A summer fellowship at theLSI prepares Michigan under grads for the next leg of their STEM journey.

This piece was written for UMich's 2022 magazine. Read the full thing here! 

Jacquelyn Roberts knows firsthand the power of authentic research opportunities for young scientists.

“It only takes a single experience to start building your research career,” says the University of Michigan graduate student.

As a researcher in Melanie Ohi’s lab at the U-M Life Sciences Institute, Roberts currently uses cutting-edge microscopy techniques to explore the 3D structures of cellular protein machines. But her introduction to the LSI came three years ago, while she was an undergraduate student at Eastern Michigan University, through the LSI’s Perrigo Undergraduate Summer Fellowship.

The LSI launched the Perrigo fellowship program in 2004 with a gift from the Michigan-based Perrigo Company, then headquartered in Allegan. From the outset, the program’s goal has been “to encourage highly talented undergraduates from throughout Michigan to pursue careers in the life sciences.” Students enrolled in any Michigan college or university can apply, so long as they’re interested in biochemistry, cell biology, pharmacology or related fields.

When the program began, Michigan was experiencing some of the worst “brain drain” — the outflow of young, highly educated or skilled professionals to other states— in the nation. And while the landscape has changed for the Michigan labor force in general, attrition in STEM fields in particular remains a national challenge.

The Perrigo program plays a small but important role in retaining Michigan-based students in STEM programs. By offering hands-on experiences to undergraduate students from around the state — often from primarily undergraduate institutions with smaller research infrastructures — the program provides opportunities for students to conduct scientific research, while learning to see themselves as capable of persevering in a STEM career.“

Throughout the 10 weeks, students are immersed in the lab activities and are treated as regular lab members,”explains LSI faculty member Bing Ye, director of the Perrigo program. “It gives a sense of belonging and instills interest in their lab work.”

Accepted fellows come to the Ann Arbor campus for the summer to work full-time in a laboratory that matches their interests, and they are assigned a mentor within the lab whom they work with throughout their project.When not at the bench, the fellows participate in science communication workshops, seminar talks, mentor lunches and other activities that build their network outside the lab. In addition to extensive training, students receive a stipend and housing support.“

The state of Michigan has been short of talent in scientific research and development, so creating an opportunity for students across our state to experience the actual work with U of M’s outstanding faculty has been an exceptional investment in our future,” says Mike Jandernoa, former CEO and chairman of Perrigo Company, who was instrumental in the formation of the Perrigo fellowship program.

Building enthusiasm at the bench

To inspire interest in bench research, the Perrigo program emphasizes providing each student with a unique and individualized project of their own.“

We were never just doing ‘busy-work,’” recalls Ty Hergenreder, who worked in Ye’s lab as a member of the2018 cohort of Perrigo fellows. “We were fully thrown into a project, and we basically had free rein with our mentors guiding us.”

Hergenreder had conducted field-based botany research as an undergrad at Hope College, but he was hoping to switch to neuroscience. He applied to multiple summer research opportunities across the state; when he was accepted into the Perrigo program, he immediately turned down all other offers so he could pursue the opportunity to work in Ye’s neuroscience lab at the LSI.

The Ye lab uses fruit flies as a model organism to study neuronal development processes and disorders. For his summer project, Hergenreder injected fruit flies with different compounds to determine which could cross the blood-brain barrier and investigated the chemicals involved in Down syndrome.

Compared to his previous undergrad research work, Hergenreder appreciated the depth of understanding that full-time lab work could provide. Both his direct mentor and Ye took the time to share not only the techniques but also the motivation behind the research project and the experimental setup.

This hands-on neuroscience experience further encouraged Hergenreder to switch fields from botany and continue down a more medical track. After graduating from Hope College, he returned to Ye’s labto work as a technician while he applies to medical school. He says his experience with the Perrigo program solidified his enthusiasm for conducting research andhis interest in applying that enthusiasm to patient care.

“That’s the coolest thing about research: We get to see something that no one else has seen before,” Hergenreder says. “I’m getting results and information that will hopefully help people in the future and will help us understand more about the scientific problem that we are studying.”

