Robotic engineering, coding, video game design, filmmaking, soccer and swimming: these are just a few of the many activities that are vying for the attention of high school students once school lets out for the summer.

But a group of about 50 high schoolers in California have chosen a different path: they will be diving into the world of stem cell biology. Each student earned a spot in one of seven CIRM-funded SPARK Programs across California. That’s short for Summer Program to Accelerate Regenerative Medicine Knowledge (yes, technically it should be SPARMK but we like SPARK better).

Today at our #stemcell seminar series we are so excited to have Todd Dubnicoff ⁦@tdubnicoff⁩ from ⁦@CIRMnews⁩ to welcome our new #CIRMSparkLab high school summer interns. It will be a wonderful summer! pic.twitter.com/mmFKJzpGzZ

— Jan Nolta, Ph.D. (@jan_nolta) June 11, 2018

The SPARK students will gain hands-on training in stem cell research at some of the leading research institutes in California by conducting a six-week research internship in a stem cell lab. Maybe I’m bias, as the Program Director at CIRM who oversees the SPARK programs, but I think they’ve made a great decision. Stem cell research is one of, if not the most exciting and cutting-edge fields of research science out there today.

The pace of progress is so rapid in the field that a large workforce over the next century is critical to sustain CIRM’s mission to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs. That’s why the Agency has invested over $4 million to support over 400 SPARK interns since 2012.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to be in Sacramento to welcome the UC Davis SPARK interns on their first day of their program which is led by Gerhard Bauer, director of the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) laboratory at the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures. The other programs, like the one at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles (see photo below), are also starting this week or next.

Because everything we do at CIRM is focused on the patient, the SPARK programs are required to include patient engagement as part of the students’ internships. Here are some Instagram posts from last year that highlight those patient-centered activities.

And speaking of Instagram, we have also included a social media component to the program. We believe it’s critical for scientists to connect with the public about the important work they do. During the UC Davis orientation, Jan Nolta, PhD, the director of the Stem Cell Program at UC Davis School of Medicine, pointed out to the students that making the science accessible and understandable to the public, makes stem cell research less scary and, as a result, it’s more likely to gain public support.

So, as part of their curriculum, the interns will share a few Instagrams per week that capture their summer in the lab. You can follow their posts at #CIRMSPARKLab. In addition to communicating through photos, the students will describe their internship experiences by writing a blog. We’ll post the most outstanding blogs later this summer. In the meantime, you can read last summer’s winning blogs.

At the end of their program, the students get to show off their hard work by presenting their research at the SPARK annual conference which will be held this year at UC Davis. It’s going to be an exciting summer!