Read what students have to say

Read what one student had to say about her experience at CityLab!

January 7, 2003
 

CityLab Program,
 

Now that I have finished college and am employed full time in the “real world” in a career position, and have had a chance to reflect on what has helped me over the last several years, I wanted to thank the CityLab Program for the large impact it has had on my early career steps.

I grew up in Massachusetts and went to school in Cambridge and Boston. In the summer of 1995, I was one of 15 high school students to attend the first session of CityLab, which that year was a lab intensive seminar centered around the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of Sickle Cell Anemia. The two-week project, sponsored by and held at Boston University Medical Center, served as an introduction to Molecular Biology and afforded us an opportunity to work directly with accomplished scientists and to become familiar with advanced equipment and methods not otherwise available to us in our high schools.

My experience at CityLab that summer provided my first taste of modern biotech and medical science and sparked my interest in this field and its commercial applications. It also contributed to my getting further experiences in this field. For three summers after that, I spent my time in internships at several of the biggest biotech companies in the Boston area including Genzyme Corporation and Genetics Institute (now Wyeth), and some venture-backed startups, including Mosaic Technologies and Asterand, and assisting at Oxford Biosciences, a venture capital firm specializing in medical science companies.

Since graduating from Bryn Mawr College in 2001, I have been working as a Financial Analyst at Silicon Valley Bank, a commercial bank that lends to promising high technology companies. In my job, I work with client companies and apply financial criteria in support of the Life Science Lending Team, which specializes in exactly the kinds of scientific and medical companies my CitiLab and subsequent experiences prepared me for. I look forward to continuing to focus my career in the business and financial end of biotechnology.

CityLab provided me with both the awareness of the exciting biomedical field and the confidence and credibility to get me started on the actions necessary to get into it.

 Sincerely,

 Merideth U.

Silicon Valley Bank

 
 

Last Modified: 2/20/2003