How one student found his four directions

Life-altering experiences come in some exciting forms, but for a young man from Maniwaki, who studies biochemistry in Ottawa, it would be hard to top the opportunity of spending a summer at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Mario Morin

For Mario Morin, now back at the University in his first year of a master’s degree program, it was a chance to assess his skills and potential at an internationally renowned research institution. And for his supervisor, Steffany Bennett, it confirmed her confidence in the way the University of Ottawa trains young minds to excel in this demanding field.

“The Harvard lab has never taken someone at such an early stage in their career,” says Bennett, who is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology. “He had to act like a post-doc, and he had just finished his fourth year.”

Mario’s experience was part of the Four Directions Summer Research Program, which annually brings about 10 university students of native North American ancestry to the Harvard Medical School for about two months. The participants live in residence on campus, right next to the laboratories where they participate in sophisticated research projects.

While many undergraduate students are never responsible for full-fledged research undertakings, uOttawa students in biochemistry do just that as part of their fourth-year curriculum. Morin arrived at Harvard with an array of practical laboratory skills that many students do not acquire until graduate school.

The scientist in charge of the Harvard laboratory expressed his delight with the Ottawa student’s performance.

For his part, Morin admits that he missed the camaraderie of sharing lab space with classmates closer to him in age. However, he adds, he was pleasantly surprised by how approachable his Harvard colleagues turned out to be.

He especially enjoyed a chance to spend some time at the New Hampshire retreat owned by a researcher whose work he has followed in journals for years. And he was even more thrilled about being able to “shadow” the head of a local hospital’s emergency room for a day.

This kind of hands-on encounter is an integral part of the Four Directions program, which seeks to cultivate a new generation of medical experts who have native roots.

“Talking with these people made me realize that maybe it’s not impossible to get in there,” says Morin, who formerly would have considered applying to Harvard as merely a dream.