Finding the right fit in STEM

When she applied for the Perrigo program, Jacquelyn Roberts already had some research experience, and even some interactions with the U-M research infrastructure, under her belt. As an undergraduate researcher at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, she sometimes had to drive her samples to neighboring Ann Arbor for DNA sequencing analysis at U-M.

Roberts came to work in Ohi’s lab as a Perrigo fellow in 2019, using the state-of-the-art cryo-electron microscopy facility at the LSI to characterize part of the protein machinery that the bacteria Helicobacter pyloriuse to spread infection.

Perrigo fellows work alongside graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, so they have opportunities to build connections and networks with their peers. For Roberts, those connections introduced her to the experiences of graduate students and made her feel like graduate school was a valid option for her.“

Spending my summer here made me feel like graduate school would be a good fit for me … and all the support from the lab cemented my desire to go into STEM,” Roberts says. “The combination of having the time along with financial and departmental support really made me feel free to focus on research without having to worry about other things.

By the time Roberts arrived back at U-M as a graduate student, she had already secured a Graduate ResearchFellowship from the National Science Foundation. Her application was based on the work she completed during the Perrigo fellowship, which she is now expanding as a second-year graduate student in the Ohi lab.“ It really shows the impact that experiences like this can have,” Ohi says. “In this case, Perrigo not only helped a student get a prestigious fellowship, but it helped U-M snag a very talented young scientist.”

‘A community I could rely on’

More than 15 years in, the Perrigo program continues to seek new ways to break down barriers that might prevent aspiring scientists in Michigan from remaining in STEM fields. Toward that goal, the LSI has recently partnered with the ReBUILDetroit program at theUniversity of Detroit Mercy.

ReBUILDetroit is one of 10 programs funded through the National Institutes of Health’s BuildingInfrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) Initiative. At Detroit Mercy, the program recruits students fromNIH-designated underrepresented populations who are interested in research, and provides them with the intensive training and support they need to prepare for success in graduate school and STEM-based careers.“

No matter your background, in order to pursue a career in research you have to see yourself there and feel like you belong,” explains Jacob Kagey, a biology professor at Detroit Mercy and the director of student training forReBUILDetroit. To facilitate this sense of belonging, the program requires first-year students to join a research lab either atWayne State University or Detroit Mercy. In subsequent years, the students are encouraged to apply to research programs or fellowships at other universities, to get a diverse range of lab experiences.

Amber Abram was looking forward to just that typeof new experience when she was notified in early 2020that she would be one of the first Perrigo students accepted from the ReBUILDetroit program. She felt it was a perfect opportunity to explore genetics — she had taken an advanced genetics course and “loved it so much I barely had to study for any of the exams,” she remembers. She was placed in David Ginsburg’s lab and she hoped to learn especially from Ginsburg, himself a medical doctor turned researcher, as she sought to marry clinical work with research.

But, just like almost everything else in spring 2020, her plans changed when COVID-19 restrictions forced the program to pivot to a fully online format for the summer. Because Abram planned to become a genetic counselor and not a research scientist, she used the summer to build her network and become familiar with the opportunities and connections on campus.

The 2020 fellows were invited back to complete an in-person fellowship in summer 2021, and Abram was finally able to conduct research in the Ginsburg lab. By then, she had already applied and been accepted intoU-M’s genetic counseling program, but nevertheless wanted to capitalize on the opportunity to further strengthen her research experience and community.

Although she had worked in a lab at a smaller university and attended several scientific conferences, Abram still anticipated feeling a bit like a small fish in a big pond.

“But Dr. Ginsburg and the lab made it a mission to speak to me and made me feel included in the overall lab experience,” Abram recalls.“It made the transition from a smaller university to a larger one a lot easier. I had a point person and a community I could rely on.”

The research experience helped Abram with her genetic counseling coursework. The insight she gained into the types of questions genetics researchers ask has informed her thinking about the clinical work she’ll be doing.“

The lab environments are instrumental in nurturing this kind of interest,” Ye says of the Perrigo program.“ Even though 10 weeks is very short, the learning experience could become lifelong.