Researcher blogs

Lessons from Summer Research School

Summer time is vacation time – or? Some students chose the lab over the beach to spend some weeks in the KI Summer School in Medical Research. In this post PhD students Iurii Petrov  and Clarissa Pisanó reflect on their recent experience exploring the unexpected rewards and challenges of teaching bright high‑school students. This blog post offers practical advice for prospective mentors and a warm reminder that guiding young minds can be as much about learning as it is about teaching.

Written by Iurii Petrov and Clarissa Pisanó

Challenges for Students and Supervisors or Teaching is challenging – but in a good way

My name is Iurii Petrov, and I have obtained my PhD not so long ago – in 2023. I have been teaching for years before that, but mostly other PhD students and, sometimes, master students. In 2024 I encountered a Summer School program via mail and decided to join it. I was intrigued to work with top students at Swedish high school, to see how different are they from university students I usually work with. I was not disappointed.

Teaching is not an easy task – it is challenging, but in a good way. Can you explain things that seem obvious to you? Sometimes you have to invent ways to explain things which you feel no longer need an explanation. And good students who are active and curious, will eventually ask you the question to which you will have but one response: “Actually, I haven’t event thought about it!”. This experience gives you new perspective, a fresh look on familiar topics. “Indeed, why haven’t I asked this question myself before? How does it really work?”. Teaching is not only about passing your own experience – it is about improving yourself as well.

What can teaching help you with? Well, first of all, it can improve your pedagogical skills (obviously): the more you explain, the more different students you encounter, the better are your techniques of explanation and presentation. That’s right – teaching can also make you a better presenter by forcing you to use more clear notions, ideas, explanations, easily graspable analogies for the audience. Researchers often forget about other people while presenting results. The outcome is a bored audience who struggles to follow the presenter. The research may be brilliant, but overcomplicated and sometimes even incoherent presentation may completely ruin the impression. Teaching allows you to gain an external point of view. Unlike people who sit in the audience and listen to your report, which is one of many during the conference (and if they feel bored – they can just snooze through your talk, waiting for a more interesting one), your students are specifically here for you. Additionally you are one on one in Summer Research School – which means you will be bombarded with questions, especially if you are not giving very good explanations. Honestly, you are going to be bombarded with questions anyways – but their quality and repetitiveness depends on you, better explanations lead to less repetitive questions.

The second good thing is not being inside of the bubble. It is very easy for a researcher to begin “living in your own world”. A summer school student is definitely someone who will be able to pop that bubble: being asked a lot of unexpected questions will sometimes show you domains of your own research you have never thought about or explored before! This helps you to stay humble and see how many wonderful problems can lie ahead of you in your journey.

Organising a schedule is not an easy task. I have been familiar with creating schedules and study plans for year a prior to my first student in summer school, but he still managed to surprise me. These students are extremely curious, so while I was preparing reading materials for 2-3 hours, the student was ready with questions about an hour after I handed him articles. They are often a bit impatient, so you will have to deal with it and adapt your teaching and research style! That’s also a unique opportunity to step into the role of  a PI: you design everything, from theoretical introduction to practical questions. You participate in all stages of their research; it is akin to having a PhD student.

Now, with this, I would like to give some advice to the ones who want to enrol into this program as a supervisor – and I strongly recommend doing it. Don’t downplay it. Yes, these students are very young, and you don’t want to scare them away from science. On the contrary, give them something challenging, but rewarding. Allow them to feel progress and be creative. I usually dedicate the first 2 weeks to theoretical preparation (oncology and radiology are demanding, you cannot just dive in), slowly coming closer and closer to actual research. During these weeks I test the knowledge about the topics we have covered by giving broad open-ended questions: “Why, do you think, we don’t have a cure to cancer?”, “What types of errors do you think are more costly in radiology?”, “What potential ways do you see to improve this routine?”. I always ask my students about their peers: what kind of tasks they do and if they enjoy it. Unfortunately, some supervisors give their students mundane and repetitive tasks. While these occur in real research, when you just have 5 weeks with your student, try to let them do something productive and, I daresay, entertaining. Students feel very good about themselves when they manage to solve a tough problem and to find a clever solution. Give them something with potential – not just for your summer school, but something which will stay with them longer, some question that will beckon them to solve it. Think what kind of impact your actions can have after just a month with a student. Maybe your student will make a scientific breakthrough in future? Or, maybe, will just become a highly skilled clinical professional? And, maybe this happens because you offered some tough but rewarding problems to tackle. 

A contagious reminder of the excitement that comes with discovering science

Written by Clarissa Pisanó

When I agreed to mentor students in the KI Summer Research School for High School Students, I expected it to be mainly a teaching experience, explaining techniques, and introducing students to life in a research lab, like working with undergraduates. I could not have been more wrong.

Very quickly, I realized that mentoring high school students is very different from supervising university trainees. They seem incredibly young, still learning how to balance curiosity with responsibility.

I supervised two students, one about to begin her final year of high school and another who had just finished school and was preparing to start university. 

One of the main challenges was designing a project that was both engaging and understandable for such young students. I found myself rethinking the way I use language, not because they lack intellectual ability, but because they have not yet developed the tools and the vocabulary to fully grasp highly specific scientific concepts. Many of the words I use daily in the lab were unfamiliar to them, sometimes even difficult to spell, and this pushed me to reflect on how we communicate science at its most fundamental level.

Another challenging aspect, and somewhat unexpectedly so, was communicating expectations: helping them understand that science requires seriousness, preparation, and dedication, without letting these expectations turn into pressure. At times, my natural frankness was perceived as criticism, which pushed me to adjust the way I communicate, slowing down, explaining more carefully, and reminding myself what it feels like to step into a laboratory for the first time, when everything is new and slightly intimidating.

Two moments, in particular, stayed with me and made me think that this is something I would gladly do every year. One day, I noticed one of the students approaching different members of the lab, asking questions and trying to learn as much as possible from everyone around her. Her curiosity was contagious and reminded me of the excitement that comes with discovering science for the first time, something we often forget, even though it is the reason we started this path in the first place. Another day, the second student ran into the lab, almost shouting with excitement, to tell me he had been accepted into the university he had applied to. In that moment, the lab felt less like a workplace and more like a family.

Mentoring in the summer school requires time, patience, and preparation, but it gives something back that is difficult to quantify. Seeing science through new eyes brings back a sense of wonder that can easily fade in everyday research life. Experiments that have become routine suddenly feel new again.

I would mentor again without hesitation, because the experience reconnects me with the young chemistry student who first stepped into a lab ten years ago, when everything felt surprising and everything was simply “wow.”