In his first year at Hamilton, Alex Thompson '13 asked if he could work with his biology professor on summer research. The answer was yes, and Thompson had found his academic element. He majored in chemistry, minored in biology and scouted out opportunities to do research alongside his professors.
At Hamilton Thompson majored in chemistry and minored in biology. He spent a summer working at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and interned at Genentech, a biotech company in San Francisco, among other accomplishments.
Now he's at Yale University earning a doctorate in chemistry. From there, he wants to work in industry to develop new therapeutic drugs.
“Only at a small school like Hamilton that doesn’t have graduate students can undergraduates have the opportunity to conduct research as freshmen or sophomores,” he says. “When applying for outside internships that are extremely competitive, students who have already had research experiences are much better candidates. I definitely would not have gotten the internship at Genentech if I hadn’t already had so much lab experience working with Hamilton professors.”
