Robert Sah (right) with two of his former Amgen Scholars.
Starting in his sophomore year as an undergraduate, in 1980, Amgen Scholars faculty mentor Robert Sah did an internship at Medtronic in Minneapolis for three summers in a row, where he worked to improve pacemakers. Then an electrical engineering major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sah recalls, "What got me really excited was after two years I was able to put into practice some of the things I had learned in the classroom." That experience helped shaped Sah's career and first opened his eyes to the value of undergraduate research.
Excited by the potential of technology, Sah went to medical school and graduate school in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, where he combined engineering and science to study joint cartilage. There, Sah helped supervise two undergraduates who were working on their Bachelor’s theses. Through his own experience and theirs, he was inspired by these early hands-on experiences and how they helped the students decide their future.
Sah formed his own lab in 1992 at the University of California, San Diego, shortly after obtaining doctoral and medical degrees. From the beginning, undergraduates have been an integral part of his team. What's more, he has participated in the Amgen Scholars Program every year since its beginning in 2007, and he has taken as many as three Scholars in a single summer.
"College is pretty much when students decide what they're going to do in life," says Sah, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) professor at UCSD. "For the development of the scientific infrastructure in the country or the world, this is probably one of the most important things — getting students who are at that stage and giving them an opportunity."
Research 101:
When he first started his lab, Sah took in two undergraduates. His students have always been more than a pair of hands: For the first three research papers Sah published independently as a faculty member, his undergraduates did many of the experiments. For that, he rewarded them with second authorship of each paper.
Sah's group grew steadily as he attracted more funding. Now, in the summers, his team swells to 40 to 50 people, 20 of whom are undergraduates.
Sah's research focuses on using and improving bioengineering to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases and injuries to cartilage. To tackle that goal, he brings on students with diverse interests and tries to fit them with a project suited to their talents. A biology student who is interested in biochemistry might be given a project to analyze molecular pathways involved in joint repair. Those intrigued by biomechanics might get to poke and pull at native, modified or engineered tissues to study their functions.
In addition, Sah keeps his work clinically relevant through collaborations with clinicians, and includes medical students and residents in his research team. Aspiring orthopedic surgeons in Sah's lab take joints apart to see how they look, feel and work, and the students get the chance to interact with his collaborators. Students who want to become radiologists learn to view complicated joint surfaces by three-dimensional computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging or other high-tech scans.
Many of Sah's students go on to medical, pharmacy, veterinary or graduate school. A few of Sah's former Amgen Scholars are in medical or graduate school in scientific fields. But when they enter his lab, many students are true beginners. Sah invests time in their development by implementing a series of workshops on theory and lab technique that he holds for his lab every summer.
As technology for data gathering, analysis and presentation has become more sophisticated, the learning curve for undergraduates has become steeper, he says. His workshops teach the basic principles behind the experiments, how to keep organized lab records and notebooks, and the fundamentals of how to present data clearly.
"Dr. Sah is an outstanding mentor," says Espoir Kyubwa, a 2007 Amgen Scholar who completed his undergraduate degree at UCSD and is now an MD/PhD student at the University. "He really cares about the student's learning,” and tries to develop each student professionally, says Kyubwa, who was recently named as a prestigious Gilliam Fellow of HHMI.
Life development:
Sah meets with his students individually on a weekly basis to talk about ongoing research and to discuss professional development. These meetings were important to Kyubwa because he was trying to decide whether he wanted to pursue an MD/PhD. "I knew I wanted to be a scientist and do medicine but I wasn't sure whether I should pursue the combined degree," Kyubwa says.
Sah set aside time to talk about the process and shared his experience about how research and clinical practice can combine, and he encouraged and helped Kyubwa apply. In fact, Kyubwa's Amgen Scholars research project formed part of a published paper and helped him get into MD/PhD programs.
Every quarter, Sah's students set professional, scientific and technical goals, and he meets with them to make sure that they are on track to meet those goals.
"He's not totally wrapped up in science – he's also about training students and helping them grow as scientists," says 2009 Amgen Scholar Lissette Wilensky, who worked in Sah's lab as an undergraduate at UCSD. For instance, in a lab meeting Sah remembered that Wilensky hadn't presented her work recently and he gave her opportunities to do so, saying that it would be good for her.
Sah also helped calmly troubleshoot when Wilensky and her graduate student mentor came close to breaking a piece of equipment. As first experiences go, research isn't easy, and Sah doesn't shield his students from the fact that experiments don't always go as planned.
"Going in as a freshman I think I had idealized what research, and tissue engineering in particular, would be like," Wilensky says. "My image of research in general has become less romanticized." Not dissuaded by the challenges, Wilensky just finished applying to doctoral bioengineering programs.
Another of Sah's former Amgen Scholars, Alexander Cigan, has gone on to graduate school in bioengineering and hopes to have his own academic research group one day. As a Scholar in the summer of 2008, Cigan — then a visiting undergraduate from Tulane University in New Orleans — worked with Sah to design a sterile chamber that the group could use to study how cartilage and bone compresses and stretches. An adapted version of the instrument is now being incorporated into the Sah lab.
"It was the first engineering design project I had ever done," says Cigan, now at Columbia University in New York. Sah bought an engineering design textbook for Cigan to review, and had weekly meetings to troubleshoot the design. He held teleconferences and kept in email contact when he was out of town.
Although he takes time outside of his normal working hours to guide and encourage his students, Sah sees his role as mentor as personally rewarding. "You have these really special kids, you give them these opportunities and some guidance and direction, and they'll do really great things in the future," Sah says. "I wouldn't trade this ‘job’ for anything."
