Future bright for next generation

By Ruth SoRelle, M.P.H.

Each fall, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine sponsors a Graduate School Symposium that spotlights the work of some of the school's best and brightest. As William R. Brinkley, Ph.D., the school's dean, said in his written comments at the front of the abstract book, “The Graduate School Symposium is really the ‘big show' where we cancel classes and focus entirely on student research throughout the day.”

The breadth of topics is astounding. It goes from obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to norovirus among travelers to diabetes to breast cancer and beyond. They have several things in common with the two most important being the sophistication of the research and the research question and the interaction between young researcher and his or her scientist mentor.

Need to keep the pipeline flowing

These young people came to BCM from excellent institutions with a good underpinning for their future science careers already in place. We need to improve on that in the future if we hope to maintain the quality of science being undertaken in the United States.

Science education in grades kindergarten through 12 is lacking in the United States, and without improving that, we will have a difficult time getting students to take on science degrees in their undergraduate careers. We need to work on that.

Then we need to support budding young scientists in colleges, providing them not only with a top rate education but also with the chance to get into the laboratory and do research. It's that kind of experience that can provide the fire and passion that drives young people in the rest of their lives.

Graduate education crucial

Continuing that support as they continue in graduate schools such as this one is also important. Scientists-in-training need to be able to carry out their first experiments in laboratories that are well supported and have the wherewithal to keep their work going.

Seed money

The answers to tomorrow's biomedical questions will be written by the researchers we educate today. They need the seed money that will push their efforts to the next level. Only that way will we finally put to rest the tragedies of infectious disease, heart ailments, cancer, Alzheimer's, genetic diseases and others that blight the lives of so many worldwide.