Regeneron Science Talent Search on Science Projects That Matter

You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I am Nate McLennan and today I am so excited to have the pleasure to talk to three incredible students who recently competed in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, co-hosted with Society for Science. With me today, Christine Yee from Washington, a student at Eastlake High School, Aseel,

a student at Anderson High School down in Texas, and Elijah, a student at Caddo Parish Magnet High School in Louisiana. All three of these amazing scientists are here today to share with us a learner-centered perspective of what does it mean to be a scientist as a student and talk a little bit about their projects and also just a little bit about learning and high school and things like that.

So Christine, Aseel, and Elijah, thank you so much for being here and congratulations on all your accomplishments and learning journeys. I’m just amazed by what you have done. So thank you for being here today. Thank you so much for having us.

Okay. So to start us off, most of our listeners are teachers, school principals, leaders, folks who think about education all the time. They are not in the deep depths of science like you all. So the challenge to introduce yourselves is just introduce who you are, just say your

name, and then in no more than two sentences, what did you learn from your projects that can help inform our listeners about your work? So I know this is a challenge because you’ve been in deep for a long time. So let’s start with Aseel. If you could start us off with a two-sentence challenge.

Yeah, for sure. So in my research, I basically developed a new mosquito larva side or larva killer out of essential oil and yeast, and I found that it was very effective against mosquito larvae. Kill mosquito larvae at very high rates for very small concentrations and was also non-toxic

to non-target insects as well as beneficial mosquitoes. Ooh, very good. A good example of a very short and concise description of a big project. Okay, Christine, take it away. Yeah, in my project, I studied some of the most extreme, dense, high-energy objects in

the universe called black holes and neutron stars using gravitational waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space itself. And I analyzed data from gravitational wave detectors on Earth and was able to show that looking at neutron stars and black holes through these signals can tell us things about the fundamental astrophysics and physics that underlies their behavior.

Okay, so we have mosquito larvae. We have black holes and neutron stars. Elijah, finish this up. What did you work on? Yes, in my project, I built a device like at carbon dioxide or water, and I found that

increased carbon dioxide, color blue, global warming has negative effects on freshwater claims in their environment. Excellent. Did you study a watershed right near you or were you dealing with fish tanks or tanks in a lab?

No, I got three of 50 gallon freshwater tanks. I put the claims in there and I had a carbon dioxide in the water and monitored their growth. Gotcha. Excellent. Okay, thank you.

That was super concise. And now our listeners know everything about your research. I want to talk a little bit about, I’m so curious about how young people develop an affinity for science. So maybe Elijah, we’ll start with you.

What were you like as a young learner? Were you always interested in science or what are your early recollections in that area? When I was little, I loved science. I was always in the garden. My grandfather planted different kinds of plants, I’ll say worms, things like that.

And I loved PBS, National Geographic and Wildcrat. I know about that show. But it’s like, yeah, I love that show and how nature works and animals interact with each other. So it’s really all started.

Gotcha. Gotcha. What about you, Christine, early recollections? Yeah, I guess for me, I’m kind of the opposite. I wasn’t really into science until I was in middle school.

I thought, I guess when I was in elementary school, I thought I was going to become an English teacher or something. But I became interested in science through earth science because I worked on earth science through this program called Science Olympiad with my school. And so it started as an excuse for me to just spend time with my friends outside of school

hours. But it actually became a lifelong love of science for me. So different story there. That’s great. And then did you end up, it’s not often that a high school student has opportunities to

think about deep space. So did you have access to a university or some partnership or was it part through your high school for this project? Yeah, I started doing astrophysics research on my own. So I did a project my freshman year that I competed in ISF, which is another program

of the society. And that was on my own. But after that, I started working with, I guess, like universities. And so I worked with one group, a local to me at the University of Washington Bothell campus on like gravitational waves and neutron stars.

And then through that, I was able to meet a mentor at Northwestern, Maya Fishbark Northwestern. Western University in Chicago, who I worked on this project with. So it is, I guess, an astronomy, it is somewhat simpler to work on projects on your own because you really just need the data and the analysis. You don’t need like a lab or something.

But it was for me, it was very helpful to be still in an established environment. Got it. Got it. Okay. I’m going to ask you one more question later about statistics and if it should be included

in every person’s high school degree. So just, but I’m going to put a placeholder and go to Asil. Asil, you as a young learner, early interest in science or that develop later? I definitely wasn’t like very, I wouldn’t call myself very interested in science, but it was definitely like the seeds were there.

