Jumpstart is a skill- and community-building precursor to RockEDU’s longstanding Summer Science Research Program (SSRP). The SSRP is comprised of half Jumpstart scholars and half direct applicants through a highly competitive application process. Students’ SSRP research projects are explorations of independent research questions within one of the prepared tracks of specific scientific topics (for 2022: neurobiology of fruit flies with molecular tools, virus hunters, soil health, and DNA breaks & repair in yeast).