Talen Niven graduated from Journey School of Costa Rica in 2018. He was accepted to Penn State, Emory, Hofstra, Vanderbilt, Baylor, University of Texas, Texas A&M, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the University of Colorado.
Talen received several scholarships, ultimately choosing to accept an offer to Penn State.
Talen immediately fell in love with biology, and when COVID sent him home he regrouped and applied to several schools with stronger biology programs, receiving acceptance to Georgetown, Cornell, and the University of Denver.
Talen opted to attend the University of Denver, where he received a full scholarship, and began working in the Erich Kushner Laboratory as a student research assistant.
Talen will graduate this weekend with honors with a GPA of 3.8. His largest contribution during his undergraduate education: Talen invented a system for micropatterning endothemial cells.
Talen has been invited to continue on with Dr. Kushner next year. He will receive his PhD in microbiology with a focus on cardiovascular cellular regeneration. Talen has co-authored a paper entitled, Lipidure-Based Micropatterning for Stereotyping Endothemial Cell Geometry, that is out for scholarly review and publication soon.
In the future, Talen intends to earn an MD in addition to his PhD, and looks forward to a career in research in the field of microbiology.
When he isn’t on campus, Talen can be found snowboarding, hiking, or rock climbing in the Colorado mountains with his dog, 7.
Needless to say, we are very proud of Talen’s accomplishments.