I feel like I wasn’t like the smartest or brightest, but I was always hungry for like understanding more about science. I was a very hands on person in like elementary school. I like would go to our backyard and just like dig up worms and stuff and like not, not like just not just for the fun of it.

Like I like to, this one time I like put them in our, our mid-leave garden and it like grew a lot. And so from there on I was like, oh, it’s digging up worms and putting it in our mid-leave garden. And I was like a super hands on person outside, but I think the main part, the main like part

of my life where I started to develop an interest in science was in middle school. I started attending like university events, like outreach events at UT Austin, such as like hot science, cool talks. That’s like an example one, but they were kind of just like great outreach events where I learned more about science and I also was able to have role models as well who were

either researchers or were professors, students that were basically giving these lectures about their research and about their work. So that’s kind of where that’s that started. And I was really lucky to live near a big science university where I could get like that kind of, that kind of, I guess, introduction to science.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. There’s some advantages for sure. And when you’re dealing with data sets like Christine was certainly remote work can be helpful there.

I also really appreciate the experiential pieces is so much for me about sciences is being curious, is learning how to ask the right questions. And all of you have alluded to that of just being curious. And I think that’s a really important thing for teachers that are listening is how do we promote curiosity in all of our students.

So okay, let’s think about your school situation and we’ll go in reverse order here. So I’ll seal first. What about your school enabled you to dig so deep or maybe it was something outside of school, but we’re all we’re all we’re very fascinated with school structures and how can we innovate in schools and how can we make schools better?

And what was worked at your school to help promote the research that you were doing? This might not be the answer that you’re looking for, but I don’t think I think I think it’s not what you may be expecting. But I don’t think that my school was a big part of me developing my interest in research, but it was definitely a big part of my ability to stick with research in the long term.

And I’m going to explain what I mean by that. So I feel like my school is definitely not like much of a STEM school. We have some like health science extra health science classes than maybe other schools don’t have. But definitely like we didn’t have like a read we don’t have a research program.

We don’t have a science fair program. We don’t only have any programs to do science external to like what is like what the science courses that we offer. And even then like there aren’t really sponsors for that stuff in terms of like teachers and I know this because I was like looking around and trying to get people to sponsor my projects

and stuff. And it definitely didn’t work out. But what actually motivated me was how much I had to invest in my research. So for example, like I funded my research, I like started my own projects on my own. I had to find time outside of school and my school is like a nine to five.

It’s like pretty long compared to other school days. And like I had to kind of manage my time to complete my research. So because I had to invest so much in my research, I made a connection with the research that I was doing that I feel like isn’t necessarily what some people might have if they have the resources already given to them.

Like I had to fight for the resources. I had to fight to be able to start and continue my projects. So because I have to sacrifice so much, it made me so dedicated and it increased the cost of quitting. And it made it to where I like felt forced to give not for a force, but I felt excited

to give the project my all because I’d already invested so much in it and being able to start my projects. So definitely allowed me to stick with my projects in the long term and continue doing projects. And when things go wrong, I didn’t have the feeling that I needed to quit.

Instead, I was like, I have to find a way to figure this out because I put too much into this project already. So like, for example, my project, I did a different project from STS, but this year, like I started it and then I like something went wrong. So I had to like pivot the project because I like already bought all the materials and

like I did a different project based on the. So yeah, basically it’s definitely a way for me to stick with my research in the long term. But yeah. Certainly certainly the you all are going to be scientists in some fashion.

I’m pretty sure and that is the nature of the game, right? Even if you’re at the university level and funding dries up or whatever the case may be and figuring out how to find more and pivot. So yeah, I appreciate that ability to stick stick with it and then the invested time for sure.

Christine, what about you structures in school or things that enabled you to successfully do what you were able to do? Yeah. So in my school district, which is the Lake Washington school district, we do have a STEM magnet school, but it’s lottery based.

And so I actually didn’t end up getting in when I applied out of middle school. But I think in some ways that was helpful for me because I was still kind of aware of the opportunities they have there. So they have their own science research class and a lot of their students also want to enter in the science, talent search and other science competitions.

And so I was aware of all that research going on because of my friends there. But then I had kind of the freedom of just being like in the normal public high school other than like a more competitive or concentrated magnet school to be able to pursue that more freely. And so I was able to pursue kind of an unconventional field of research, which is astrophysics.

