As a student at Grandville High School in 2013, Sam Daniels was trying to envision his future. He was fairly set on a path, with interests in science and engineering lighting the way toward a biomedical engineering career. Yet plenty of questions remained: What’s the best school? How close to home should he be? What if the reality of engineering doesn’t match his dreams?
Amidst these doubts, there was one thing Daniels was certain of: He wanted to work at Van Andel Institute.
Long before he decided on a career, Daniels found a connection with VAI. At Grandville High School, Daniels played in and attended multiple sporting events in support of VAI Purple Community. He remembers being excited to see that science is happening where he lives but, as a teenager, didn’t really know what the work entailed.
“At that age, you hear of cancer or Parkinson’s research and you imagine all the things we see on TV: test tubes, pipettes and super-powered microscopes,” Daniels said. “Getting involved with Purple Community helped me take a small step into the research world, hearing from people who are involved every day in making a difference.”
Daniels would honor his high school declaration in 2020 when he joined VAI as a research technician. He is now a VAI Graduate School student pursuing a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology under the mentorship of Dr. Evan Lien. So far, his experience has lived up to what he envisioned as a high school senior.
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“I wake up every day excited to come here, and it’s inspiring to see the work taking place,” Daniels said. “Every time I get to read a paper or see findings in a journal, I’m in awe of what can be accomplished.”
For him, Parkinson’s research is personal. His grandfather lived with the disease, and it’s also impacted his wife’s family. There was a need to do something, and it ignited his curiosity for knowledge and learning — and how they can be leveraged to improve human health.
Daniels’s drive brought him back to Purple Community in 2021, where he joined the VAI Marathon Team and ran in the Bank of America Chicago Marathon.
“I was wildly unprepared,” he said. Still, it was a unique opportunity to merge a hobby with his passion for research. He has since completed that race two more times, along with marathons in Traverse City and Sacramento. Those 26 miles are an opportunity to step away from science and focus on life, which in turn allows him to focus on the mission.
While he envisioned his future at VAI more than a decade ago, he’s not too keen on forecasting the next big thing in his career.
“Science is hard, and it takes a long time,” he said. “Sometimes you feel like your contribution to research is small, but I remind myself that I’m contributing my own puzzle piece. Years down the line, when combined with the pieces from other scientists, institutions, donors or even students, it can enable discoveries we’ve never dreamed of.
