Princeton High School graduate Ann Sarnak, right, pictured with her mentor Jennifer Resnick, spent the entire month of July conducting scientific research in Israel.
Princeton High School graduate spends summer researching at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel
By Regina Yorkgitis
With graduation and its associated festivities behind them, most rising college freshman spent their summers counting down the days until the start of their college careers.
But Ann Sarnak, who graduated from Princeton High School in June, spent an entire month of her summer in a very different way. For four weeks in July, she participated in a comprehensive summer research program at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Sarnak, who will attend Yale this fall and plans to study cognitive science and molecular cellular biology, attended Weizmann’s International Summer Science Institute.
The ISSI is an annual program that gives about 70 students from around the world the opportunity to work in a research laboratory along side scientists and graduate students. Sarnak was one of only 19 students from America chosen to attend the prestigious four-week program.
“I didn’t think it was possible to feel so different after just four weeks, but that’s a testament to how important the trip was,” Sarnak said, adding that working in a scientific laboratory was not a foreign experience — last summer she studied neuroscience as part of a program at Muhlenberg College.
“I really like biology,” she said. “It has a lot of opportunity for an interdisciplinary focus.” The chance to examine the brain for instance, from different angles, such as through psychology or anatomy is what attracted Sarnak to biology.
Although she has always enjoyed science, she began to seriously consider a career in the field during her final two years at Princeton High School.
Sarnak took the chance to further explore her interest when she applied for the 45th annual ISSI earlier this year. After answering a detailed questionnaire and soliciting teacher recommendations, Sarnak was accepted to the program and was on her way to Weizmann, which is located in Rehovot, Israel.
Sarnak said she applied for the ISSI because it seemed like a perfect combination of opportunities — a trip abroad, lab experience with renowned scientists, and a chance to conduct cutting-edge research.
Other students participating in the program hailed from Australia, Europe, China, and many other countries around the world. They were selected for various areas of scientific study, including chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science. Sarnak chose biology as her concentration.
During the program, three and a half weeks were devoted to the laboratory scientific research. During that period, the students were lectured by senior institute scientists, and also visited some of the state of the art facilities on campus. Upon completion of laboratory work, participants gave an oral presentation before an assembly of their peers and mentors and also submitted a written report.
The participants spent the last week of the program at the Negev and Ein Gedi Field Schools in the Judean desert. At the field schools, the students studied survival in the desert, as well as the wildlife, ecology, archaeology and history of the surrounding area. The experience included extensive nature hikes, field experiments, wildlife observation and demonstrations.
Sarnak said that during the initial three-week period, small groups of two to three students worked on a specific project with mentors — often graduate students pursuing a PhD. Between meals and breaks, the students spent most of their waking hours in a lab expanding on actual research. At the end of the session, students submitted an oral and written report for review.
Sarnak said she studied “how organisms generalize or discriminate based on a stimulus” — in other words, the brain’s response to learning. Her group’s challenge was to expand on the research of her mentor, Jennifer Resnick, by testing a different variable in Resnick’s existing project.
The test subjects were instructed to wear headphones and listen to sounds produced through a computer program. The listeners would hear both a screeching noise and a neutral sound through the program. Their ability to distinguish between the two sounds was one response that Sarnak and her fellow young scientists evaluated and recorded. They studied how fear conditioning affected the results.
Just as Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to salivate at the ring of a bell, fear conditioning states that when a neutral sound is played with a fearful sound, such as screeching, consistently, the neutral sound is played alone the subject may be afraid without ever hearing the fearful sound.
“It was great to get a sense of the atmosphere in the research lab,” said Sarnak, who hopes to continue exploring scientific research in the future. “Research is more diverse than I first thought.”
She was most impressed by the first hand exposure to the “joint scientific curiosity,” described by the President of the Weizmann Institute in an address to the students at the start of the summer program. A lab environment allows different scientific disciplines to interact and collaborate on a regular basis.
Sarnak said that opportunity to travel across Israel in the final week of the program was an invaluable experience.
“They planned a comprehensive overview of the country,” she said, adding that she finished her trip with a greater understanding of diversity in landscape, weather, and culture that form the small yet pivotal country. In addition to the Judean desert and the Negev, she also visited the Old City of Jerusalem.
But, perhaps the most rewarding aspect of her journey was the confidence and independence she gained from being an ocean away from home.
“The most surprising thing about the experience is how much I have been quietly changed,” Sarnak said. “There was no one moment when I felt monumentally transformed, although the desert experiences came really close,” she said.
“But when I returned home, I realized how much the accumulation of ISSI experiences has really morphed my outlook on research, travel, and life in general,” Sarnak said.
“It was really great to be able to witness how research takes place on a day-to-day basis, not just the big results, but the little tasks and considerations of the students and investigators in the lab. Learning about the research of my mentor, as well as the other projects in the program, has added dimension to my mental picture of scientific research,” she said.
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