And I was able to start it earlier than they usually would. And that was really, I guess, helpful for me because a lot of what’s invaluable to me in the research is having kind of like the ability to take initiative. I would also say that we didn’t like kind of like a seal. We didn’t have an established research program at my school, but I was able to find the science

teachers here are really great. And so a friend and I started the science research club here and we hope to give support to I guess future generations of students at Eastlake that are interested in research. Let me ask a follow up question. So should all high schools in America have a strong research strand regardless of if people

are going into science or not? Should that be available for everybody? Christine? I definitely think not necessarily a pure science research stand where people are just going to like do a science project and like present it at a science fair.

Not necessarily that traditional structure, but the same skills that are involved, things like inquiry and data analysis and being able to use evidence to support an argument. Those are really, really valuable. And so I guess there are like different forms of like research classes in school ranging from like a pure science research class to maybe like AP research or like IB papers.

And I think all those like kind of student driven inquiry based projects are extremely valuable to have and are really, really useful for I guess solving those real world problems. Yeah, I like the idea that you’re tagging the idea of skills and competencies that it may not matter the vehicle, but it’s this idea of every student should be good at inquiry and data analysis and analyzing evidence and evaluating evidence.

So I appreciate that. Elijah, what about you’re something about your school or your learning experience that helps support doing what you did? Yeah, my school kind of Mackinac High School. It’s a Mackinac school.

It’s like our STEM program is super strong. We have like partnerships, local hospitals, universities like some of the research with the different mentors, professors. And for like teachers also like a big part of it also like I have teachers who have master’s degrees and we have classes like Grand Chemistry and Medical Sciences and those classes like

we allow students to kind of delve deeper into different kinds of parts of science and what we want to do in the future. And also the students, they’re also inspiring and knowing all of them and seeing all the research they’ve done like finding exoplanets and research purposes and disease and seeing all their projects over the years.

You know, like growing up with them is also inspiring. It’s going to do better for myself and like find more answers to questions that don’t know yet. Yeah, so that that magnet school seems to be it had been an advantage to be surrounded by students who are doing similar similar work and have similar interests. And that was that a lottery based?

How did that work for you? Well, the way it works in our district is that you test against the magnet school first. And once your magnet school gets access like all the programs they have and all those different types of classes and it’s not a lottery based. It’s more like how far you want to go into it and how much interest that you have in the program already.

Gotcha, gotcha. And then Christine for your assist for the one that you didn’t get in via lottery. Did you have to do testing to even get into the lottery or how did that work? Um, no, I think there’s some rule in my state, but all the like choice schools here are lottery basically just to put your name in and then you get picked or not picked.

So I think they had like a thousand applications for like 150 spots. So yeah, not the best thoughts. Right, it seems like maybe we need a few more spots. That could be a good recommendation. All right, so I want to pivot to recommendations a little bit is that we have a lot of listeners.

And like I said, a lot of them are working in schools. And I am a huge supporter of asking students what they think learning should look like and what recommendations they have. So for each one of you, and we’ll start this time with Elijah, we’ll go and backwards the other order, reverse order is what if you had one recommendation to change education or schools in our country,

what would it be? What would be the strongest recommendation that you would have? So Elijah. I put like making sure that different programs are known to everybody and everybody has equal access opportunities that they might be interested in.

So I can know in the past, I’ve seen like something that they don’t have access science for projects because they didn’t know about science fair or they didn’t know that they could like get a research mentor their school. So I’m going to make sure everybody has the same access opportunities and the same hands-on kind of learning would make it a lot better.

All right, hands on and access. I wish Secretary of Education, Cornona was listening today because these are really important things. I was listening to him earlier and he was talking about listening tours of teachers and I’m sure he talked to students, but I’m hopeful that he’ll listen to this podcast as well.

