Sergio Ita
Read more about Sergio's experience at Harvard
Sergio Ita knew he wanted to be a medical doctor. But that was probably because he didn’t know what else there was.
“When you come home with good grades in math or science as a minority – Mexican-American, African-American, whatever - the idea often is that you need to go to medical school because that is going to be your way to prosperity,” Ita said. “And reaching medical school was a specific way to make that happen. And you are engrained in this idea – ‘I’ve gotta pursue a professional career in medicine. And I do think being exposed to more careers in science might have helped me more.”
He became aware of something other than medicine, when a professor at Palomar Community College with a National Institute of Health grant to promote under-represented minorities in research careers wanted to know if Ita was interested in being in the program.
“I didn’t know what a career in research even was,” Ita, a Mexican-American said. “I didn’t know what that meant.”
Bridges to the Future and Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) are programs at California State University at San Marcos designed to make sure students like Ita would know what that meant. Through Bridges, Ita had access while attending Palomar to the research labs at CSUSM and the opportunity to shadow students and research project heads. After transferring to CSUSM, MARC provided Ita a lab project and a mentor. But CSUSM also provided him with perspective.
“(CSUSM) emphasized that when you do your research you need to be figuring out if you really like it and what area of research you think you’ll like,” he said. “Because, while there is discovery, there is a lot of frustration. So think about whether you like it or not. And they said that to us a lot and really emphasized it.”
Ita worked in undergraduate research and volunteered at a San Diego hospital to make sure he would make the right decision.
“I just found research fascinating – I was never exposed to it when I was younger, Ita said. “I didn’t get that same satisfaction when I was volunteering at the hospital.”
The irony is that Ita, 30, is now at Harvard Medical School – but not to become a medical doctor. He’s pursuing a Ph. D. in Virology at Harvard’s New England Primate Research Center. He’s studying one of the viral proteins of SIV, a primate virus which is the equivalent of HIV in humans. Ita has finished his coursework and passed his qualifying exam and oral test. He says he’s found his work rewarding and challenging. That’s a long way to come in a career path that he didn’t even know existed a few years ago.
