Model student
by Joyce Peterson
What if you were diagnosed with a rare kind of cancer, one that was also lying in wait for other members of your family?
And what if you had the opportunity to advance research in that very same cancer?
Wait, one more thing: You’re a high school student.
In the winter of 2006, Alex Royce was a sophomore at Mount Desert Island High School, the closest secondary school to The Jackson Laboratory. When he and his classmates were assigned to find a day’s job shadow in a research facility, Alex picked the Laboratory because, he says, “I thought the Lab looked pretty cool and wanted to know what was going on inside it.” Alex also had an interest in science, especially engineering.
Alex is a tall, soft-spoken boy with a British accent and a friendly, easygoing demeanor. His family, originally from England, moved to Bar Harbor from Holland in 2005 to explore new opportunities for his stepfather’s 12th generation mussel-farming business.
Greg Cox, Ph.D., volunteered to host Alex on his job-share day. Dr. Cox studies neuromuscular disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) and muscular dystrophies. He’s also well known as a fun dad of three young boys and a caring mentor to the postdocs and technicians in his laboratory.
“That first day in the lab was a blast,” Alex recalls.“I had imagined the scientists would all be the serious type like in the movies: grumpy, no sense of humor, just concentrating on doing work and getting results. And yes, they were working, but they were also having a lot of fun and joking around.”
Dr. Cox, his office shelves decorated with a miniature Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and other goofy toys, says that Alex fit in with his lab group right away. “At the end of the job-shadow day, I invited him to join the lab as an academic-year intern for the next school year, and he agreed.”
