“The Amgen Biotech Experience has inspired me to pursue a lab opportunity in my post-secondary pathway. … At York University, I work as a research assistant under Dr. Haas's lab, and it involves a lot of the techniques that were learned through the program, including techniques related to working with DNA and gel electrophoresis. The pipetting skills that were developed through the experience have truly set me apart from many other applicants seeking the position and helped me find confidence and success in many experiments.”
—David Lee
“The Amgen Biotech Experience inspired and solidified my choice of pursuing a post-secondary degree in medicine- and biotechnology-related fields [at University of Toronto, St George]. It was an amazing experience being able to work with technologies that are used in labs and sparked a real interest in working in a research lab.”
—Ellie Tsiopelas
“The Amgen Biotech Experience helped reinforce my choice to pursue a biology-related degree by giving me a university-level biotech lab experience while still in high school. It let me realize that lab work is something I'd like to keep doing in my career, which is part of why I picked Biomedical Engineering at the University of Waterloo.”
—Laksikan Navaratnarasa
Choosing a single student's story to highlight for a program that has reached 1 million students is not an easy task. Over the past 35 years, alumni of ABE have done everything from running their own labs and working in biotech manufacturing, to teaching and becoming engineers. The stories highlighted above are just a snapshot from a single school and teacher—Georges Vanier Secondary School, with ABE teacher Shafin Devji—of varied educational pathways inspired by the program, highlighted from one of the younger program sites: ABE Canada.
Winnie Sloan has been there since the early days of the program some 32 years ago as a biology teacher at Oak Park High School in Southern California. Two of her former students offer perspective on the impact of the program, long past high school.
“I remember the ABE labs being a big step up in my education,” says Erinn Sloan, who now works in aeronautical engineering. “They were the first time I felt challenged and like I was doing something real in a lab setting.”
For Eric Olivares, the same experience inspired him to pursue molecular biology and genetics. “For the first time, I experienced experimental biology in real life and was instantly hooked,” he recalls. “Somehow, it connected all the book learning I had done to real-world applications.”
For both Olivares and Sloan, ABE was a formative part of their journeys in STEM, highlighting the tremendous impact the program can have on students.
A Lightbulb Moment
Olivares says that he left high school knowing he wanted to pursue genetics in college. After pursuing some summer research in a lab, he earned a scholarship that enabled him to work in a plant biology research lab at the University of California-Davis. He used many of the same molecular techniques to engineer and understand tomato plants and corn as he learned in ABE. His part-time work as an undergraduate evolved into an internship and work at a biotech company and then to a PhD in genetics at Stanford, focusing on patient applications of molecular biology.
“For me, in biology, I found something I could continue to be excited about and imagine working on for a long time,” Olivares says. “My dad’s career advice was always ‘find something you like doing because you’re going to be doing it for a long time,’ and I took that to heart.”
After receiving his PhD, Olivares worked in various positions in biotech, with a focus on developing research tools. His work included founding a web forum for scientists to connect and collaborate on next-generation sequencing technologies. Olivares also worked at a clinical sequencing company, Invitae, for 11 years, joining as the 14th employee. “I was part of the team that grew the company to over 2,000 employees and was processing over 1 million clinical tests per year,” he says.
Now on the executive team at biotech company GeneDx, Olivares leads a team of about 100 scientists, engineers, and product managers to design and develop the technology behind a whole-genome sequencing test that identifies rare genetic diseases. “My job is to set the strategy for technology advancement across all aspects of the business, from how we interact with customers digitally to how we can provide our patients with the highest quality genetic test results,” he says.
ABE still represents a “lightbulb moment” for him: “I’d read about bacteria, DNA, genes, but putting my hands on these components while executing a real experiment allowed me to see what I could do with my career. At a time in life where ‘what do you want to do when you leave high school?’ is a very present and intimidating question, the experience in that program helped me answer that question.”
Early Confidence Boost
Erinn Sloan still remembers doing the gel electrophoresis lab in her 10th-grade AP biology class with her teacher, Winnie Sloan, and the pride she had when her bacteria came back glowing red. “What high school kid doesn’t love things that glow?” she recalls. “But more importantly, I remember this being a long but satisfying experiment where I learned to use new equipment, which I would use again in college and beyond, and could apply some different concepts with my own two hands. It seems simple, but those early days of learning the importance of a control or how to validate your experiment were brand new to me and so important in my daily career now.”
That class, Sloan says, was her first AP class, first “hard science course,” and her first time running experiments in the lab. “I was already interested in the sciences, but the skills I learned through the ABE labs gave me so much confidence and curiosity moving forward into my later education and career today,” she says. “I was a very shy kid, so any amount of self-assurance to back up my interests was imperative for my quiet and unsure mind to persevere through the challenging course load ahead of me.”
Sloan credits that early confidence to her ability to shift from lab work to mechanical engineering at the University of California-Santa Barbara on the master’s degree track. “The ABE labs were my first exposure to bioengineering, which ended up being the focus of my master’s degree,” she says. “Without the early exposure and confidence of these courses, I don’t know that I would have been as successful as I am now.”
Sloan says she looks back fondly at the shy but curious kid she was in 10th grade: “She was excited by science but had no concept of what was out there, what she could do, or how capable she was,” she says. “The early days of being excited about science, experimenting, and being supported through a challenging but fascinating course were the building blocks to be successful later as an engineering student and into my career now.”
Both Sloan and Olivares encourage students to learn how powerful a well-designed and executed experiment can be. “Even if you aren’t doing these exact experiments in the future, you’ll be able to adapt to new experiments, techniques, and subjects so much quicker,” Sloan says.
And both are grateful to their teacher, Winnie Sloan. “Deepest thanks to my favorite teacher who found this program, inspired me, and made biology lessons real and practical,” Olivares says.
Winnie Sloan is but one teacher, and Olivares and Sloan are but two students of the 1 million plus, who are the heart and engine of the ABE Program—which continues to inspire the next-generation of leaders in STEM fields.