As a 12th-grader at Menlo-Atherton High School in Northern California, Anna Quinlan is a little preoccupied. What senior isn’t? But here’s the thing: It’s all about science — heady stuff like helping people manage Type 1 and 2 diabetes through her very own invention, a low-cost, closed-loop insulin pump. She calls it an “artificial pancreas,” a breakthrough that won her the Grand Award in the 2018 National American Indian Virtual Science and Engineering Fair (NAIVSEF) sponsored by AISES.

Learning how to smoothly transition from learning in a classroom to navigating a workplace can be tricky. At her internship with Boston Scientific, University of Oklahoma student Alexis Keeling learned how to be a working engineer. Besides picking up a lot of company-specific procedures and tools, she was able to see how what she has learned in school applies to real-life manufacturing. Keeling, Cherokee, says that as an intern you are expected to do true project work that applies to your education, as well as learn how a company functions, outside a textbook.

Like many other Native students, Kenny Swift Bird was motivated to go to college. He had some great teachers at the high school in his small Nebraska hometown of Chadron, less than an hour’s drive from his Oglala Lakota Tribe’s Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. When he took statistics, calculus, and chemistry, his teachers helped him discover both his aptitude for STEM and how much he enjoys it.

Growing up surrounded by his family and immersed in culture provided a firm foundation for Jeffrey Davis. “My driving factor is words of wisdom from my grandparents William ‘Buster’ Davis and Martha Davis,” says Davis, Tlingit. “They told me early on that I should always do any job to the best of my ability because my success and hard work are a reflection of me, my family, my community, and my culture.”

Elsie DuBray turns 18 on the Fourth of July. She’s headed for Stanford University after graduating last spring from Timber Lake High School in Timber Lake, S.D., where she sang in the choir, played flute in the band, participated in the One-Act Play and Oral Interpretation programs, served as student council president, played volleyball, and volunteered with the Cheyenne River Youth Project. 

Adonis Martinez spent his childhood at the foot of the Black Hills in Rapid City, S.D. He was raised by his grandparents and great-grandparents in a family that has emphasized education for generations. His great-grandmother and grandmother both attended college, encouraged by their families. Growing up, Martinez was told, “You either go to school or you work. There is no in-between.”

Growing up on ancestral lands next to Yosemite National Park, Irene Vasquez spent countless hours hiking, swimming, biking, and attending cultural ceremonies. Over the years, she’s seen the ecological deterioration of the land that she calls home. This deterioration pushed Vasquez to realize a dream: to help influence management of public lands with an Indigenous perspective.

Patricia Bancroft gives her family a huge part of the credit for her success. In her household there was no question — skip-ping college was just not an option. “I’ll be the second of three siblings to get an undergraduate degree,” says Bancroft, a member of the class of 2018 at Northern Arizona University. “I say it every day: my degree is not only for me but for my family.” 

At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., there’s something big happening. It’s called Mars 2020 — a mission to position NASA’s next Mars rover so it can investigate a region where the ancient environment may have been favorable to microbial life. Translation: the search for signs of life on the Red Planet is heating up.

Alex Allard has always been interested in biology — and in helping people. So it’s no surprise that these interests shaped his academic studies. His path has not been easy, but having recently graduated from McGill University in Montreal with a major in physiology and a minor in kinesiology, Allard is poised to make his mark.