A Q&A with Dr. Robert Lue, the researcher who led development of the innovative laboratory platform
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Introducing LabXchange. Developed by the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and funded through the Amgen Foundation, this free online science education platform allows users to personalize science education using virtual experiments, lab equipment simulations and the ability to create and share learning pathways with fellow users around the globe.
The path from Amgen Scholars to working at a major pharmaceutical company has been anything but linear for Jan Botthof. Between his undergraduate work, PhD program, and now as a trainee in the International Future Leadership Program for Product Supply at Bayer, Botthof has taken time to try different roles and figure out the best balance of science in his career. Through his journey, Botthof has learned that many career options are available to those with science skills that go beyond traditional benchwork.
Each summer hundreds of undergraduates step into some of the world’s premier research universities and institutions to participate in the Amgen Scholars Program. Students conduct hands-on research in the lab alongside top faculty, participate in seminars and networking events, and take part in symposia with their peers and leading scientists.
Since 2007, Amgen Scholars have come from 52 U.S. states and territories, 73 countries and represented over 750 colleges and universities.
Amgen Scholars at the Tsinghua University consists of eight weeks of intensive research program in a wide range of fields in biomedical sciences. The accepted applicants will join a faculty’s laboratory and involve in one or more specific research projects. Each Scholar will have a faculty member as his/her mentor. In addition, a postdoc, a technician or a graduate student will be assigned to train and assist the student in the lab.
Written by Scott Heimlich, Vice President, Amgen Foundation
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Can you imagine the implications to the country and society if we were better able to harness and unleash the talent all around us? What if opportunity and culture unlocked the ambition and dreams of more people – young and old – to achieve their potential? We’re barely scratching the surface.
The path from Amgen Scholars to working at a major pharmaceutical company has been anything but linear for Jan Botthof. Between his undergraduate work, PhD program, and now as a trainee in the International Future Leadership Program for Product Supply at Bayer, Botthof has taken time to try different roles and figure out the best balance of science in his career. Through his journey, Botthof has learned that many career options are available to those with science skills that go beyond traditional benchwork.
Kudos to Amgen Scholars alumni Corshai Williams and Enrique Garcia-Rivera for so eloquently sharing their stories at The Atlantic Education Summit (per this 10-minute session). To learn more of Corshai’s remarkable story, see this profile in the Baltimore Sun.
This question is so fundamental, and yet too often it’s not even asked by those funding and working towards social impact.
We assume it was asked and answered by someone else at some earlier time, or that this initiative with its holistic approach to the whole person can’t be reduced to a single or even set of metrics. Or maybe it’s that we simply don’t have the time and resources to build that data-driven culture that allows us to adjust our strategy and actions based on whether our indicators of success are flashing green or red.
