Hayli Manning attended an advanced science program called Adventures in Biotechnology at the Cambridge based biotechnology company Biogen this summer.  Manning’s experience at Biogen included working in the lab and taking a closer look at bacterial transformations while interacting with Biogen employees from a wide range of departments. Biogen specializes in the discovery, development, and delivery of treatments for neurological and neurodegenerative conditions.

During the week-long program, Manning would spend seven hours each day at Biogen. She primarily worked on bacterial transformations. There, she and her lab partners successfully transformed blue fluorescent protein (BFP) into green fluorescent protein (GFP). Hayli was accepted alongside twenty-two other students for this particular session of Biogen’s summer program. “I had no idea the program was competitive,” Hayli says, “I thought it was a ‘you apply, and you get in’ type of thing, but that turned out not to be the case.” Hayli soon found out, through one of her advisors, that only about half of those applied were accepted.

Hayli enjoyed this program and learned many new things. When asked if she would recommend the program, she said, “If you’re interested in the STEM field, I would totally tell you to go for it.”