Our teen program, Future Science Leaders (FSL), may be on hiatus for the summer, but our students are still exploring science and taking advantage of FSL opportunities.
This spring, two of our FSL students, Mindy Lim and Lauren Dobischok, won the StemCellTalks blogging competition! The pair attended StemCellTalks Vancouver, a day symposium exploring the science and issues of stem cells, and composed and submitted blog posts about their experiences. They won the opportunity to attend the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) conference being held in Vancouver's new convention centre.
Both students wrote about their experiences at the ISSCR conference. Check out Lauren's post here and Mindy's post here.
Being Future Science Leaders helped them with the challenge of blogging for an international organization.
"FSL made me aware of both events [StemCellTalks Vancouver and the ISSCR conference] and the experience I gained in FSL made me more comfortable at the conference in terms of interpreting talks, asking questions and even understanding basic concepts like peer review, clinical trials, ethics etc. (I wasn't really aware of any of this before FSL)."
"ISSCR was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that instilled knowledge I would never gain in classrooms. FSL, the ISSCR and other science opportunities revealed to me what real scientists do and made me more certain about my career choice."
This was an amazing opportunity for Vancouver's high school students and I'm glad that two of our Future Science Leaders got to participate. We are always looking for more ways for our students to explore their passions and contribute to our community.