Summer in the lab
While 17-year-old Haley Greenslade’s friends were busy working the usual summer jobs — babysitting, working in movie theaters, flipping burgers — she spent her break doing something different. Greenslade, of Masconomet Regional High School in Topsfield, was one of eight students who took part in a new internship program aimed at showing high school students how research is conducted by allowing them to work in one of Harvard’s biology labs. “I never imagined I’d be working in a Harvard lab for the summer,” she said. “It’s just an amazing opportunity that’s been given to us. My friends are amazed by what I’m doing as compared to other summer jobs. “ The program is co-sponsored by Harvard’s Life Sciences Outreach Program and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Besides Masconomet, participating high schools this year were Belmont, Chelsea, and Revere. Students spent nearly two months in the lab designing a “synthetic gene” and inserting it...