Like many students, senior Jaden Carnevale ’26 first connected with the Endicott community through his Orientation Leader. Connor Sokop ’25 welcomed him during a summer campus visit and soon became Carnevale’s go-to guide during those first few weeks at the Nest.
“My Orientation Leader was my first friend, and we’ve remained friends throughout my whole college experience, even after he graduated,” Carnevale said. “He was my first example of what college was all about.”
Fast forward three years, and the biotechnology major has been an Orientation Leader every year since, or in his words, “as long as I could.” As Carnevale reflected on those first few weeks on campus, he didn’t have to spell out his appreciation for what the past several years had meant to him; his genuine smile gave it away.
Carnevale came to Endicott with a plan in mind: major in biotechnology and set the stage for a career in research of neurological and rare diseases. Thanks to mentors like Bram Lutton, Professor of Biology & Biotechnology, and Erica Polleys, Assistant Professor of Science and Technology, he found a clearer understanding of himself, a new sport he loved, and renewed confidence in trusting his own unique journey.
“I played all kinds of sports growing up, but football was the first one that I truly loved,” Carnevale said. “It taught me grit and gave me a taste of a brotherhood that helped propel me through the other parts of my life.”
He ended his football career in high school, but by his second week at Endicott, Carnevale was itching to find a new version of that brotherhood. He stumbled upon the men’s rugby team website, got the invite to join a practice, and never looked back.
“It reminded me so much of everything I found meaningful about football, and it’s allowed me to meet so many people and have so many cool experiences,” the rugby captain shared.
Whether on a field or in the classroom, finding meaning has always been a motivation for Carnevale. When he started at his vocational high school in Coventry, R.I., he chose welding as his focus. While it was interesting, Carnevale quickly discovered it “didn’t feel fulfilling. I wanted to feel like I was constantly learning, and that I was contributing to something that maybe no one had ever done before.”
It was while taking a biotechnology class in his junior year that things clicked. Carnevale admitted that he didn’t have a clear sense of what his future might entail at the time, but realized that the biotech field could open up a number of fulfilling pathways. After his grandmother’s symptoms of Alzheimer’s developed shortly before he left for Endicott, that focus became clearer: work towards finding new treatments for Alzheimer’s and diseases like it so that “people don’t have to say goodbye to loved ones too early like I did.”
Throughout his time in Endicott’s biotechnology program, the first-generation college student’s passion for cell biology deepened, but he was still fine-tuning how to translate that passion into a career that would both challenge him and help others.
“When I started getting deeper into my research and looking for new opportunities in my field, it made me lose some confidence seeing people at my stage who were seemingly so established, and feeling like I’m late to the party,” shared Carnevale.
Luckily for Carnevale, life had more mentors in store for him. After several classes with Lutton, Carnevale discovered that he was in for much more than the basics of immunology or bioethics.
“Dr. Lutton gave me insight into not only being a good scientist, but being interdisciplinary and being sound of mind in many different ways. He’s given me a reason to look forward to the future of the world, and my own personal future, rather than just looking for a good grade in the classroom and finding a nice job later on.”
Armed with encouragement from Lutton and a recommendation from Polleys, Carnevale applied for the Summer Research Early Identification Program at Brown University and was accepted.
He spent last summer in the Ayala Lab, researching how immune cell populations in murine lung tissue change in response to septic shock. This included learning protocols, presenting his research, and unsurprisingly, benefiting from the mentorship of a grad student who helped oversee the program.
As Carnevale eyes graduation and wraps up work on his thesis exploring how senolytic drug treatment protects healthy cell populations from stress-induced senescence, he’s more confident than ever about his future. After his time at Brown and his internship as a researcher with the start-up Active Site Partners, Carnevale has settled on spending a few years in a lab to gain more experience, then pursuing his doctorate.
Reflecting on his time at college so far, Carnevale appreciates the range of experiences at Endicott that have helped shape him.
“The biggest challenge for me during college was finding my own path,” said Carnevale. “I think the opportunities that Endicott helped me have, that I decided to say yes to, have helped me become who I am. Just because my path doesn’t look the same as the people around me doesn’t mean that I’m not finding my own way there.”