On July 17, 11 students from The Preuss School UCSD celebrated the end of an intensive two-week summer research program with a poster symposium and luncheon at SBP’s La Jolla campus. The program provided talented 11th graders with the opportunity to experience what it is like in a research lab, learning daily research lessons and laboratory experiments, and about the various careers in science.
The program, which recently expanded to two weeks, provides students with the opportunity to spend more time in each lab, so they can set up an experiment and come back the next day to see, analyze, and interpret the results. The students also had a tour at ThermoFisher, a leading global biotechnology company, where they learned about career development in the fields of scientific research, genetic analysis, and applied sciences.
A poster symposium and luncheon were held on the last day of the program, with the students, their parents, Preuss School representatives, interested donors, and participating staff in attendance. The students were presented with a certificate of completion and took a group photo. Guy Salvesen, PhD, dean of the SBP Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and associate director for education and mentoring in our NCI-designated Cancer Center, and Diane Klotz, director, office of Training and Academic Services, hosted the luncheon and handed out the certificates.
Duc Dong, PhD, whose lab hosted the students, said that the program is giving them the opportunity to work with scientists inside a real lab, and it gives researchers like him the opportunity to inspire the next generation of scientists. Phuong Nguyen and Tommy Le, participants in this year’s program, agreed that their experience in the lab was motivating: “We’ve got the opportunity to work in a real lab, with top scientists, and see how things look from the inside. It was really exciting because it’s something we’ll never get to do at school.”
The program is made possible by founding philanthropists Peggy and Peter Preuss and Debby and Wain Fishburn, and with additional support from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation (Gayle Wilson) and Carl Eibl. Of course, the program would not be possible without the scientists who so willingly share their time and talent: Dong and his lab, Thomas (TC) Chung PhD, and his research group, Malene Hansen, PhD, and her lab, Kathleen Scully, PhD, and members in the lab of Pamela Itkin-Ansari, PhD
