Summer Student Research
Opportunities and Experiences
A List Compiled
by FUN
Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience
A Few Student Experiences.......
Jessica Policastro - Summer 2006
This summer Jessica Policastro will be taking part in the Summer Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. The national program, which was established by the U.S. Department of Energy, is a ten week program in which participants are associated with members of the scientific and professional staff to complete research in a wide array of scientific fields. Jessica will be completing neuroscience research with a scientist at the laboratory, in which she will be manipulating rats’ brains with methamphetamine and assessing specific effects it has on them. She will make a poster of the research she takes part in and offer a presentation of the results verbally or in writing, and her work may appear in a contribution to a scientific journal or BNL report.
........................................................Phil Loscombe - Summer 2006
I just thought I’d drop you a line and update you on my situation here at NIH in Rockville. My experience in the Laboratory of Pathology has been amazing so far. I have learned so many new techniques like in situs, western blots, migration assays, adhesion assays, microangiography, and more. Dr. Ramchandran was impressed with my digital imaging abilities. All my training with the sheep brain has come in handy. I am even in charge of taking care of all the cell lines and tissue culture work. I’ve been a busy man, working about 10-14 hours a day, 6 days a week, but all my hard work is paying off. Within my 8 weeks here, I have made some great discoveries in regards to our Robo4 study and my PI has included me as second author in a paper that has just been submitted to the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Just to give you a brief background about my specific research, roundabout receptors are a class of guidance molecules that function in both the neural and vascular system by interaction with slit proteins. There are four members in this family of which, Robo4 is the only member expressed in zebrafish embryonic vasculature. Robo4 is also predominantly expressed in tumor vessels. To determine whether Robo combinatorial signaling code has a role in vascular guidance similar to axon guidance, I am investigating the signaling interplay from Robo receptors in a cell culture model system.
To culminate my internship, I am presenting my findings at a symposium on August 3rd, followed by a poster presentation of all my summer research. I am very excited and I now realize all the dedication that is required to be a scientist. After speaking with my PI, I am now strongly considering M.D./Ph.D. programs. I can’t wait to start back at Scranton with this direction and I look forward to telling you all about my experience.
........................................................Brentt Swetter - Summer 2006
Penn State, Hershey Medical Center
........................................................Amanda Celi - Summer 2005
........................................................Sol DeJesus - Summer 2005
........................................................Lyndsey Schneider - Summer 2004
Penn State, main campus
........................................................Kunal Patel - Summer 2003
Summer Internship/Research @ Penn State College of Medicine, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences. I worked there for 8 weeks assisting in an ongoing project in the Behavioral Neurochemistry Research Laboratory of Dr. Andras Hajnal. The project's focus was to examine if central insulin plays a role in establishing food preferences. In this particular set of experiments, adult male Sprague Dawley rats were used to determine if a the preference for a flavored sucrose solution is enhanced by pairing its availability with an intracerebroventricular infusion of insulin. I assisted in the sectioning of brain tissue for injection location and autoradiograhy assays. I took part in two experiments. First involved a simple two bottle preference test between water and sucralose (in incrementing concentrations from .0001gm/L to 10gm/L). The second was a more complex experiment testing the effect of conditioned preference of flavored sucrose solutions paired with insulin over water using the sham feeding technique. Basically, the focus of the study was to look at NCC/pleasure center in the brain. In some other ongoing projects that I assisted in, normal rats were being compared to diabetic rats, applying varying concentration of insulin via a canula inserted in to the 3rd ventricle to observe/monitor feeding behavior. Some cool techniques I learned were surgical implantation of canula in the brain, fistula implantation in stomach, and most rivetting of all - guillotining the rats at the end of the study.
........................................................Dario Englot - Summers 2002 & 2001, & Intersession 2002
University of Texas Medical Center at Houston
I worked in the lab of Dr. Edgar T Walters in Integrative Biology. Terry Walters studies intracellular mechanisms of injury-induced sensititation and memory. My experiments involved intracellular recordings of sensory neurons from the sea slug Aplysia californica during various pharmacological treatments and also during stimulation of the tail nerve. The medical center is one of the largest in the country, and the Summer Research Program for undergraduates was well organized with talks and social events in addition to research. I made a lot of great friends, and enjoyed working with Terry Walters.