Larner Professor of Medicine Daniel Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., spoke with WCAX-TV about rural high school students from Vermont and New Hampshire who attended the 20th anniversary of the Stem Cells, Cell Therapies, and Bioengineering in Lung Biology and Diseases conference at the University of Vermont.
Weiss said this is only the second year the conference has invited high school students. “The students who are here, the high school students, are absolutely engaged, they’re animated, they’re asking questions, they’re soaking everything in. So, we’re hoping this can be the next generation of scientists out there,” he said.
The conference offered opportunities for high school students interested in lung biology and diseases to observe and participate in labs, learning from top researchers in the medical field; they also were assigned a mentor.
For Julia Ormerod, a biomedical engineering Ph.D. student who works in the Daniel Weiss Pulmonary Research Lab, the conference provided an opportunity to meet other graduate and undergraduate students in this field, create relationships, and serve as a mentor. “I’m really looking forward to having conversations with them, because I know that when you’re 17 and 18 years old, there’s lots of big decisions to be happening around your career. So, if there’s any way to provide guidance, I would love to be support for them,” she said.