South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Max Planck program helps young scientists prepare for their careers
Nikita Thomas, Winston Cheung, William Swann, Eugenia Victoria Gomez, Ilaria Drago, Cameron Pirozzi, Subhash Kanamneni and Seoyoung Kwon. Seven students explored science and advanced technologies alongside professional scientists during Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience's 2018 summer internship program.
The Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience in Jupiter hosted seven Palm Beach County high school students in a summer internship program to prepare them for life as science professionals.
From June 11 to July 20, the students learned about brain structure, function and development and explored the techniques and technologies that scientists in the field use.
“As an intern, you learn a lot about research and what a career in science will look like,” said Seoyoung Kwon, a 17-year-old student at Dreyfoos School of the Arts, in a statement. “It’s really different from your normal high school labs.”
This year’s intern cohort, selected from 130 applicants, also included Subhash Kantamneni and Nikita Thomas from Suncoast Community High School, William Swann from Saint Andrews School, Cameron Pirozzi from the Benjamin School, Eugenia Victoria Gomez from Spanish River Community High School and Winston Cheung from Atlantic Community High School.
Education Outreach Coordinator Ilaria Drago joined MPFI just as the new interns arrived. As a neuroscience researcher, she came to the position with experience teaching science classes and volunteering for outreach and philanthropy events.
“I shared with the students all the excitement for this new job and I bonded a lot with them by doing electron microscopy experiments, by introducing them to a Nobel Laureate that was a guest of our Institute and by rehearsing their final presentations,” Drago said in an email.
The interns each completed a scientific project with the help of Max Planck Florida scientists. At the end of the program, they presented their findings.
“One of our students worked in close contact with the mechanical workshop to engineer a mounting system to perform virtual reality experiments while another used machine learning to devise a way to automatically analyze electron microscopy brain images,” Drago said.
Applications open for next year’s summer internship program on Jan. 7, 2019. For more information, visit mpfi.org.