Junior high and high school students and their teachers from throughout the Sacramento region will gather tonight for dinner and inspiration for future careers at a “Dinner with a Scientist” event at the Twin Rivers Unified School District offices in North Highlands.

The keynote speaker will be immunologist James Hildreth, dean of the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, who will discuss his journey to becoming a scientist.

That journey started at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in chemistry in 1979. He then went to Oxford University in England as a Rhodes scholar, where he earned a doctorate in immunology in 1982. In 1987, he earned a medical degree at Johns Hopkins’ School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Before joining UC Davis in 2011, Hildreth served as chief of the Division of Research for the National Institutes of Health’s National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. He also directed the Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research at Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, where he was a professor of medicine.

Dinner with a Scientist, now in its second year, brings about 180 students and teachers together for a science knowledge game, dinner and dessert with about 20 scientists from UC Davis, Sacramento State, state agencies and private industry. The goal is to increase young people’s interest in study and careers in science, technology, engineering and math, commonly known as “STEM” subjects.

“Our plan for the first Dinner with a Scientist event was to start small,” said Arthur Beauchamp, director of the Sacramento Area Science Project. The project is a collaboration between the UC Davis School of Education and Sacramento State, working with Sacramento’s Powerhouse Science Center.  

“We were pleasantly amazed when the first event last year exceeded capacity,” Beauchamp said. “The response has been tremendous. Students are eager to talk with scientists, and scientists and engineers are willing to convey their enthusiasm to students.” 

Tonight’s event is the third Dinner with a Scientist. In all, more than 260 middle and high school students from nearly 50 area schools and 40 practicing scientists have attended one of the dinners with their teachers. School districts including Sacramento City, Natomas, Elk Grove, Twin Rivers, Folsom-Cordova, Vacaville, Washington, Camptonville and others will be represented at the event.