Year 3

The CIRM STAR High School Summer Research and Creativity Program is an 8-week summer science research experiences that takes place at the USC Health Sciences Campus. This program is integrated with USC’s existing STAR Summer Research Program, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary since the program’s inception. CIRM STAR focuses on stem cell and developmental biology research. During week 1, students complete a 5-day training course at the USC Stem Cell Core Facility which prepares them to conduct stem cell research. Each CIRM STAR intern then joins a research team at the USC CIRM Broad Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Once the students are placed in their labs, they conduct research as a member of a scientific team which includes USC faculty, CIRM pre-doctoral, postdoctoral and clinical fellows. Throughout the CIRM STAR internship, students attended weekly forums on various topics in order to teach students the important realities and responsibilities surrounding a career in scientific research.

Week 1: Stem Cells Techniques Course
Week 2: Science Writing and Fundraising
Week 3: Bioinformatics and Literature Searching
Week 4: Ethics, Oversight and Public Policy in Stem Cell research
Week 5: Journal Club
Week 6: Career Development, Networking and Communication Skills
Week 7: Translating Stem Cell discoveries into Therapeutic Applications
Week 8: CIRM STAR Colloquium and Poster Presentation

CIRM STAR Summer Intern Projects:

Jose Garcia: Defining the Localization and Molecular Characteristics of Tongue Label Retaining Cells

Rizwan Choudhury: Genetic Approaches to Uncover Regulators of the Stem Cell Microenvironment.

Peter Guan: Function Characterization of Mutants of PHF6

Aleck Sun: Constructing Synthetic Positive Feedback Loops to Reinforce Motor Neuron Fate Commitment

Cody Lim: Optimizing DNA Donor Template Delivery for Site-Specific Gene Therapy in Hematopoietic Stem Cells

Rebecca Sine: Allopregnanolone Site of Action for Promoting Regeneration of
Human Neural Stem Cells

Garnier Mani: Site Directed Mutagenesis of PHF6: A Study on Borjeson Forssman Lehmann Syndrome

Ashley Haong: Functional Dissection of Alcohol-Mediated Self-Renewal of Liver Tumor-Initiating Cells via TLR4 Signaling