Release Date: May 20, 2013
Contact: Gita Brown, 401-456-8465, gbrown@ric.edu
RIC Grad Heads to Harvard
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Recent graduate Kyle Inman will begin an internship at Harvard University in August. Inman will be interning in the research lab of Dr. Kyle Kurek ’93, director of the Pediatric Pathology Fellowship Program at Harvard Medical School. Inman plans to attend medical school in 2014 to become a cardiologist.
A native of Chepachet, Inman was homeschooled beginning at the age of nine. The things that really interested him, he taught himself, he said, including math and science, and building his own computer.
At 14 he joined a robotics team made up of homeschoolers andtraditional-school teens. They built robots and competed against other teams in the FIRST Lego League competitions, winning two state championships.
By age 15 his science studies began to require access to a laboratory and he enrolled in a course at Rhode Island College – Introductory Biology I – taught by Lloyd Matsumoto, professor of biology.
The following year he took Introductory Biology II as well as Introductory Chemistry and Physics I and II. Once he had achieved 24 credits, he was able to enroll at RIC full time.
Inman said it wasn’t difficult to acclimate to college because he was used to studying independently at home. He singled out Matsumoto andDeborah Britt as faculty who impacted him greatly. “Dr. Britt taught me a lot about research techniques and proper scientific writing that will really help me in the medical field,” he said.
Britt, an assistant professor of biology, said she was impressed with her former student’s presentation skills. “Kyle’s senior seminar presentation was the best I have ever seen,” she said. He discussed a vaccine that a group of researchers developed to treat cocaine addiction and explained how the vaccine worked. “His delivery was more polished than many senior scientist presentations I’ve seen. He definitely stands out from the pack.”
Inman in the lab is an enthusiastic and diligent researcher, she said. “In the course of my career I’ve trained seven students at Rhode Island College and 15 from BrownUniversity (in my previous position), and I would rank him near the top of them all.”
