I’m a first-generation college student and I wanted to convey the message that I’m not special in any way… and yet now I’m a stem cell researcher at UCLA. When there’s an opportunity to mentor others, I’m of the mindset that we should grab onto those connections. Graduate student in the lab of Brigitte Gomperts, MD There’s time to explore different career paths and take things one step at a time. Besides gaining a deeper understanding of stem cell science, I hope the students learned from my story that it’s OK to not know exactly what they’re going to do in life right after high school. Maybe the time I spent with the students made them think differently or gave them something to discuss with their friends or family that night over dinner. For me, a simple one-day research event at my community college led me to where I am now. You don’t know the impact you can have on somebody's life. The Rose Hills Foundation Graduate Scholar UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center trainee Graduate student in the lab of Donald Kohn, MD “Having young people who come from backgrounds like theirs come talk to them during this pivotal time in their lives can really open their eyes to all the opportunities that they have access to.”īelow, the Center’s inaugural cohort of trainee outreach mentors share what motivated them to take part in this activity, why they believe high school outreach is important and what they’re taking away from the experience: “Our high school students generally come from low-income families, so it’s difficult for them to imagine themselves in certain professions because they’re focused on surviving instead of thriving,” she added. “After the, my students told me that they didn’t know scientists could be so cool and easy to talk to,” said Sonia Perez, a 10 th grade biology teacher at the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy in Los Angeles, California. While the Outreach Program aims to enable students of all backgrounds to see themselves in a STEM field, the trainee outreach mentors are also given a platform to practice talking about their often complex research to a lay audience-a key component of the Center’s training program. The interactive presentations delved into how stem cells are currently being used to treat blood disorders and grow mini-organs in a dish for disease modeling, as well as how regenerative medicine is informing future disease treatments.Īlthough there has been a push to increase diversity in STEM, Black and Hispanic people remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce, according to the Pew Research Center. He and fellow trainees of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center Training Program led virtual field trips, which included video lab tours, recaps of the sometimes-circuitous paths that brought them to UCLA and advice about how to navigate the college application process, at two Los Angeles County public high schools. “I wish I had that when I was in high school.” “As a Mexican immigrant, I always enjoy taking part in outreach opportunities because I want to provide students with an image that’s not an archetype of what a scientist looks like,” he said. This spring, when the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA launched a High School Outreach Program in partnership with the UCLA Science Project, Pérez-Ramírez was quick to sign up to be a mentor. Today, he’s a postdoctoral scholar studying stem cell metabolism at UCLA. César Pérez-Ramírez’s STEM journey has taken him from his hometown of Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border town, to Princeton University, where he earned a doctorate in molecular biology and afterwards to Germany, where he worked as a research assistant.
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