Cornell U/Sloan-Kettering - Graduate Biomedical Sciences

Other Activities

A Different Kind of Spring Break: "Junior Fellows" Tour Weill Cornell

Dr. Randi Silver speaks to the junior fellows, ninth-grade students enrolled in the Junior Fellows program of the New York Academy of Medicine, during their recent visit to Weill Cornell labs.

For eight "junior fellows" from the New York Academy of Medicine, spring break this year was more about learning science than getting a break from it.

On Thursday, April 5, during their week away from high schools throughout the city, the select group of ninth-graders took tours of five Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences laboratories, learning about everything from the impact of hormones on the brain to the unique life cycle of Plasmodium malariae.

The Junior Fellows program was begun by the New York Academy of Medicine to develop middle and high school students' interests and career awareness in health, science, medicine and research through partnerships with New York City schools and local academic medical centers, like Weill Cornell Medical College.

"These students, many of whom may go on to medical school later, usually learn about science from textbooks and they don't know how scientists really do science," said Dr. Xiaoai Chen, fellowships and outreach director for the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. "Experiences like our lab tours expose students to real, working scientists."

Dr. Aihao Ding leads the students through a guided tour of her lab.

Over the course of a day at the Graduate School, students toured the laboratories of Dr. Teresa Milner, professor of neuroscience; Dr. Randi Silver, associate professor of physiology and biophysics and associate dean of the Weill Cornell Graduate School; Dr. Thomas Templeton, associate professor of microbiology and immunology; Dr. Aihao Ding, professor of microbiology and immunology; and Dr. Betty Jo Casey, professor of psychology in psychiatry and the Sackler Professor of Developmental Psychobiology.

Against the backdrop of working postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in Dr. Randi Silver's lab, the junior fellows gathered around a fluorescence-activated cell-sorting machine to learn more about what it takes to be a scientist in the 21st century.

"You can not be a reductionist in science and you can not just look at one molecule. We have to put our research within a context and right now that context is disease, which is called 'translational research,'" said Dr. Silver.

As the group moved into a side room to take a closer look at some mast cells, it became clear that these junior fellows already knew a thing or two about hot topics in 21st-century medicine. As the Q & A session opened, a hand quickly shot into the air, "Do you guys have any stem cells around here?"

-- This article appeared in the Weill Cornell Medical College Dean's Bulletin, April 16, 2007.

-- Photography by Dr. Xiaoai Chen.