SAN DIEGO (KGTV) \u2014 A group of local high school students have ditched the lazy summer days and instead are testing hypotheses and conducting their own scientific research inside the University of San Diego\u2019s labs.<\/p>\n
Aleyda Lopez is an incoming Junior at Hoover High School and she already knows what she wants to be when she grows up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be a medical scientist,\u201d Lopez said.<\/p>\n
So, to get a head start on that career, she\u2019s spending her summer testing a hypothesis, one step at a time, then comes the part every scientist knows, waiting for the results.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s what makes every day coming excited to class, seeing what we’re able to work with,\u201d Lopez said.<\/p>\n
Down the hall other students are getting their own hands-on lesson in physics, testing waves and seeing what happens when they change different variables.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want them to understand why we’re doing those things and why we’re doing those techniques and analyzing the research in certain ways,\u201d USD Physics and Biophysics Professor Whitney Ryan said.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s really the point of this two-week summer research experience.<\/p>\n
The Ocean Discovery Institute has partnered with USD for three summers now, giving students from City Heights the chance to do something they may not otherwise get to do in high school: real research.<\/p>\n
The program is free, and nearly 100 students have now had the chance to work alongside USD faculty and researchers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt turns that peephole imagery of what you think science, physics or biology is, and just connects them and brings them together to show them that they can use those tools to impact the world around them,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n
For Lopez, there\u2019s another reason this experience matters. She\u2019s setting her sights on a career in science, a field where women have historically been underrepresented.<\/p>\n
But she says she doesn\u2019t see that as a reason to think any smaller.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like that’s much of a mentality,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cWe can both achieve what we want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s already testing the science, and challenging the stereotypes that come with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (KGTV) \u2014 A group of local high school students have ditched the lazy summer days and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[12455,85576,168528,74,76,75,645,16852,168529],"class_list":["post-422167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-biology","tag-hoover-high-school","tag-ocean-discovery-institute","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-science","tag-university-of-san-diego","tag-usd-physics-and-biophysics-professor-whitney-ryan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}