To encourage promising high school students to pursue careers in academia and research, Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine welcome scholars from Baltimore’s Boys Hope Girls Hope (BHGH) to work in university laboratories. From June through August each summer for the past three years, high school students have worked alongside scientists in Johns Hopkins University laboratories producing raw data that supports the research goals of their mentors.

This summer, the university welcomed four BHGH scholars and, at the conclusion of the session, the scholars presented their findings to faculty, students, staff, and members of their families during a poster session held, August 12. The program also celebrated its first two high school graduates.

Matthew Green-Hill has been in the BHGH/INBT program for three summers. He graduated this spring from Archbishop Curley High School and was accepted to The College of William and Mary where he plans to study political science. He worked in the lab of assistant professor Sean Taverna in the department of pharmacology and molecular sciences. Along with his mentor PhD student Tonya Gilbert, Green-Hill presented “Cloning Yng1 to Identify Novel Histone Modification Binding Motifs that may affect Gene Expression” at the poster session.

Dwayne Thomas II worked in the cell biology laboratory of associate professor Douglas Robinson. He and his mentor, PhD student Hoku West-Foyle, conducted research that was presented in the poster “Dictyostelium discoideum myosin-ll, a modular motor.” Thomas has participated in the summer research program for two summers. He graduated from Loyola Blakefield in May and will attend Loyola University Maryland in the fall as a biology/pre-med major.

Working in the biological chemistry laboratory of professor Craig Montell, Durrell Igwe was mentored by postdoctoral fellow Marquis Walker and presented the poster “Reduced Immune Response in Drosophila Lysosomal Storage Disease Model.” This is also Igwe’s second year in the program, and he will graduate from Archbishop Curley High School in the spring of 2012.

One of the newest BHGH scholars is Charles Booth, who worked with postdoctoral fellow Yulia Artemenko in the cell biology lab of professor Peter Devreotes. He presented the poster “Analysis of the Functional Redundancy Between Dictyostelium KrsB and Its Mammalian Homolog Mstl.” Booth attends Calvert Hall and will be a junior this fall.

The BHGH program is geared toward students with academic potential but who lack the resources or stability to achieve their full potential. Some of those who have participated in the program may have at one time missed weeks of school in the past. Others have even been homeless. Students voluntarily apply to the nonprofit program to access services such as a stable home, tutoring, and counseling. Scholars have the opportunity to live together in an adult-supervised house in Baltimore and attend local private schools. Both boys and girls participate in the program and next year, Robinson said he hopes Hopkins will attract some of the young women interested in science and medicine to work in sponsored laboratories.

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Boys Hope Girls Hope Baltimore

Story by Mary Spiro