Look carefully next time you flip through a science journal or magazine.  You may see some familiar faces.

This past summer, several CHS students began work in experimentation across the country, with some working nearby at Washington University and others as far away as New York. These students surpassed academic learning, the dutiful studying of past undertakings, and have already begun their own contributions to the scientific world.

Chemistry teacher Nathan Peck encourages students to work on their own scientific experimentation outside of class.  “Research allows students to experience things that can’t be done in a high school setting,” Peck said.  “If students find that they have time and really want to pursue higher-level studies, I’d strongly recommend any experience in a real laboratory.”

Higher level studies, indeed.  Microsoft Word fails to recognize most of the terms that these students toss around as the basis of their work – they’ve begun studying specialized fields beyond those of high school textbooks, and many of them are pursuing graduate-level work. And despite the fact that most teenagers spend their summers relaxing as far away from work as possible, many of these students have voiced a common appreciation for laboratory work as a summer endeavor.

“I think that it’s a great way to learn a lot about science and the work that you might be doing in the future,” senior David Ryffel said. “It even helps if you find out you hate research because you won’t wind up in an important research position you hate for a big part of your life.”

Ryffel participated in the STARS program at UMSL, where high school students have the opportunity to pair with professors from various institutions in St. Louis. His experimentation yielded results demonstrating that certain organic bases can increase the yields of reactions, an applicable discovery in the field of chemical engineering.  However, Ryffel was not alone in his participation; other students from the STARS program concurred with him on the experience.

Senior Tim Nonet, another STARS researcher, worked instead with nanodiamonds and their properties at Washington University, but he offers the same advice, “I definitely would recommend doing research or even just finding a job that is a little out of your norm. The experience you receive and the people you meet are worth it hands down.”

Victoria Yi, a current junior and an alum of STARS, also recommended summer research projects as an opportunity, noting that “[r]esearch allows students to apply their scientific knowledge from school to a real life laboratory application.”

Yi’s project, a study in the effects of various light conditions on green algae, actually called into question current research standards. She believes that her results potentially invalidate Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a traditional model organism, as a reference species in biofuel studies.

In contrast to most other student researchers, senior Emily Braverman participated in a materials science program in New York. The organization, Garcia MRSEC at Stony Brook University, supplied dozens of projects on polymer and nanoparticle studies, and Braverman chose to work in a cell biology lab studying the toxic effect of gold nanoparticles. She believes that, in addition to developing theories on cell membrane’s aging process, her research experience was valuable in shedding light on the research experience.

“The most important thing I learned was that your research cannot start and end in six weeks,” Braverman said. “Once you begin researching, you realize how much there is that is unknown, and you develop even more questions to fuel more research. If research is done correctly, it is an ongoing process that will continue long after a summer program is over.”

Many of her peers came to analogous conclusions. Nonet similarly realized his research experience was quite the opposite of what he expected. “But I learned just how little of the world we really can explain,” Nonet said. “A lot of what we take for granted today is understood just enough to take advantage of but we don’t really understand how most things really behave, especially at the atomic scale.”

These responses seem to reflect Peck’s previous experience with student researchers.  Peck recalled that, in his experience with students, “Nobody comes back and says that research was a waste of time.  They’re all usually pretty jazzed.”

All of the CHS students interviewed said that they’d like to return to research later in high school and in college.

Ryffel and Yi are both contemplating researching in college, while Nonet is particularly interested in further developing his work on nanodiamonds.  Nonet said, “It is very exciting to test something that you built and then improve it based on your data.”

Braverman, who is similarly continuing her summer research at Stony Brook, is considering a career in scientific research.