So Christine, one or two recommendations you have for our listeners for rethinking schools and etc. Yeah, I would say I guess we talked about this a little bit earlier, but kind of the skills, skills based education where they’re not even not only teaching you like what you need to know or like like pure facts, but like also how you learn it and how you get there. So things like I guess we might talk more about statistics later, but you know,

like dealing with evidence and handling evidence or for example in my project, I never took an astronomy class in school. So I just like kind of learned on my own where to find all the resources and the information on my own because at least in my experience, I found that the skills I take away from classes are not so much like the exact facts or numbers or like things like like like memorize things,

but kind of the skills I learned that can apply to like a wide variety of other contexts. Right, and that I think is a really important message for the education sector is that it we’re looking for these transferable skills we call them as educators and those can be developed in a variety of different places that you’re alluding to. Okay, let’s pause and go to my distraction here. So there’s a big argument in high school mathematics about whether or not

statistics should be part of the required curriculum in comparison to say calculus. And I’m not going to ask you to weigh in on calculus, but should every student take a statistics course? Christine, because I know your project was on statistics, you all probably use statistics, but I guess I’m biased, but I do think every student should have some form of statistics. Actually, some of my students, some of my friends are taking the AP

stats exam right now in the gym, like 20 feet away. But yeah, I think it’s a very valuable class because it teaches you kind of it is math based and it is like good practice for your like math and algebra skills, but it’s also a new way of thinking. And it gives you like very powerful tools to kind of evaluate the evidence that’s presented to you. So like, you know, you can like kind of scrutinize a paper, you can decide like how significant these results

actually are because otherwise you just kind of blindly trusting what everyone else says to you about the data. But statistics kind of gives you like a mathematical tool for weighing the evidence. And then you get to fall in love with p p values and r squared values and all those fun things that show up in statistics. I seal support or refute Christine’s assertion around statistics before I ask you your recommendation for schools. I’m I feel like I’m less biased than Christine,

but I still am biased towards like having statistics in education, just because like I feel the most it’s just also from my experience, I’m taking statistics this year. And I took all the required ones too. But I feel like statistics has definitely been the most engaging because I feel like all the problems that we do and like the analysis that we do, a lot of times, like some parts might be more applicable to some people than others. But there’s always something that is like relevant

to someone at least in the class, you know, because like, everyone’s going to go to their like real, like their jobs out in the real world, or that they’re like going to be just going to do something in STEM, or they’re going to be doing politics or business or whatever they’re doing, they’re going to need statistics in some point, even if it’s just like statistics one, like the first one that people take, so that you understand how to do, for example, like like an independent

t-test or something like that’s going to be very useful for a lot of people in any sector. I think I honestly think it’s really useful and definitely something that is very useful outside of STEM as well. Gotcha. Thank you. I have the same assertion, by the way, so I support both of you in those assertions. Ciel, talk to me about what a recommendation would be for our listeners. Yeah, so I agree a lot with what Elijah and Christina have already pointed out. I think that

kind of project-based learning would also be really good. Just like, see, I would like to say like, collaborative learning with like project-based and more like problem-solving-based projects, because I feel like that’s been like the most useful for my growth as like a scientist and just like a student. But I know that that might not be very useful in a lot of environments where, like, I don’t know, there’s like the infamous like group project story, where people will be like,

oh, I did all the work in a group project. I mean, obviously that’s going to happen, but it’s to some extent. But I feel like there should be an encouragement more about like the skills for some things as opposed to grades. Like, I know that grades are a good metric, but for things like projects and more experiential learning, I think that focusing on the skills and long-term kind of growth is better than grades. Whereas we can use grades in some,

to measure some metrics, I think it shouldn’t be the only metric, just to give students more of a variety in their motivation to do, to work on things. Right, right. Yeah, there is a long-standing argument in education of how valid are A through F grades, right? Because they’re just a dilution of a huge amount of work. Whereas all of you are alluding to this idea of skills-based assessment is can you collaborate well? Can you analyze well?

Can you problem solve well, whatever the case may be? So I appreciate that. And I’m hopeful, personally, that schools are moving away from letter grades as a single metric of success to some much broader that includes skills. Okay, aspiring scientists are all over the place out there. What advice would you give to, I’m going to change my question a little bit, and what advice would you give to your younger self? So if you could talk to yourself from, you know, when you

were in, I don’t know, third grade, second grade, fourth grade, what’s the advice about being a scientist? Would you give yourself? So let’s start again with Elijah here. The advice I’ll give to myself would probably be to find a connection to what you love in your schoolwork. Because if not, I love dinosaurs and everything like that, and all those different kind of nature things. But I didn’t really know how to connect that well learning in school.

And so I got to high school doing science for anything like that. So I feel like when I was younger, the knowledge that I could find my interest in school into schoolwork and classwork, my vision, that gap between at home learning and school learning, if I could do that more successfully, then like, change my life basically. I love that, like connect passion to what’s happening in school. So your passion for learning outside of school to inside of school.

