BEAUMONT IN THE WORLD
ACADEMIC SCHOLARS CONDUCT BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH THROUGH SUMMER INTERNSHIPS AT
HARRINGTON DISCOVERY INSTITUTE
Beaumont’s Academic Scholars sent its fourth cohort of students to the Harrington Discovery Institute (HDI) as interns this summer. Beaumont students are the only students offered this outstanding opportunity to work at the HDI. This program was introduced to Academic Scholars Director Gretchen Santo by Natalie Haynes, former Program Director at HDI and parent of Parker ’20. For eight weeks during the summer our students work with mentors on research led by Dr. James Reynolds and team leaders from HDI/University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve conducting hands-on research in the lab. The summer program pairs each student with team leaders at HDI to assist with their research projects to advance medicine, and is overseen by Edwin Pacheco Colón, MS, MBA, Research Assistant 4 / Lab Manager for James D. Reynolds, PhD, Institute of Transformative Molecular Medicine (ITMM) Clinical Researcher, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center/Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Each day our students conduct research, run labs, and document their findings. At the end of the summer, the students present their 18
findings to Dr. Reynolds, team leaders, and the Harrington family for which the institute is named. While the real-world experience in the lab confirmed for most of the students their own interest in pursuing careers in the medical field, they also learned valuable life skills that go beyond the lab. Amanda Desamito ’20 summarized one of those lessons best. “At the beginning, I was unsure of my actions and I made mistakes along the way, but my mentor and peers assured me that making mistakes is part of the research process. In
Harrington Discovery Institute interns: Hayley Muhvic ’20, Amanda Desamito ’20, Grace Elhindi ’20, Anna Farrington ’20.
research, you don’t always get your desired results, so it is completely acceptable to make a mistake, start over, and reconfigure. This lesson impacted me because it can apply to my everyday life. As humans, we are not perfect and, of course, not everything will go exactly as we want it to. It’s perfectly okay to make mistakes throughout life. Mistakes will make you think. They might redirect you to a different path, maybe even lead you to something better than what you originally wanted. Without making mistakes, we would never learn.”
Grace Elhindi ’20 in the lab.
Harrington Discovery Institute Mission: To advance medicine and society by enabling inventive physicianscientists to turn their discoveries into medicines that improve human health.
BEAUMONT NEWS I A MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNAE AND FRIENDS OF BEAUMONT SCHOOL I FALL/WINTER 2019
