Summer-school scientists

This summer, while most of his friends were spending their afternoons playing basketball and going to the movies, 17-year-old Erick Desingco was measuring proteins in a Harvard laboratory, helping develop new drugs to boost patients' immune systems.

For Desingco, a student at Boston Latin High School, working from 9 to 5 every day wasn't a sacrifice. Instead, it brought him one step closer to his goal of becoming a pharmacist.

"I've always loved science," he said. "It's like a puzzle -- you have to keep looking and it may take you two years but it's worth it because you are improving people's lives."

Desingco is one of 25 local high school and college students from underrepresented backgrounds who participated in paid eight-week internships sponsored by Harvard Medical School that concluded this week.

The program, Project Success, was designed to increase diversity in the biomedical professions by instilling in students a passion for science and the tools to pursue it. Since 1993, it has produced five medical doctors and two dentists. Ninety-nine percent of participants have gone on to graduate from a four-year college, said Dr. Joan Reede, who started the program and heads the medical school's office of diversity and community partnership.

"We are looking at a country that has an increasingly diverse population, an increasing number of immigrants, and an inadequate representation of those populations in science," said Reede, who was trained as a pediatrician. "If you don't have students finish high school prepared for college, you are already behind the 8-ball, just trying to catch up."

Desingco has done plenty of catching up this summer. On a recent afternoon he showed a visitor the fluorescent microscope and Western blot machine he had learned to use from his mentor, research fellow Kulandayan Subramanian.

"When I first came to the lab, I was freaking out -- I saw all these biohazard signs and I was scared to touch anything," he said. "Now, with help from everyone, I feel pretty much at home."

He said the program has taught him patience and discipline. Subramanian agrees.

"When he came in he was a little bit shy," said Subramanian, who is encouraging Desingco to apply to Harvard as an undergraduate. (Desingco prefers the University of Connecticut). "He's opened up a lot more. He asks the right questions and takes time to ask other people in the lab about what they're doing. I've seen a huge difference."

Only 12 percent of medical students and 7 percent of medical school faculty nationwide are people of color, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges.

Project Success tries to beat those odds by making contact with students early and keeping in touch with them throughout their careers. Students apply for the program in 10th grade. If accepted, they can keep coming back each summer through college, as long as they maintain a grade-point average of 3.0 or higher.

Besides getting hands-on training, students attend talks by scientists about their work. They also learn life skills, from the simple (how to hold a glass at a reception, how to shake hands) to the complex (how to apply for financial aid).

Cassandra Paul, 18, applied for Project Success because her high school didn't offer any advanced placement science classes.

In the year since she joined the program, her mother and Reede said, she has transformed from a nervous bookworm scared to speak in public to a poised scientist-in-training who confidently explains her work refining fluorescent proteins for use in cancer research. Her mother, Mimose Registre, remembers rising early to drive her precocious daughter to gifted and talented programs in middle school.

"It was hard, but we made it through," said Registre, a waitress and single mother who was born in Haiti but is a United States citizen. "Now she is going to Williams, one of the number one colleges in the United States."