Name: Amanda Cline

Year: 2016

Major: Biology

What’s going on? We’d love to hear how your internship is going! My internship has just picked up in the last few weeks! Initially it was getting familiar with the laboratory setting and typical protocol for a normal day of work. Now I have much more liberty to work on projects without direct guidance. My research in particular is regarding the isolation and characterization of wild yeast populations in the area. Our goal for this summer is to obtain statistical data regarding the frequencies of local yeast strains; eventually, we would like to expand our work into characterizing wild yeast strains found by students and faculty from UPenn that are shown to be reproductively isolated from the two common strains of yeast found in Eastern PA.

How I heard about my internship: I heard about my internship opportunity originally from Dr. Tamara Davis in the BIO dept. It was not until I took Dr. Shapiro’s genomics course that I secured a position in his lab this summer.

Why I applied for my internship: There are numerous reasons to join the summer of science research team. First, its a great chance to gain a one-on-one connection with professors in your dept, which will in turn help with letters of recommendation for grad school. Not to mention a sense of comfortability going into upper level classes with professors you recognize and know your learning style. Secondly, its a chance to learn about lab safety and protocol. I originally applied for the internship in the hopes of determining whether or not research was what I wanted to pursue, or if I wanted to look more into patient care after Bryn Mawr. Either path I choose however, will benefit from spending the summer developing my own research that I find interesting.