Summer job at Wash. U. leads to research forum in Florida
By Sandra Jordan For the St. Louis American
The results of a Soldan International High School student’s summer job as a young scientist are taking her to Florida to present her findings at the Minority Research Training Forum in Florida later this month.
This summer Soldan senior Dereka Travis participated in the Young Scientist Program at the Washington University School of Medicine. For eight weeks, 40 hours a week, she and other YSP students worked on separate projects to solve actual problems alongside graduate student mentors.
Travis spent her summer researching plant genetics, in an effort to understand plant health and disease, which has implications for agriculture and agribusiness.
“I was trying to find out which thing in the pathway was causing the plant to be more susceptible to the bacteria,” Travis said.
“The plant pathogen we are studying, it is known for infecting tomatoes and soybean plants. If we can find out how this plant responds to its pathogens, then we can find out how other agriculturally important plants respond to other pathogens. Then we can create different chemicals and whatnot to help stop the cell damage process.”
From earlier work, Travis’ mentor, Agnes Demianski, suspected that a particular gene was important in how the plant under study responds to a pathogen. What she and Travis uncovered was big news.
“So what Agnes did, she had gotten a mutant in this gene and then she basically had Dereka characterize the mutant and asked if the mutant plant has a different response for the pathogen, and they found that it does,” said Barbara Kunkel, Ph.D., associate professor of biology who oversees this research.
“We didn’t know what would come out of the research this summer, so it was very exciting for Dereka to have everything work and then get a new result.”
The experience has the senior looking at a future in science and law. She wants to attend college at the University of Pennsylvania or Temple University and then come home for graduate school at Washington University.
“I am really interested in biology because of my work this summer, and I want to go into intellectual properties law, because I can major in biology, do a minor in business and go to law school,” said Travis.
“I can study patent law or intellectual properties, because the ideas and research of these scientists that do all of this work make life better for us.”
For those who lead and support the program, developing future scientists is just what the doctor ordered.
“What we really are interested in is in the talent, and we know that there is talent in all segments of our population,” said Thomas Woolsey, MD, professor of experimental neurological surgery and faculty advisor for the program.
“You have to expose people to career tracks that they may not be made aware of. It is not clear to me that there are a lot of opportunities for underrepresented talent to get the type of experience and exposure that they need.”
In a 2002 survey of the first decade of the YSP, over 65 percent of the participants agreed the program helped turn them toward careers in science. All attended college, and the majority were science majors.
“This is more than double the percentage of college attendees who elect science-related majors,” Woolsey said.
Travis said her misconceptions about scientists are dissipated.
“I had a big misconception that scientists were geeks, always in the lab,” she said. “Scientists are real people. It shows that you can have a career and still be, I guess, a normal person.”
She has also become an advocate for students to pursue YSP, take science in school and consider it as a career.
“I’ve been trying to recruit as many people as possible,” she said.
“And it’s not the everyday norm. It’s not like working at McDonalds or other fast-food places, and you have to take your work seriously if you want to advance.”
Travis said she also plans to take the university up on its invitation to come back to the lab to do further research.
In addition to students from St. Louis Public Schools, this summer’s group included one student each from East St. Louis High School, Ladue High School, O’Fallon Township High Schoo and Parkway West High School. The students are paid a $2,100 stipend for participation in the program.
