Student Research in Full Bloom: BTI’s 2018 PGRP Interns

This June, more than thirty of the country’s brightest students arrived at the Boyce Thompson Institute from all over the United States to experience the life of a researcher.

BTI’s 2018 Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) interns have made it to Ithaca and are motivated to pack in as much exploring and engaging and as they can over their ten-week journey (seven for high school interns).

Throughout their summer, the students will be immersed in the life of a BTI scientist: reading current research, writing proposals, testing hypotheses, and presenting their results in the form of a poster or a presentation at a public symposium.

Since collaboration is a key aspect of modern science, each intern will be partnered with a mentor in their respective research lab. Together, mentor and mentee will create an independent project that best utilizes the student’s curiosity and drive while also contributing to the lab’s research goals. This project will be each intern’s focus throughout their summer.

For many of the students, this is their first immersive research experience. Learning the fundamentals of lab life from their mentors will be a crucial experience to kickstart their research career.

When they aren’t working on their projects, interns will attend weekly seminars by BTI researchers, take a five-week-long Bioinformatics course, and engage with graduate students, communication professionals, and faculty at workshops. Throughout the summer, they will have a chance to explore Ithaca and take group trips to Niagara Falls and New York City.

For the first year ever, the PGRP interns have a science communicator amongst them. This intern adds to the ever-diversifying program, which now includes students researching in traditional, “wet” biology labs and in “dry” plant bioinformatics labs and a student communicating BTI’s science across multiple platforms, such as social media, podcasts, videos, news articles, and press releases.

The program will culminate in the annual Student Research Symposium that is open to the public on August 9th from 9am-4pm at BTI in Ithaca, NY.

BTI would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for their generous support of this year’s internship program: Carolyn W. Sampson, the Ithaca Garden Club, the Triad Foundation, Robert and Roberta Kohut, the Legacy Foundation of Tompkins County, Rheonix Inc., the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program, and the United States Department of Agriculture.

Stay tuned to our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and website for more updates on their summer!
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Interns: Who They Are

BTI is proud to welcome the following undergraduate and high school student interns:

Undergraduates

 

Name	University	Major	Lab
Evelyn Abraham	Winthrop University	Biology	Pineros
Akriti Bhattarai	University of Connecticut	Biological Sciences	Gore
Blyssalyn Bieber	Misericordia University	Biology	McArt
Benjamin Carter	California State University, Monterey Bay	Molecular Biology	Martin
Thomas Chan	Tufts University	Computer Science & Biology	Mueller
Samantha Clark	Lock Haven University	Biology	Harrison
Keeley Collins	Elon University	Biochemistry	Fei
Marazzano Colón	Duke University	Biology	Li
Savanah Dale	Clemson University	Plant and Environmental Sciences: Agricultural Biotechnology	Giovannoni
Joshua Derrick	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Computational Biology & Creative Writing	Pawlowski
Joseph Dyson	Wells College	Biochemistry + Molecular Biology & Environmental Science	Rose
Emmanuel Gonzalez	Pacific Lutheran University	Biology	Giovannoni
Autumn Hurd	Doane University	Biology	Bogdanove
Kyle Keating	SUNY Cobleskill	Plant Science/ Horticulture	Van Eck
Alexander Kehl	San Joaquin Delta College	Plant Biology & Pharmaceutical Chemistry	Bentolila
Elena Lazarus	University of Portland	Biochemistry	Moghe
Celine Manigbas	Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts	Computer Science	Mueller
Christopher Neely	Rio Hondo Community College	Biology & Computer Science	Fei
Serena Stern	Cornell University	Communication, Environment, Science & Health	Hannon
Zorimar Vilella	University of Puerto Rico	Microbiology	Raguso
Allyson Weir	California State University, Fullerton	Biological Science (Molecular Biology and Biotechnology)	Catala
Halle Welch	University of Maryland, Baltimore County	Chemical Engineering	Roeder
April Wendling	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	Earth, Society, and Environmental Sustainability & Geography Information Science	Van Wijk
Raffee Wright	Brown University	Biochemistry & Molecular Biology	Pawlowski

High School Students

Katrina Jander, Ithaca High School; Carolyn Jessop, Romulus Central School; Hayle Ackerman, Ithaca High School; Zachary Bradshaw, Hingham High School; Alice Hu, Ithaca High School; Matthew Larson, Union-Endicott High School; Elena Suarez, Academy of the Holy Names; Valerie Chen, Ithaca High School.