The BCRL's mentoring program also involves bringing area college students to the lab, usually for about three to six months, to work on one of the many research projects underway. These students do a brief rotation through the different parts of the laboratory, and are then trained by one of our scientists in the techniques relevant to the project they will be working on. These college interns become a true part of the research process and often make significant contributions to the research performed in the BCRL. In the last week of their internships they present their data to the group. It is expected that by this time they will have gained a firm grasp on the concepts that root the BCRL's work in the scientific community, and be able to clearly demonstrate the arc of the experimental process.
Andrea M. Carpenter
Jacqueline N. Talarchek
Ricardo Salomao
It is our aim that these students leave the internship program with a deeper understanding of what it means to be a working researcher, and better informed and inspired about the shape of their future.
In the fall and winter of 2008 two college students from Holy Family University were selected to participate in this program. Andrea M. Carpenter and Jacqueline N. Talarchek worked on the role of hCG peptides in human breast epithelial cells in vitro under the direction of Dr. Irma H. Russo and Dr. Ricardo Lopez.
Ricardo Salomao, a forth year medical school student in the Faculdade de Ciências Médicas de Santos do Centro Universitário Lusíada, Santos-SP, Brazil, came to the BCRL during summer of 2009.
During his internship, under supervision of Dr. Julia Santucci-Pereira, he had the chance to learn some of the methodologies performed in our laboratory in cell culture, histology and molecular biology. He followed the everyday life of a scientific laboratory and studied in-depth the mechanisms of chromatin remodeling.
Rebecca Starker, a biology major at Florida State University , worked in the BCRL in the summer of 2010 under the direction of Dr Sandra Fernandez on the project Reversion of the neoplastic transformation by retinoic acid."