All right, Christine, what are your, what’s your advice to your younger self? Honestly, I would advise myself to start coding when I was like in fifth grade or something, because it’s like one of the most valuable skills. Because I know I talk about like how I do astrophysics when I study black holes, but like what I do on a daily basis is like writing scripts and like running them to analyze the data. And so I think like being like technologically

liter is one of the most valuable skills, like, in our world today. And if I could like the earlier start, you know, the better you are, if you want to start doing research, like, at a younger age as well. Good advice to your younger self. We have a huge skills gap out there in the world in terms of jobs that require coding and computational information technology work. And so I would say that’s good advice. All right, Aseel, finish us off in this category. What would you give yourself?

What advice would you give yourself? I’ll have to agree with Christine about the coding part. Like I also wish I started coding. I’m still not very good at it either. I wish I started earlier on. But I think that has more to do with just my mindset. And that’s what I want to like give advice to my younger self about more so my middle school and like early high school self than like my elementary school self. Because I don’t think I could have been doing much more

excited. I wasn’t really sure if I want to do science at that point in time. But I think that my main issue was being too stuck to one particular field for my projects. Like I was always like convinced in my head, I was like, I’m a bio person, I’m always going to be a bio person, like I’m only going to do biology, you know, and like, I feel like that is true. Like I do like biology. But I think that prevented me from exploring new avenues for growth through doing

other projects. So for example, like when we’re when we’re in middle school and high school, we have like so much time to figure out what we want to do so much time to learn new things. So like if I’m bad at physics, for example, that doesn’t mean I can’t like touch a project that’s new physics or like chemistry, you know, like it’s just, I just have to learn that particular field or maybe I haven’t found a field that I like, I feel like that’s something I learned a lot

through science bears. Like I’ve learned that I can’t do bioprojects myself a lot of times because they require like a lab and cells and things that I can’t really get access to at my age, especially without a mentor or like a lab. So that forced me to kind of explore other avenues of like contributing to biological or public health kind of problems around the world. So like for example, the mosquito larva side, that’s like an indirect way to contribute to, to like pandemics

through rough pandemics, I guess, but like the spread of tropical infectious disease. So yeah, I think that just goes to show that you can explore other avenues, but still contribute to the general problem while learning a lot of new things and growing as a person. Right. Yeah, being open-minded, it seems like you’re talking about today, you know, you can be very narrow in some ways, but then don’t forget to expand every once in a while and see, you know, open the blinders up. So I really

appreciate all the advice that you’ve given your younger cells. I’m going to ask just one question because I know that you all don’t do science 24 hours a day. So when you’re not thinking about science, what’s your, what’s your favorite thing to do just right now in your moment as graduating seniors? Christine, we’ll start with you. Just what’s, what’s something that you do outside of science? Um, one thing I really like is like, I guess the arts. I’m a big fan of music and of ballet. So I

played like piano and violin for many years. And I also danced ballet since I was very little. And so it’s like kind of a creative outlet for me just to have. And it also kind of actually enhances my creative creativity, which is helpful in my science because I guess another thing I’ve learned about the science is that it does have a creative aspect. You know, it’s kind of the marriage of your creative mind and your technical skills. I really appreciate that. Coming up with good questions is a, is a

creative endeavor. Creating good methodology is a creative endeavor. So I appreciate that. Elijah, what’s, what’s outside of, what’s in your world outside of science? Outside of science, I love Taekwondo. I’m a six-year champion. I’ve done it for years. And basically like a way to kind of discipline myself, like the main goal of Taekwondo is to get, um, mental strength, physical strength, spiritual strength. And I feel like I accomplished that. And like now I’m kind of helping my other

teammates and classmates in that and helping other people do Taekwondo. And the basic little experience is amazing. I kind of like learning about myself in a way and how much my body can do and how much more I can do for myself. And like, also I would stay healthy. I love running, you know, I did cross-country also. So that was the way to clear my mind in a sense. We, we do have to keep our, our bodies fit if our minds are going to be fit, right? That’s part of the, part of the equation,

