History

History of the BioQuest Academy

The BioQuest Academy was launched in 2005 as a week-long program funded by the Ginger and Barry Ackerley Foundation, the Byron and Alice Lockwood Foundation and other BioQuest donors. While hundreds of Northwest teens visit Seattle Biomedical Research Institute through the BioQuest Site Explorations program, the Academy provided the ideal immersion portal for those students with a predilection for science and global health. In 2007 Seattle Biomedical Research Institute was awarded a Science Education Partnership award from the National Center for Research Resources, allowing the Academy to transition to a nationally-recognized, two-week program that through dedicated mentorship allows a mosaic of teens from Puget Sound to engage and learn from graduate level laboratory investigations. To find out how you can invest in the future leaders of global health, visit Seattle BioMed.

Academy graduates are doing amazing things all over the world! College is a priority topic at the Academy. More than 90% of our oldest Academicians (those from the 2005 sessions) have graduated from colleges around the country. Our graduates include National Merit Scholars, Biogenius finalists and Presidential Scholars — as well as published scientists and leaders in their college communities.

“If [Americans] are to recapture the sense of mission which our own survival demands, then our leaders must have the capacity and vision to call it out. In short, the varied leadership of our society must come to recognize that one of the great functions of leaders is to help a society to achieve the best that is in it.” — John Gardner (scholar, ethicist and founder of Common Cause)

"Improving education in math and science is..about the power of science..to unlock, in the minds of our youngest people, a sense that with some hard work..they have the potential to achieve extraordinary things"— President Obama