STORRS — Sometimes science can be rotten.

Micheka Felican, 17, a senior at Bassick High School in Bridgeport, learned that from spending three weeks in a University of Connecticut lab examining the colors on an assortment of slowly rotting tomatoes, melons and squash.

Yet, armed with rubber gloves, a chromameter and a roll of paper towels to catch the drips, Felican has not lost her stomach for research.

Her mentor, Usha Palan-iswamy, has assured her that the work is important and will advance the study of anti-oxidants in fruits and vegetables.

"I've learned there is so much to investigate. It's taught me to be more analytical and about patience. It's not as if I can just make things happen. Everything acts on its own," Felican said.

Felican is one of 70 high school juniors and seniors from throughout the state — including 14 from Bridgeport and two from Stratford — who carved out three weeks of their summer vacations to be paired with UConn professors and researchers for the 10th annual UConn Mentor Connection.

Sponsored by the Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development, the program gets funding through various sources, including People's Bank and the Inner City Foundation of Bridgeport, which provide full or partial scholarships to participants, program manager Heather Spottiswoode said. Tuition is $3,100.

The increasingly competitive program targets students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. They must be entering their junior or senior years, have at least a 3.0 grade-point average and be in the top 25 percent of their class.

Students have a range of study options, from archeology to creative writing to puppetry. Over the decade, organizers have seen a growing trend of minority students choosing science. In the first couple of years, five to 10 minority students opted to spend the three weeks in a science laboratory. This year, 27 are at science research sites, advancing the study of such things as beneficial bacteria, smart medicines and memory.

Kennedy Oghayore and Okechukwu Gubor, both 17 and seniors this fall at Bridgeport's Harding High School Health Magnet, are trying their hand at nuclear physics.

"I think this will give us an edge to what we're going to learn this year in physics," Gubor said.

Working with Richard T. Jones, a UConn associate professor of physics, the Harding students have stepped into something called the GlueX Experiment. It's a project that involves more than two dozen research labs around the planet, trying to pin down what holds together quarks — subatomic particles thought to be the basic building block of all matter. The theory is, it is something called gluons: massless neutral particles.

Jones' piece of the project is to work with the University of Regina, in Saskatchewan, Canada, on producing a prototype of a high-sensitivity beam that can detect and line up subatomic photons. Regina is working on one model, and UConn a second, to see which is better.

"We've made a lot of progress in the past two weeks. The students are working on the photon detection," Jones said.

They did that by designing and building a 30-by-12-inch wooden box, just big enough to hold the electronics the prototype will use. They painted the box black inside and out to keep out as much light as possible.

Over the hum of machinery, Oghayore explained that what they're searching for, the human eye can't detect. "You need a very dark environment and very sensitive photography to detect individual photons," he said.

"We've learned a lot about light that we never knew before," Gubor said.

Jones called it very stimulating to have inquisitive high school minds in his lab. Sure, the work might go faster with graduate students, but it would be far less fun, he said.

Gubor said he would like to pursue a medical career after high school.

"This is helping build me up," he said.

He will leave the program not only with the experience, but also with three college credits.

This is Gubor's and Oghayore's second summer in the program. They like living on campus and going on weekend fieldtrips to places such as Six Flags New England.

Weekday evenings are spent working on the research report they must turn in at the end of the program.

Meanwhile, at the Phytochemicals and Functional Food Laboratory, Palaniswamy, an assistant professor of allied health and Asian-American studies, told Felican that she didn't have to weigh and measure vegetables that have disintegrated.

"Just put them aside and I will photograph them for your report," she said.

The seventh of eight children, Felican found out about the mentorship opportunity from her guidance counselor. Medicinal plants weren't her first choice — she hoped to be put in a pharmacy lab. Still, Felican is glad for the exposure to things such as lycopene — the substance responsible for giving tomatoes their red color. Lycopene may help reduce the risk of certain cancers, help prevent heart disease and protect the skin from ultraviolet radiation. Palaniswamy's study is measuring the color and lycopene content of fruits and vegetables as they ripen.

Palaniswamy, a mentor in the program for four summers now, said she loves having the help.