Irene Wong. Image: Gretchen Ertl
It was a simple online search for “science internships, Boston” that set Irene Wong on a 10-year path from her hometown of Malden, Massachusetts, across the Charles River to Harvard Medical School, where she would one day complete a PhD in biological and biomedical sciences.
Her search turned up a Harvard-affiliated summer research program called CURE, aimed at high school and college students from groups underrepresented in science. From there, Wong pursued one research opportunity after another in the Harvard sphere — science-flavored breadcrumbs that slowly but surely led her to earn a PhD from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in an HMS lab.
Now, Wong is a scientist investigating lung regeneration and a teacher and mentor devoted to training and supporting young scientists from diverse backgrounds — including those in the same CURE program she discovered more than a decade ago.
“I strongly believe that science should be accessible to everybody,” Wong said. “Life, in itself, is always unequal, so a lot of what drives me is helping people who aren’t in a situation of privilege have access to opportunities so they can succeed.”
The path to HMS
Daughters of parents who immigrated from China, Wong and her sister were the first in their family to go to college — a feat that Wong says was made possible in part by teachers who poured time and energy into their students.
She didn’t begin envisioning herself as a scientist until high school, when she participated in the CURE program at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Wong was placed in the breast cancer lab of Sandra McAllister at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. That first taste of research left her eager for more.
“I’ve always been fascinated by biological things, and I really like learning about biology by asking questions and designing experiments that address them,” Wong said.
As an undergraduate at Brandeis University, Wong spent two more summers in the McAllister lab before moving to the lab of HMS Dean George Q. Daley at Boston Children’s Hospital. By the end of her degree program, Wong knew that she wanted to pursue a PhD, and she wanted to do so at HMS.
“HMS has so many resources, and to be able to access that is a real privilege,” Wong said. “I think that really distinguishes us from other institutions.”
When she was accepted as a PhD student, Wong joined the lab of Carla Kim, HMS professor of pediatrics in the field of regenerative medicine at Boston Children’s. The Kim lab studies lung regeneration and cancer.
Wong used mouse models to explore how airway injury can cause widespread changes to other areas of the lung, such as the alveoli, where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged. She was also involved in a project growing and characterizing “mini lungs” — simplified versions of lungs, also known as lung organoids, that are grown in a lab dish. The ultimate goal is to transplant these organoids into patients whose lungs no longer work.
Wong shares her peers’ drive to understand how respiratory diseases develop. These diseases can shorten people’s lives by years or decades, Wong said, and they can’t be cured without understanding their root causes.
“Lung research is fulfilling because respiratory diseases affect so many people worldwide,” Wong said. “They’re one of the leading causes of death in the United States, along with heart disease and cancer, but people are not as focused on them as they should be.”
Paying it forward
Wong’s work at HMS has extended well beyond her research. As a teaching fellow for the Harvard University undergraduate course Cell Biology in the World, she had the opportunity to pay forward the time and energy her early teachers put into helping her. Wong taught the course with the late Rob Lue, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wong helped move the course online with a science education platform called LabXchange that Lue developed to turn wet-lab experiments into virtual simulations. LabXchange is a free platform that aims to expand access to lab experiences that might otherwise not be available to students or teachers.
“The vision is that education should be accessible to everyone,” Wong said. “Our goal with the course was to help people become literate in the sciences — and I think we did reach that goal.”
Wong also served as a peer mentor in her department, providing support and space for students to share their positive and negative experiences in graduate school and learn about mental health resources such as therapy and counseling available to them through the University.
“Getting a PhD is a long process, and it can be taxing physically and emotionally,” Wong said. “We should be able to talk openly about these dark sides of being a grad student.”
However, Wong’s greatest source of joy during graduate school was volunteering in many different roles for the CURE program. Most recently, she worked with YES for CURE, a part of the program that prepares students for summer lab research. Many of these students are completely new to research, Wong said, so the program teaches them about everything from how to search scientific literature to how to dress and conduct themselves in a lab space.
“I’ve been able to help people who started with little or zero lab experience become very thoughtful scientists,” Wong said. “Research has a lot of ups and downs, but you can always rely on students to learn something and grow, which is what I find rewarding about teaching and mentoring.”
As her time at HMS comes to an end, Wong is thinking about her legacy. She hopes she will leave a lasting positive mark on the community.
“It’s important to recognize that there’s a huge ‘people’ component to what we do as scientists, so we need to make people feel valued and confident and capable,” Wong said.
While she is still planning what she will do next, Wong expects it will involve some combination of research, teaching, and mentoring — and she is confident that HMS has helped give her the skills to succeed.
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