Eight students in the College will spend their summer as research interns at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, marking a new phase in the affiliation between the lab and the University of Chicago that will allow students to pursue significant scientific projects.
“The student interns will make invaluable contributions this summer, while gaining important contacts and resources to navigate the complex process of finding a career path,” said John W. Boyer, dean of the College. “The Marine Biological Laboratory internships are an example of the faculty and laboratory collaborations that can help our students succeed in many careers.”
Funding for the internship comes through a partnership between the MBL and the College, and the interns will be part of UChicago’s Metcalf internship program in Career Advancement. Each student will live in or near the MBL campus in Woods Hole, Mass., a village on Cape Cod that attracts world-renowned scientists for intense, transformative research and advanced courses in a range of biological subjects. The MBL’s summer courses are famous for creating a distinctive environment of collaboration among instructors and students, often working with the latest technology to address research questions.
“It is a fantastic opportunity. We’re going to have a lot of exposure to the scientists, and will understand more things that are happening in the field,” said Medha Biswas, a second-year biology student, who will be part of the first group of interns. She visited the MBL during a Career Advancement trek over spring break.
This summer she will work on live imaging of synaptic proteins in the laboratory of William Green, professor of neuroscience at UChicago and a visiting fellow at the MBL.
While the MBL has hosted many scholars from UChicago during its summer programs, this is the first time that a formal internship program will bring a group of students to Woods Hole.
“Scientific discovery moves forward when bright, young, curious minds are given the opportunity to explore without limits. These outstanding undergraduates are the perfect connection of real intellectual capital between our two great institutions and I have every anticipation of extraordinary accomplishments,” said Jonathan Gitlin, deputy director for research and programs at MBL.
Biswas said she is excited by the opportunity for these inaugural interns to show what UChicago students are capable of contributing at the MBL. The other interns—Rachel Folz, Shaunae Alex, Clara Kao, Lyda Harris, Para Mehta, Caroline Owens and Andrea Rummel—will work on projects as varied as suspended animation in zebrafish and the sedimentary layers of the salt marsh ecosystem.
Each of the student interns identified a faculty member at the MBL whose area of study intersected with their own work. They wrote proposals to the faculty members, explaining a research project that they hoped to pursue in collaboration with the laboratory scientists.
“We look forward to the energy and scholarship that the Chicago students will bring to our summer programs, and to seeing the results of the research and discoveries that will come out of their work,” said Joel Smith, a biologist at the MBL who has worked closely on bringing the UChicago interns to the lab this summer. The MBL’s renowned summer programs attract more than 1,700 scientists and advanced students from around the world.
The MBL interns will be part of the College’s largest group of Metcalf interns. More than 1,000 undergraduates will travel around the world through UChicago’s paid internship program to gain on-the-job skills and explore career opportunities this year.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
