Northwestern University’s Children’s Memorial Institute for Education and Research (CMIER): American Cities Program – Chicago November 21, 2007
Posted by cwslibrary in American Cities Program, Chicago, Juniors, Summer 2008, biology, chemistry, research, science.trackback
Northwestern University’s Children’s Memorial Institute for Education and Research (CMIER)
American Cities Program – Chicago
This internship has a range of possible projects varying from laboratory based “bench” projects, using state of the art technology, to clinical investigations, using our extensive data base. In this translational research project, review of the literature and data analysis will be part of the approach to the problem. The intern may also write a paper during her tenure at CMRC, in order to understand how her work fits in with others in the field, and she will interact with our nine member research team. Specifically, she will participate in weekly lab meetings and institute-wide conferences. She will also visit the clinic to observe the physical and laboratory findings in children with Juvenile Dermatomyositis. The focus of the group’s investigation is now twofold: 1) to understand the mechanism of soft tissue calcifications that plague 30% of children with Juvenile Dermatomyositis, and 2) to dissect out the factors that occur at disease onset.
Internship Description:
Internship mentor, Dr. Lauren Pachman, typically has two or three students working with her each summer. As part of this institute-wide training program, the intern would meet other college and medical students (over 50 people), and would be requested to give a ten-minute presentation about her internship research topic at the end of the summer assignment, to the rest of the student body.
Ideal Internship Qualification:
| Logistical: Current Juniors 3 Years lab experience In-depth knowledge of biology and chemistry Familiarity with statistics Experience with science writing |
Personality: Motivated Organized Detail oriented |
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This summer I interned at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Over the course of ten weeks, I worked on an independent research project on Juvenile Dermatomyositis (or JDM). Juvenile Dermatomyositis is a rare pediatric autoimmune disease that has no cure. It is not known what causes Juvenile Dermatomyositis or what makes one child more susceptible than others. A great amount of research by Dr. Lauren Pachman, my mentor, and her lab team is dedicated to finding answers.
My own project was done at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine downtown. I had another supervisor on site, Dr. Joan Cook-Mills. My own research project entailed finding the presence of VCAM-1 (vascular cell adhesion molecule) in the blood vessels of Juvenile Dermatomyosits patients. Dr. Cook-Mills is a renowned expert on VCAM-1 and provided me with exceptional teachings and guidance in my research. I detected the expression of VCAM-1 in muscle tissues of Juvenile Dermatomyositis patients by using a VCAM-1 fluorescent antibody and used fluorescence microscopy to take images. I also used the program Slidebook, Excel and SPSS to organize and calculate my findings. More research is being done currently to add on to my findings and a paper is in the works to be published.
Other than my independent research, my favorite part of my experience was shadowing Dr. Pachman at the Juvenile Dermatomyositis clinics on Wednesdays. Patients flew from all over the country and even the world to see her and get her expertise. Not only was it a privilege to watch Dr. Pachman at work but I learned a great deal on how to deal with patients, parents, and other members of the team.
There are some aspects of my experience that I believe could have enhanced my experience. I do wish I prepared more by taking an immunology course. Immunology and rheumatology is Dr. Pachman’s specialty as well as a lot of her research focuses on those two fields. The first week I had to have many quick biology lessons from fellow lab mates in order to understand the scope of my project. Though I did learn a lot from my project itself, a better understanding of the specifics would have helped. Also, scientific writing is important. I had experience in helping other researchers write scientific papers and in courses, but I have never undertaken a scientific paper on my own. Dr. Pachman and Dr. Cook-Mills helped me immensely in this area and I feel confident that the paper that will be published will be up to standards expected from scientific papers.
Erin
Class of 2009