Our Community

K-12 STEM Education

For over 40 years, Salk Education Outreach has delivered innovative, engaging STEM learning experiences to thousands of students at no cost to students, teachers, or schools. Through active outreach and engagement with under-resourced communities, Salk Education Outreach programs inspire and launch the next generation of scientists by improving scientific literacy and understanding of STEM among K-12 students.

Salk Education Outreach’s core programs, the Mobile Science Lab, Heithoff-Brody High School Summer Scholars, and High School Science Day provide opportunity for Salk’s world-class scientists, faculty, and staff to engage with students across San Diego County. These core programs are supplemented through additional outreach programs including Edwards-Yeckel SciChats@Salk and the Ellen Potter Research Connections for Teachers symposium.

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship

The Salk Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (Salk SURF) is a 10-week fully paid internship that provides students with exposure to and experience in biomedical research, access to world-class research facilities, and a network of mentors. This program is open to students with limited or no research experience. Applicants must be entering their junior or senior year at the time of participating in the program. Salk SURF aims to build and sustain a quality STEM pipeline to advance the Salk Institute’s mission for training the next generation of bold, innovative scientists. It encourages applications from students of all backgrounds in STEM.

Salk Edge Summer Program

The Salk Edge is a two-week summer program that equips graduate students for competitive careers in academic science. Students are trained on cutting-edge techniques while also supporting the use of these new techniques in their home labs through pilot grants to be used in their PhD labs to implement these new technologies. The Salk Edge is a fully funded competitive program that helps prepare students for postdoctoral positions in top-tier labs across the country.

DISCOVER Symposium

DISCOVER is designed to identify talent and build a supportive, collaborative, and welcoming community.

Through the DISCOVER Symposium, future postdocs will have the opportunity to meet faculty mentors who could become future postdoctoral advisors, facilitating new mentor-mentee pairing opportunities and holding space for collaborative/co-mentorship opportunities to form across disciplines of biology, not typically found in traditional postdoctoral interview formats. Postdocs will also present their research, participate in discussion groups and professional development workshops, informally network with Salk faculty, and tour Salk.

Rising Stars Symposium

Every year, Salk brings exceptional postdoctoral researchers to the Institute for the Rising Stars Symposium. Postdocs are typically nominated or self-nominate in years 3-4 of their training, prior to their formal entry into the job market. A selected number of nominated trainees receive the Rising Stars Award and an invitation to the Rising Star Symposium where they present their research and meet with faculty one-on-one and over dinner. Rising Stars are also paired with a Salk faculty mentor and are maintained informed of relevant Salk recruitment opportunities.

Professional Network Outreach

Salk’s faculty, postdoctoral students, and staff participate in regional and national scientific meetings where students and scientists of all backgrounds are represented, in an effort to recruit quality candidates into the STEM pipeline. By participating in meetings such as the National Diversity in STEM and the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists, Salk aims to increase the visibility of Salk and to open dialogues about Salk as a training opportunity. Salk’s goal is to recruit postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, recent undergraduates who may wish to work for several years before moving on to graduate or medical school, and current undergraduates, including those interested in scientific support roles.

Salk Women & Science

Salk Women & Science engages women in the community with leaders in biological science and technology. The program provides a dynamic and vibrant forum in which community and business leaders gather with Salk’s women of science as friends, entrepreneurs and researchers to discuss the latest discoveries in science and technology while inspiring more women to embrace scientific research as a focus of personal and philanthropic interest.