NYSCF Partnership Offers Prep Students Hands-On Lab Experience and Career Insights

During the 2008 financial crisis, many Prep for Prep students shifted their aspirations from finance to the science and medical fields. Always responsive to students’ interests, Prep for Prep sought to find a way to offer exposure in this area. Jay Kriegel, a Prep for Prep trustee and Chair of the Professional Advancement Committee at the time, saw an opportunity for Prep students to gain access to the field and made an introduction to Susan Solomon, founder of The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF). (Both Jay and Susan have since passed, but their impact on Prep for Prep continues.)

NYSCF hosted its first class of Prep for Prep interns in 2011, marking the beginning of a collaboration that has lasted more than a decade. Since that time, NYSCF has provided opportunities for Prep students in many ways. Middle schoolers are introduced to stem cell research and the lab environment in a very lay-friendly manner via tours of NYSCF’s facilities. Additionally, NYSCF offers a five-week summer internship program for high school and college students focused on laboratory research, engineering, data science, and program administration.

Through a week-long Stem Cell Research Immersive, high school students engage in curriculum that exposes them to topics including neurodegenerative diseases, data science, and genomics; career development opportunities such as mock interviews and career panels; and lab skills workshops. “Learning about the experiences from many branches here was very unique because I thought we would really only be in the lab,” says one summer 2024 Prep for Prep participant. “The program also provided me with a basic understanding as to what stem cell research is and some of the protocols and experiments involved. Now I can confidently say what exactly PCR [polymerase chain reaction] is.”

This summer’s immersion program was made possible by a generous benefactor. Anita Volz Wien, a Prep for Prep trustee who served on the board with Jay for decades, has been a longtime supporter of Prep. In fact, funding the NYSCF program marks her second time supporting Prep’s career programming. When the number of internships dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, Anita stepped up and funded internship stipends for our Prep students, in honor of Jay, who passed away in December 2019.

“The partnership with NYSCF has really been a game changer, specifically for our high school students because it’s very hard to get bench research experience as a high schooler,” says Rebecca. “That makes them more competitive for future opportunities, including internships and the college application process.”

Working with Prep supports the NYSCF mission to democratize access to education. “Our partnership with Prep enhances NYSCF’s commitment to developing a diverse STEM pipeline,” says Jennifer J. Raab, NYSCF’s President and CEO. “We are grateful for the opportunity to mentor Prep’s talented and focused young scientists, and look forward to growing this impactful partnership.”

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BRIAN CAMPOS (XXV/HUNTER COLLEGE HS ’08, HARVARD ’12) MD, BROWN ’20

General Surgery Resident, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Brian Campos was a member of the first class of Prep for Prep New York Stem Cell Foundation interns. “I was still flirting with the idea of going to medical school, but it hadn’t solidified in my mind,” says Brian, who was a rising college senior at the time. “I wanted to have another kind of laboratory experience to help me make that decision."

That summer, Brian worked under the mentorship of a NYSCF postdoc who was studying Alzheimer’s Disease. He assisted with experiments, gaining basic laboratory skills such as culturing cells, pipetting, and handling chemicals at the bench. The research data he gathered was included in a manuscript that was published in 2013.

NYSCF was so impressed with Brian that they offered him a full-time position following his graduation from Harvard University. “I jumped at the opportunity to be able to go back and continue building my career as a research scientist,” says the neurobiology major.

As a research technician in the Parkinson’s Disease (PD) Group, Brian worked to turn skin cells from healthy controls and PD patients into induced pluripotent stem cells, which at the time was fairly new technology. The group then turned those cells into dopaminergic neurons to study a gene mutation that influenced the development of PD, and they published a paper detailing their findings in 2014. After two and half years as a research technician, Brian was promoted to a research associate position in the Neurobiology Department. It was during that year that he made the decision to attend medical school. As an MD, he would be able to carry out the type of research he is interested in while also conducting clinical work.

“I look back at that experience very fondly because it was during that internship and those almost four years that I spent at NYSCF that helped solidify my love for the sciences,” says Brian. “It also allowed me to build a career as a research scientist and ultimately that has influenced every step of my path to where I am today.”