Summer at UTMB Expands Horizons for High School Students
While most high school students are content spending their summers slinging fast food or lounging on the couch, 17-year-old Marisol Cortez spent hers studying the replication and reversions of the Zika virus and its mutations between populations in Africa, Asia and the Americas. And that wasn’t all.
As part of UTMB’s High School Summer Biomedical Research Program, she received BSL-2 biosafety training from UTMB’s International Biosafety Training Center, where trainer Nikki Ward taught her the safety protocols and lab techniques that eventually allowed her to work safely with the real Zika virus in a BSL-2 lab under the direction of Dr. Jianying Liu.
Dr. Liu is a post doc working with Dr. Scott Weaver, one of the world’s foremost experts on Zika and other arboviruses – those spread by mosquitoes.
“She’s very smart and really loves science. She helped me a lot,” Dr. Liu said, adding that Marisol went the extra step of spending time in the Moody Medical Library to study up on subjects that went well beyond her high school science classes.
The research conducted by the 11 students who participated in the program is real, ongoing medical research. In Marisol’s case, she assisted Dr. Liu with the work she’s been doing since she came to UTMB from China: understanding why Zika suddenly emerged to cause major outbreaks in order to develop ways to prevent future epidemics.
So what drives a 17-year-old to spend their summer in a research lab? Marisol says she developed an interest in epidemiology when she was in the 8th grade.
“The Ebola outbreak was all over the news and it really grabbed my attention,” she says. Having a young brother with autism also led her to develop a very personal interest in neurology. After her experience at UTMB this summer, she says her latest passion is tropical medicine.
Marisol says she really enjoyed learning about the different types of mosquitoes and spending time in the insectary that is a part of the GNL-Keiller complex.
“I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to work with this faculty. I learned so much from everyone, both in the lab and in our lab meetings. I really had a chance to develop my critical thinking skills and see how the students and faculty challenge one another,” she said.
When asked what her career goals are, without hesitation she said, “I want to do medical research.” But for now she’s preparing for her senior year at Luther Burbank High School in San Antonio. When she completes her college applications this fall, her focus will be on the University of Wisconsin-Madison or the University of Texas at Austin. But for graduate school, she already knows where she wants to go: UTMB.
UTMB’s High School Summer Biomedical Research Program culminated on August 1 with a presentation of research to faculty, lab members and graduate students. The program is coordinated by Dr. Marguerite Sognier, the Director of Educational Outreach at UTMB and Executive Director of the Southeast Regional T-STEM Center.