"There's nothing more exciting than coming in at 6:30 in the morning and finding students that have stayed here all night..." says Michael
Summers.
Photo: Mark Lee
"Dr. Summers has told us that he wants us to feel like the lab is our second home, and to stop by during the day and say hi."
At conferences, Summers is famous for showing photos of his lab on one of their ski trips or spotlighting an undergraduate who contributed to his latest work. Ryan Turner recalls that at a recent award ceremony, Summers presented the research that had been published in Science. "At the end he said, 'This is Chelsea Stalling; she's a senior biochemistry major and she's looking for good M.D./Ph.D. programs.'"
The students learn other things in the lab, things that go a bit beyond reading nuclear magnetic resonance spectra. "I learned that you don't have to follow traditional paths," says Stalling. "Just from seeing people like Dr. Summers, who is not in the least a traditional scientist, you learn that you can do what people say you can't."
Brian Turner echoes that sentiment and says his experience in the lab has left him determined to use his M.D. and his Ph.D. in equal measures. "Some people believe you can only do one or the other, but I was quite honest [in graduate school interviews] in saying I would try to contribute equal time to both. It can be done."
Although mentoring takes up "a huge amount of time," it's worth it, Summers insists. "There's nothing more exciting than coming in at 6:30 in the morning and finding students that have been here all night because after several months of effort, they've finally made a breakthrough," he says. "Once they've started, they don't want to stop, and they want to be the first to show it to me when I walk in the door."
Then, this top-notch researcher of HIV structural biology says something
you might never expect. "While I'm very proud of our research," he allows,
"it may be that in the end, what I do with these students is more important
than what I do in the lab. Now I hope that what we do in the lab is really
important and beneficial, but I know that what we do with the minority
undergraduates is right and good." And working. 