I think. So, Ahseel, what about you? I don’t really have super cool hobbies. I just like going hiking with my brother or son, my family. And I also make like rainbow loom bracelets sometimes as like the creative outlet just to get my hands busy. I listen to a podcast or something and just like, and just make a bunch of bracelets. I just like how the colors look. I saw like a kid right now, but it’s just, it’s just nice. It’s a nice de-stressor for sure. One thing that I,

the advice I would give you is that it’s okay to be a kid even as you become an adult. Is this, don’t lose that. And then the second thing I would say is that hiking isn’t boring. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Yeah, especially there’s a nice trails in Austin. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I like the, the Bat Bridge in Austin is one of my favorite things to watch when I’ve been down there a few times. And it’s one, one of the more amazing experiences to see all those bats coming out

from underneath the bridge there on that bike trail. So, okay. Thank you so much, everybody. I’m gonna, we’re gonna close with a final question. And it’s a two-part question. So one is, I want to give you an opportunity to, to give a shout out to the teacher, a teacher who inspired you. Now, I know there may be many, but just one teacher you’d like to give a shout out to. And then the second is what’s next for you all? Where if you’re headed to school, where you headed to school, and just

something simple like that. So two-part question. And Christine, we’ll start with you. And then we’ll go to Elijah and finish, finish up with a seal. Okay. If I had to shout out one teacher, I’ll shout out Mr. Green, Casey Green at Eastlake High School, who was a mentor for my science research club and is also the current teacher for my biotechnology class. He is so passionate about getting students involved in research and giving like the support in like schools where I guess

like schools like Eastlake where we don’t have official programs. And so we also sponsored my projects for science fairs and was able to provide really nice advice, even if he wasn’t an expert in astrophysics. And for next year, I’m headed to Stanford University in California to study physics and hoping to keep doing more astrophysics research, more physics research, exploring other fields, exploring the humanities, just kind of getting like a nice broad but deep education.

And I might keep working on gravitational waves. I’m interested maybe in the context of like experimental physics. So kind of designing the detectors, but yeah, just things in the subject area. Awesome. Good. Thank you for sharing and congratulations on knowing your next set of steps. Elijah, teacher you’d like to give a shout out to and where you headed next? Yes, I want to shout out Mrs. Chris Clements, the Cato Magna High School, my chemistry teacher

for the past three years. She taught me something about chemistry and she taught me do science for in the first place. And because of her, I wouldn’t be here today. Tell me how to do research and make a presentation on PowerPoint, make a poster and all that. And she’s been very inspiring to me and gave me all of my encouragement through his way. And for next year, I’m going to Tilly University in New Orleans, majoring in cellular biology and also environmental science on a pre-made

track to become my MD PhD. MD PhD. Excellent. You have a long, a large number of school years ahead of you. Yes, we worked in that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Aseel, wrapping us up, a teacher you’d like to give a shout out to and where’s your path taking you next? So one teacher, like a school teacher that I like to give a shout out to is Ms. Roy. She’s really nice. She’s my chemistry teacher, my sophomore year chemistry teacher, but I always go update her on my science fair projects. And

although she’s like really busy and can’t necessarily always help with the project, she’s so, so, so supportive and always there for me when I need to talk to her about something, get her advice about science fair, get her advice about literally anything, whether it’s just like personal issues too. Not personal issues, like weird, like science stuff or college stuff. She’s always there. And I know this is kind of like unofficial, but my brother was also kind of

like my teacher, Malik. He’s like really, really nice. And when I had issues with Excel, you’d always help me fix them. So I want to give a shout out to him as well. He’s like my unofficial teacher. But for where, what’s next for me is next year, fall, I’m going to be attending Harvard University, hopefully in Massachusetts, and hopefully going to be majoring in integrated biology, hopefully with like either like a minor in CS just to get like data science skills.

I don’t really know what I want to do career wise in the long term, but I am hoping to go into research, whether that’s in like academia or industry, preferably clinical research, but I know that that requires an MD. So I don’t know if I’ll do a PhD like Elijah, I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that. Right. Well, one thing I could tell you is that your pathways will, will, you’ll have all sorts of choices along the way. And you’ve done amazing work so far.

What I heard today, I heard a lot of great things. And I really appreciate you all taking time away from your busy schedules, giving us some recommendations. And I heard some really important recommendations around making sure every young person has access to incredible programming. I heard a lot about skills based and thinking about how do we develop skills that, that cross different disciplines that are useful in a lot of different places.

And then this idea of experiential and project based learning and learning how to problem solve. These are all critical, critical elements that we see that you all have alluded that are important and we agree with here getting smart. So thank you all for all the work you’ve done so far. Thank you for the work you’re going to do in the future. Christine, Asil, Elijah, we really appreciate everything that you do. And thanks so much for joining the podcast today.

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