What is this initiative?

In 2022, we performed an insights survey on 70 undergraduate students around the world to understand the main barriers hindering them from entering and succeeding in the life sciences and biotech field:

• Research experiences and projects are of highest demand among undergraduate students compared to training programs, internships, conference attendance, and more (Figures 1a and 1b).
• The biggest barrier for undergraduates to pursue these said research experiences is the lack of access to financial resources, with 37% of respondents choosing this factor above others such as difficulty finding opportunities (19%), and lack of mentorship and non-financial resources (13%) (Figure 2).

Figure 1a and 1b: User survey results showcasing the high demand and interest for research experiences among the undergraduate community

Figure 2: User survey results highlighting the barriers faced by undergraduates when pursuing research and other career-advancing experiences

Undergrads are under-supported in research

Despite the clear demand and career-advancing potential of undergraduate research experiences, funding for undergraduate researchers makes up the smallest allocation in science spending compared to other academic research occupations.

To further elucidate these findings, we selected 10 students to conduct 1:1 interviews to understand the experiences of undergraduate students pursuing research opportunities:

• The status quo for many academic research experiences, either over the summer or academic year, was that ****they were unpaid or severely underpaid opportunities.
• Labs that are limited in funding often get students to give students menial and mechanical tasks that provide limited educational value, which was often mentioned as a barrier that discouraged interviewed students from persisting in their research pursuits.

There is a diversity problem in biotech

From Nucleate’s worldwide 2022 Activator program (a biotech entrepreneurial initiative that involves graduate and undergraduate researchers teaming up with local MBA students to create a venture/startup around the researchers’ intellectual property), we aggregated responses from 53 participating undergraduates and showed:

• Low rates of participation in students coming from low-income households (LIHs), which we define as a familial annual income below $50,000 USD (Figure 3)
• 0% of surveyed participating students were enrolled in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges & Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions
• A strikingly low number of Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and LatinX participants, alongside no record of any self-identifying Black, Pacific Islander, or Native American participants (Figure 4).
• An exceedingly high proportion of all participants also came from families with at least one parent obtaining a post-bachelors’ level of education, such as doctorates (Figure 5).

Figure 3: 2022 Activator survey results highlighting the breakdown of household incomes of participating undergraduates.