MedGen Students Partake In Temerty Faculty Of Medicine Summer Mentorship Program

We are happy to announce that several alumni from the Medical Genomics Program have generously volunteered their time and expertise to the Summer Mentorship Program (SMP) run by the Temerty Faculty of Medicine as part of their Community of Support initiative to support Indigenous, Black, Filipino, economically disadvantaged, or who self-identify with having a disability during their journey to medical school. The SMP gives high school students of Indigenous or African ancestry to explore health sciences at the University of Toronto over four weeks in July. You can learn more about the program here.

The SMP allows the students to learn from and connect to a variety of health science faculty and professionals. This year, alumni of the MedGen Program will work with small groups of students to walk them through what their professional lives look like, and their career journeys.

Thank you to Pratyusha Attaluri, Sierra Scodellaro, Safa Ansar, and Luis Peña Martinez for participating in this mentorship opportunity, and giving the high school students the chance to explore careers in genomic curation (Safa), genomic policy development (Luis), clinical research (Pratyusha), and pharmacogenomic data analysis (Sierra).

Luis explained that this mentorship opportunity is not only valuable to the student mentees, but also to the mentors. In his words:

“Before coming to Canada I was a high school teacher in Mexico, and though I enjoy science very much, I love teaching and sharing science more. Seeing someone learn and grow from other’s experiences is very rewarding, and I find that building connections with younger generations can help us grow as people.”

Thank you to our generous alumni for their time, we’re sure the high school students appreciate the chance to learn from experts like you!

Images sourced from the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.