It has often been quoted that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This quote reiterates the concept that beginning something is in many cases the most difficult part of the process, a feature that is likewise embodied within research. While it is extremely beneficial to hear the stories of mid- to late-stage career scientists who have had decades of experience within their field, getting the perspective of students just beginning down this pipeline offers an altogether different yet equally insightful angle of this journey. Incoming second-year undergraduate student Charles Simon details his path towards research: the inspiration, the process, what life as a college researcher is like, and pieces of insight he has since gained.​

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A desire to help

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Growing up, Charles Simon was initially interested in mathematics, but this interest soon shifted: “Once I got to kind of more advanced math, I realized that that has really no application in helping people. And so I transitioned into biology and medicine because I think I can make a difference.” Chasing the desire to make a difference in the world and in others’ lives, Charles joined his high school sports medicine team: “the program was my first intro to medicine and patient care, and I really did love helping athletes…but I realized that interfacing with patients really wasn't for me.” Instead, rather than pursuing the front end, patient-physician aspect of medicine, Charles found a passion within biomedical engineering, where he could “be the one designing the tools and designing the therapies that are used by others.” 

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Sparking a new passion in research

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Wanting to gain more experience in research, Charles applied and was accepted into a summer fellowship at the Ellison Medical Institute, under their Junior Scholars program, which proved to be one of the pivotal moments that hooked him onto research. During his sophomore year of high school, he lost his father to cancer. He described the effects this loss had on his career outlook: “I was almost afraid of the word cancer. You know, you hear it and you kind of shrivel up a little bit because it reminds you of that…Working at the Ellison Medical Institute was the first time that word cancer turned from something I was scared of to something I almost look forward to because I knew so much about it and I knew I could be part of treatments to help make sure that others don't die to cancer.” From his experience at the institute, Charles began to view cancer as not this huge, almost omnipotent problem, but instead as yes, a large problem, but one that could be broken down and tackled little by little, and most importantly, a battle which he could directly contribute to. Charles specifically cited another insight he gained during this process, wherein as part of a mock diagnosis trial of the program, his patient had undergone multiple rounds of chemotherapy and treatment, but this was ineffective, leading him to the realization that “the solution to all cancers isn't just throwing more medicines at it…we have a lot of medicines today, but also things that we cannot control and treatments that work, but not every time.” Seeing the volatility of treatments further spurred Charles into the world of biochemical research, which would greatly direct his next moves in college.

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A firsthand perspective of undergraduate research and the steps to get there

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In college, Charles is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). Simultaneously, he’s conducting research at USC’s Zavaleta lab, a lab focused on developing nanoparticles to improve cancer imaging to feature better clarity and sensitivity. As an undergrad in this lab, Charles main responsibilities are “growing and passaging cells, and doing the Western blots to confirm their expression in the genes we want them to express…so then we can target those specific genes with our nanoparticles.” On the routine day, he balances a schedule between taking classes in the morning until around 2 PM, before transitioning to lab research from 2 PM to around 6 PM. This research represents the stepping stones within Charles’ journey to becoming an independent scientist, where he hopes to “find myself on a paper before I graduate because [it’s] such a good experience to see the whole experiment through…[and] gaining the responsibility to design my own experiment.” This is a very common road to autonomy within the research pipeline, wherein newer undergraduate researchers must first incrementally gain more experimental practice, before having the knowledge or experience to independently pursure their own doctorates where they have almost complete autonomy. But still early in his career and just having completed the transition from high school to college, Charles mentioned a few unexpected challenges with this process: “Learning the terminology of a lab was something I never thought I'd have to do refreshers on… [especially] acronyms, there's so many kinds of protocols you're expected to know. In high school, you're given an instruction manual on what you need to report and how you need to report it versus in college, you’re given a task and you have to do the full workflow: designing the experiment, noting the experiment, and then reporting the experiment on your own.” However, for those interested in pursuing research, this is not meant to be daunting, but rather a demonstration of the learning curve that comes with stepping into an entirely new environment. 

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Interdisciplinary skills in innovation

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On top of biochemical research, Charles is also an active member of USC’s MEDesign club, where over the course of a year or two, teams conceptualize, design, and engineer a novel medical device, wherein his team “wanted to make a startup, so we spent the entire first semester talking to people before you even had a plan, just to see where there were gaps in the market,” before the team eventually decided on “a device to test peripheral neuropathy, which is when you lose feeling in your hands or your toes due to diabetes or cancer treatments.” Following the conceptualization, the team is currently working to prototype and execute their vision while also entering into entrepreneurship challenges in order to raise the necessary funding. Notably, this interdiscplinary process integrated skills from medicine and biology to engineering to business and finance, which actually the often overlooked reality of research. As Charles describes: “[There are] research teams that are doing cancer research, but we also have research teams doing market research. So that when drugs are designed, they can actually have a viable way to advertise and get those to be profitable enough to help people because I’ve seen that drugs can work, but if they’re not profitable, they don’t get into patients’ hands.” Rather than solely focusing on a single speciality, it’s instead much more beneficial to have skills spanning numerous different fields, a point that Charles both showcases and also highly advises current high school students to be cognizant of: “[In high school], we think of biology, physics, and chemistry as separate fields, but it's the same principles coming up over and over and over again…there's such a breath of classes offered in high school and college nowadays that you really have to take advantage and understand more than just one discipline to be successful.” 

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Advice for the next generation

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For the next generation of scientists, Charles emphasizes the importance of “setting yourself up for failure more. It's okay to bite off more than you can chew and then back up…but living with the regret of not trying something hard is more difficult than trying hard things.” This something he admits he did not entirely embody while in high school, but has since embraced at USC, with the results clearly seen from his work since. 

 

From balancing school studies with biochemical research to innovating novel medical equipment, Charles’ journey is one that demonstrates a constant desire to learn and grow, while offering invaluable insight into what it’s like to take on the often intimidating world of research.

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