Jayson Wright DC ’26, ’27 MPH holds up an agar plate heavily streaked with pale yellow, as though it has been shaded in with colored pencil. A closer inspection shows that each streak is made up of small dots: blooming colonies of Staphylococcus aureus, the bacteria responsible for staph infections. In hospitals, such infections can be fatal.

Wright works in the lab of Thomas Murray, a professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine specializing in infectious disease. The bacteria he’s cultivating originated just across the street: Wright and Murray swabbed various surfaces, from keyboards to milk warmers, in the Yale-New Haven Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. They are testing different strains of the bacteria found in the hospital to determine which strains are resistant or susceptible to various antibiotics. 

“Our NICU does really, really well compared to the national average in terms of keeping staph infections down,” Wright notes. But the bacteria are nonetheless present in the ward, which means they still present an infection risk.

“In the NICU, the babies may be more susceptible to opportunistic infections,” he says. “So we’re trying to lower that risk by studying the bacteria that are present so we can potentially implement new infection prevention protocols.”

This fall, Wright will begin the first year of a master’s in public health concurrently with his senior year at Yale College. He aims to use his experience working in this epidemiology lab to inform his public health studies. Eventually, he says, he plans to pursue combined MD/PhD degrees; he wants to study the “hard microbiology parts of epidemiology,” he says. 

But none of that would have been possible without the support of the Science, Technology, and Research Scholars Program, better known as STARS, which provides opportunities for Yale undergraduates from high schools with limited resources in science, technology, engineering, and math. In Wright’s case, it meant getting paid for his research position.

“Realistically, I don’t think I would’ve been able to stick to research if it wasn’t for the STARS funding,” Wright says. He was working two or three jobs during most semesters, and without STARS, any research he would be able to do would have been unpaid. “STARS is what let me continue to pursue a career in public health and epidemiology research.”

Gaining Crucial Experience

During the summer between his sophomore and junior years, Wright knew he needed research experience but wasn’t sure he could find a paid position. So, when he found a lab where he wanted to work, “I was prepared to work for free,” he says. Ultimately, the researcher did find some funding to pay him, but the choice between paid work and work that benefits one’s career can be a balancing act. Programs like STARS can relieve students from having to make that difficult choice.

The STARS program has three different components: STARS I, STARS Summer Research, and STARS II. The first provides seminars, networking, mentorship, and professional development tailored for first-year undergraduates; the summer program provides individual on-campus research with academic support and course credit; and STARS II supports individual student research beginning in the fall semester of their junior year and continuing through the following summer and their senior year. Wright is currently part of the STARS II program. 

“I heard the STARS program was extremely selective, so I was somewhat anxious about getting in when I applied,” Wright says. But he was accepted. He notes that the number of applicants accepted this year went up from previous years.

“It was great to see that more of us got that opportunity, and I would love to see the program continue to expand,” he says. “There are a lot of first-generation, low-income students like myself who rely on funding like that.”

Giving Back

Wright has long had his eyes set on a career in healthcare. His grandmother worked as a trauma nurse for forty years at a rural hospital near where Wright grew up in Georgia. “The more I learned from her about healthcare, the more I was drawn to it,” he says. At Yale, he realized that public health and epidemiology are a natural combination of his desire to work in healthcare and his long-standing interest in science and research. 

Wright says he could see himself returning to work at a rural hospital. “I would love the opportunity to give back,” he says. “Rural hospitals are under fire right now. And healthcare access is so important everywhere but especially in rural areas, where there can be so much misinformation about infectious diseases and vaccines.”