The sudden deprivation of valuable in-lab summer research experiences from high school students caused by the global shutdown in 2020 challenged us to find a way to bring a unique and innovative research experience to students wherever they happened to be in the US. Backed by our collective experience in STEM outreach and our professional backgrounds in biomedical & clinical research and education, we founded the STaR Program in May 2022! 

We have witnessed that young scientific talent throughout the US needs the opportunity to be nourished to flourish and in this post-pandemic remote work era, distance is not a barrier to accomplish this. Our guidance has helped high school scholars develop award winning remote research projects showcasing their ingenuity, academic resourcefulness, and intellectual ownership. More than that, the time each student has invested in their project nurtured the development of their unique and innate leadership qualities. Indeed, the STaR Program is privileged to have students such as these join us as STaR coaches to share their experiences and advice for the first generation of STaR high school scholars.    

We strongly believe the STaR Program will help students realize their potential in a tangible way clearly recognized by academic, scholarship, and admission committees. More than just a summer experience, the quality research experience conducted by mentees during the academic year have the potential to earn our scholars national recognition with commensurate awards, in addition to making them strong contenders for multiple institutional, regional, and national scholarships. Our STaR coaches have firsthand experience with how their remote research experience earned them such accolades, in addition to receiving offers of acceptance from MIT, Caltech, Vanderbilt, and Berkeley, among many other school admissions, with successes continuing well into their undergraduate career. 

To our future STaR Program mentees: what will your successes be? Let us help you rise to claim them.