Michael Segel. Image: Veasey Conway/Harvard University
Sixteen years ago, Michael Segel was a rising senior at Brookline High School in Massachusetts when, acting on a friend’s suggestion, he signed on for a summer stint at a Harvard stem cell lab.
“I was somewhat interested in science, in particular biology, but never thought that it was for me,” Segel says.
But working with renowned biologist Douglas A. Melton, now a distinguished research fellow at Vertex Pharmaceuticals and the Catalyst Professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard Medical School and Harvard University, and with then-postdoctoral researcher Richard Sherwood, now HMS assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, brought an epiphany.
Segel said his curiosity and passion were stirred by the stakes involved in the researchers’ quest — a cure for type 1 diabetes, and with it, the promise of doing research that could one day improve and save lives.
“Almost right away,” Segel recalls, “I realized that research is what I wanted to do with my life.”
Inspired by his summer in the lab, Segel went on to receive an A.B. degree in human developmental and regenerative biology from Harvard College and completed his PhD in clinical neurosciences at the University of Cambridge and MIT. In his doctoral work, Segel investigated how aging affects glial stem cells — the cells that provide nourishment, protection, and support to neurons in the central nervous system — with a primary focus on understanding how the growing brain restricts these cells’ ability to regenerate.
Almost right away, I realized that research is what I wanted to do with my life.
Michael Segel
