Alessandra Azure spent about two months of her summer vacation working in a medical research laboratory in Pittsburgh. That’s a wild use of any student’s coveted time off from school, but it’s even more intense when you realize that the 16-year-old rising junior traveled all the way from Seattle specifically for this experience.
Alessandra was one of 80 high school students and four college undergraduates this summer to participate in the 2022 UPMC Hillman Cancer Center Academy, an eight-week program that matches budding scientists with researchers who mentor them and guide them along as they work on a specific project. Its main goals are to provide a glimpse of what it’s like to actually work in a lab and promote diversity in the field of cancer research.
For her, that involved being mentored by Kellie Spahr, a Ph.D student in Pitt’s School of Medicine studying T-cell metabolisms within tumors in the lab of immunologist Greg Delgoffe. Spahr was on hand all summer to answer Alessandra’s questions and guide her through the ins and outs of real laboratory techniques, like western blotting, cell culturing and flow cytometry.
“I think after the program, I have a more accurate idea of what research is versus what I thought research was without actually having seen it,” Alessandra told the Post-Gazette. “That’s one of the things I was surprised by, how interactive and collaborative it is. I thought it was someone in a dark room with a pipette all by themselves. But it’s not really like that all.”
Hillman Academy is currently run by director David Boone, who is also the vice chair of the Hillman Cancer Center’s education committee and an assistant professor of biomedical informatics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The Greene County native went through a similar program in high school organized by West Virginia University that sparked his lifelong passion for science and still serves as a constant reminder for him of “the impact this program can have.”
Boone said that there are more than 600 Hillman Academy alumni at this point who he generally recruits through the Pittsburgh Public Schools system and local outreach programs such as the Fund for Advancement of Minorities through Education and Homeless Children’s Education Fund. He always gets excited when summer comes around because the Hillman Academy students tend to “bring an energy to the cancer center and into the research that’s often lacking.”
“Science is better the more diverse it is,” he said. “Currently, it is much more homogenous than I think it needs to be in order for science to impact all populations. ... The more we are able to reach all students, the better we can impact health care in the short term and long term by training these students and having them go off to become researchers and clinicians in the future.”
This year’s Hillman Academy was the first fully in-person one since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It wrapped up in mid-August and featured 197 mentors showing students how their labs function. Boone mentioned that the Hillman Academy also expanded its usual offerings to include ophthalmology and surgical oncology lab-placement options.
One mentor-mentee pair who seemed to have gotten a lot out of their Hillman Academy experience was Neil Carleton, a Pitt medical student working in the lab of breast cancer researcher Steffi Oesterreich, and Enysah Roberts, a 17-year-old rising senior at The Ellis School. A lot of Roberts’ summer was spent characterizing tumors that the lab generated using rat models in an ongoing effort to create a reliable breast-cancer model applicable for humans.
In addition, Enysah also got to visit an operating room and witness a hysterectomy in person, which confirmed her inclination toward surgery. She appreciated Hillman Academy for providing her and everyone else with a rare “opportunity to dip your toes into a professional field” and for “expanding my interests” in all thinks science, technology, engineering and mathematics, aka STEM.
Then there was the duo of Sierra White, a postdoctoral researcher studying mitochondrial regulatory protein in the lab of ovarian cancer researcher Nadine Hempel, and Donise Griffin, an 18-year-old Taylor Allderdice High School graduate and incoming Carnegie Mellon University freshman who just completed her second Hillman Academy stint.
“It really helps you on your path to other STEM-based careers,” Griffin said. “You get to network a lot and see what you’re really interested in and what you’re not. It’s great that they work with kids in high school. It’s really fun for them.”
The mentors get just as much out of Hillman Academy as their young charges, particularly important practice in determining how best to explain their research to someone with minimal background in what they’re studying.
“You’re constantly teaching people about the science you do and how to do the science properly,” White said. “I really wanted to get involved to advance myself and push myself as a teacher because it’s really important as a scientist to know how to teach.”
Spahr described Hillman Academy as “a really awesome way for young scientists to be exposed to real research” that she wished was available to her at their age. And as Carleton put it, Hillman Academy is the kind of sink-or-swim venture designed to show students whether a career in STEM is truly for them.
“You’re not in a classroom setting anymore,” Carleton said. “This is real science we’re doing that we hope will shed real light on how to treat the disease. Having a chance to get your hands on and learning about real work going on at Hillman Cancer Center is a second-to-none experience.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: September 11, 2022, 10:00 a.m.