Morning brought them to the Broad Institute, one of the world’s leading biomedical research centers. Students suited up in lab coats and rotated through three active labs — genomics in the Greka Lab, gene editing in the Fei Chen Lab, and infectious disease research in the Sabeti Lab, where they saw Dr. Paull again, the same scientist from the night before, now fully in her element.

At one point, Danielle peered through a microscope at rat liver cells being used to develop human medicines. “I thought it was really cool how we were able to use the liver of a non-human being to develop medicines and treatments for people, even though we are different species.”

From there, the group headed to MIT Sea Grant, where they piloted underwater drones while studying ocean acidification. Then to Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech company programming cells to solve problems in health and sustainability, where advanced robotics were sequencing biological material in real time while the students watched in their lab coats and goggles, feeling exactly like the scientists they might one day become.

The girls didn’t just visit labs. They also met the people who make science matter beyond the lab. At the Broad Institute, the group also met a videographer, Russell Murachver, whose entire job is to translate complex genomic research into stories people can understand. At MIT Sea Grant, they met their Artist in Residence, Keith Ellenbogen, who uses photography for marine biology, science, and ocean conservation activism. 

It’s a career path most students never even know exists: science communicator, research videographer, conservation photographer. People who sit at the intersection of storytelling and discovery. That’s exactly the kind of message CIJE wants young people to absorb; there is a whole world of professions you don’t know exist yet, or don’t exist now but will when you’re an adult. And they are all open to you. 

Nothing prepared the group for the RAI Institute. 

Cameras weren’t allowed inside, so picture this instead: robots pitching a baseball at 70 miles per hour to another robot that catches it. A self-balancing robotic bike. An “arm farm” where dozens of robotic arms are in various stages of development.

Then, the students got to hold a semi-anthropomorphic robotic arm themselves.

One engineer explained that its design bridges what she called the “embodiment gap”: the challenge of translating human mobility into robot behavior. Annabelle hasn’t stopped thinking about it since.

“The idea of trying to understand human mobility and project it onto robot parts and behavior was really intriguing to me. I still wonder about it every so often.”

Next, at Draper — a nonprofit engineering innovator with over 50 years of aerospace and defense history — the students heard from Dr. Yitzy Ehrenberg, a Jewish MIT-trained engineer working on cutting-edge antenna systems. His journey from student to doctorate to researcher was another proof point: Jewish identity and a world-class scientific career aren’t inherently at odds. They can coexist.

The final educational stop was the MIT Media Lab, guided by Eyal Perry, a doctoral student in the lab of Joe Jacobson, the inventor of the core technology behind the Kindle, and a friend of CIJE. The students walked through research on prosthetics that connect directly to muscles, city-planning technology, and “dream engineering” that uses technology to shape what people experience while they sleep. They also sat with Natalie Rusk, co-creator of Scratch, the coding language that has taught millions of children worldwide how to think computationally.

At the end of the day, it was time to head home. One last stop at JP Licks for ice cream, because even world-changers need a scoop.

The science was extraordinary, but ask these students what they’re still thinking about, and the same answer keeps surfacing: belonging.

Danielle flew in as one of four girls from Florida, quietly worried she’d have nothing in common with anyone. By the end of the first night, she and a girl named Hannah, a student from New York who came alone from her school, were laughing so hard their faces turned red.

“One of the main reasons I was able to create many friendships on this trip was because we were all Jewish,” she says. 

Before the trip, Annabelle had no idea what a career in innovation even looked like. But afterward, “I know that it can be almost anything you want it to be — a wet lab, a desk, traveling the world, or experimenting within an office space.”

Danielle’s perspective changed as well. While three days prior, she pictured workers sitting at desks, “I now picture a creative environment filled with collaboration, testing, and building.”