At the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (left to right), Veronica Chouinard, Karen Leong, and Quyen Le, all Medfield High School students, participate in a career panel discussion.

Harvard Medical School presented many possible futures last week to 200 southern New England high school students who attended the Southern New England Regional Junior Science and Humanities Symposium on Friday and Saturday, March 12 and 13.

The students visited Harvard-affiliated hospitals, heard a panel discussion by current Harvard students, listened to keynote speeches by accomplished scientists, and made their own science presentations to the group. Through it all, the theme was to make your own way and reach for the stars.

"Find the things that are your passions in life," Valerie Edmondson, a Harvard College junior, told the students during a panel discussion by College and Medical School students. "Keep asking questions, keep challenging the broadly accepted ideas."

The regional Symposium is sponsored by Harvard Medical School's Minority Faculty Development Program and is part of a national Symposium begun in 1958 and sponsored by the Departments of the Navy and Air Force. It is a showcase for high school students who want to tackle serious science projects, such as "Does Environmental Stress Have an Effect on Bacterial Resistance to Viral Infection?," a topic addressed this year by Rachel Sugal, of Joseph Case High School in Swansea, Mass.

Other projects tested lobsters' memory, examined sex determination in the fruit fly Drosophila, and took a crack at inoculating crickets against bee venom.

Forty-nine students submitted abstracts of their work to the Symposium in advance, and 10 were asked to present full papers. After a review by a board of scientists, five were selected on Saturday to go on to the national symposium in North Carolina.

Joan Reede, the Medical School's associate dean for faculty development and diversity and assistant professor of medicine, said hosting the Symposium is important because it helps the Medical School support science education. In addition, it encourages high school students who might be considering careers in science.

"We're very much interested in keeping open and supporting the pipeline to youth who have an interest in science and an aptitude for science," Reede said. "What is particularly exciting to me is seeing new schools coming in to work with us that have never worked with us before."

Students attending the Symposium said they found the presentations useful. Patrick Willett, a junior at St. John's Preparatory High School in Danvers, Mass., said he enjoyed the panel discussion with current college students because it showed him that he doesn't have to have his career path selected and plotted out right now.

Willett, who is interested in economics, said he was concerned that he had to make all the right choices now to get into the college -- and eventually the career -- of his choice.

"I've always gone through high school thinking, 'What am I going to do in college? What if I'm not prepared? What if I change my mind?' " Willett said.

Veronica Chouinard, a senior at Medfield High School, was among the 49 selected to submit abstracts to the panel, but wasn't among the 10 finalists. Chouinard studied whether the elliptical orbit of the moon had any effect on earthquakes and found clusters of quakes at the times the moon was at its farthest and nearest approaches to the Earth.

Chouinard said she is interested in medicine, particularly in viruses, but also loves the arts and isn't yet sure what career path she'll pursue.

The students heard from a variety of speakers over the two days, including Shahram Khoshbin, associate professor of neurology at the Medical School and physician of neurology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Elio Raviola, Bullard Professor of Neurobiology and curator of the Medical School's Warren Anatomical Museum.

Khoshbin told the students that he originally entered college to study fine arts, but that he took chemistry courses to keep his competing interest in science alive.

Khoshbin became enamored of the work of Vincent van Gogh, and began to wonder how the mind of such a genius works. His interest in the mind led him to study epilepsy, which deepened his fascination and set his feet on the path to medical school and the study of neurology. Khoshbin went on to present a chronology of the study of the brain and ended telling the students that, although much has been learned about the brain so far, much is still to be discovered, perhaps by one of them.

"Is there something more to learn? A lot more," Khoshbin said. "The whole future is yours."