The van den Brink Lab High School Summer Program aims to enrich the scientific knowledge of young students interested in pursuing a scientific field in undergraduate studies. This program aims to introduce students to bench top scientific techniques, while helping them develop a research project of their own over multiple summers.

Jiayi Pang - The Bronx High School of Science

Thymus Recovery Project | Mentor: Hana Andrlova, MD

I joined the van den Brink Lab for the summer of 2020. It was the first time the program ran fully remote. However, I still learned a lot from this experience. First off, I learned about numerous lab techniques like flow cytometry, gene sequencing, and many more. Second, I learned in depth about multiple areas in immunology such as the thymus and its importance, cancer immunotherapy like CAR T cells, allogeneic hematopoietic cell therapy, and the role intestinal microbiota in immunology. I was also fortunate to be able to visit the lab one day. I watched many procedures that I was only able to read about and that gave me a better idea of the lab’s projects. Through this experience, I found even deeper interest in immunology and hope to go further with this knowledge. Overall, I had an eye-opening experience and enjoyed it very much.

 

Tristan Weng - The Bronx High School of Science

Microbiota Project | Mentors: Marina Burgos da Silva, PhD and Melissa Docampo, PhD

I interned at the van den Brink lab during the summer of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and I had a wonderful opportunity to learn from amazing mentors. We learned many things throughout the course of the summer time such as DNA sequencing, gene editing, flow cytometry, ect. Although I was unable to go into the lab for most of the summer to get hands on experience, I was still able to experience other things such as lab meetings, learning about the other researchers in the lab and their projects, and journal clubs. However, the day I was able to go to the lab and experience what it was like, it was really fun and interesting. I was able to see things in the lab such as harvesting organs, flow cytometry, and just how the lab operates in general. During the few months I interned at the van den Brink lab, I was able to obtain some knowledge and experience which I greatly enjoyed.