels at learning science, but he gets little chance to do the actual laboratory work that is the backbone of professional research. Until this summer, that is, when he became an intern in the Stanford Institutes of Medicine Summer Research Program.
Working in the laboratory of Mark Davis, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology, the high school student from San Leandro explained that he is "helping to understand how T cells are selected so that they don't attack the body."
Under the direction of P.J. Utz, MD, the summer research program is designed to bring bright students to Stanford for eight weeks, pair them with Stanford graduate students and postdoctoral scholars and make them part of real biomedical research.
Although there are many laboratory programs aimed at high school students, the Stanford Institutes of Medicine (SIM) Summer Research Program is remarkable in many ways, Utz said. "I would guess that this is the largest and best in the United States," said Utz, associate professor of immunology and rheumatology. "I can't imagine there is a group of higher quality students in any other program."
The SIM Summer Research Program is unique, for instance, in paying students for their work. "Many programs charge families for the opportunity to work in the lab," he said. And though the program makes efforts to reach out to disadvantaged kids, the primary goal is to find students who are motivated and want to figure out if they really want to be a scientist.
The selection process is extensive. Utz gets over 400 applicants every year, mostly from around the Bay Area, but some from out of state or even out of the country. He tries to create a final group of 40 students who are diverse in terms of class, race and public or private school background, he said.
Utz said he makes an effort to avoid "resume polishers," trying instead to find students who are hard-working, very smart and very committed, with a strong interest in the sciences, whether or not they have the highest grades. His model is Stanford researcher Irving Weissman, MD, who participated in a similar program when he was in high school in Montana. Weissman has acknowledged not being at the top of his high school class. He is now head of Stanford's Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Institute as well as the Stanford Cancer Center and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
These qualities were also exemplified by Jessica Saal, a local patient and arthritis research advocate who passed away in 2004 and whose family has continued to support the summer research program. Every year, one student is given an award in her name.
Utz himself went to a similar program at Roswell Park in Buffalo when he was growing up. He credited that program, and working in his father's automotive machine shop business, with helping him get the kinds of hands-on skills and problem-solving abilities that are invaluable in laboratory biomedical research.
The students in the SIM Summer Research Program get experience that any science student would envy. In the afternoon they perform lab work, while in the morning they listen to lectures from distinguished Stanford researchers like Nobel laureates Roger Kornberg and Andrew Fire. "I get excited listening to the lectures, too," Utz said.
Next year will be the tenth year the program has been in existence, but getting funding has been a challenge every year. Utz has always organized the program without compensation, on top of his normal research load, but this has become more onerous as the program has grown and NIH budgets have dwindled. He recently was able to hire a talented program coordinator, Cindy Limb, who does the work that Utz no longer has time for. "If it wasn't for Cindy, there wouldn't be a program this year. She is even more passionate than myself about science education," he said.
In the first years the students were working in immunology, but they now work in labs doing research in regenerative medicine, neuroscience and cardiovascular research as well. Next year, plans call for the program to take an additional 10 students and add cancer research to the mix.
Utz has videotaped the lectures and created a syllabus for the program, which he hopes will serve as a model for other universities. "My vision for the program is ultimately to have 10 or 20 centers around the U.S. doing the same program," he said. "I see Stanford as a national and world leader in developing educational materials for teaching science, especially bench research."
Christopher Vaughan is a communications officer for the Stanford Institutes of Medicine.