Showcase

The Reach Out and Read (ROR) program encourages parents to read aloud to their children to promote literacy development. We found that there is no research around parents reading to babies before they are born. There is a ROR program at Riley Fetal C ... enter where each parent who receives prenatal counseling at the Fetal Center is given a book to read to their baby before birth. My team and I developed a survey based on literature review and expert opinion aiming to explore parents' perceptions and experiences after their participation in the prenatal ROR program. I had several meetings with the family support program at Riley NICU, the Fetal Center research coordinator, and my mentor. I learned how to do literature searches, how to use EndNote, and different research methods. I reviewed literature on relevant topics and provided feedback to the team. I was responsible for documenting meeting minutes and sharing them with the team. I fully participated in the creation of the survey. The survey is IRB approved and is being distributed amongst parents in two different languages. I plan to continue my work with UROP support to publish our findings and contribute to efforts promoting literacy for children. Read more

Healthcare worker wellness includes a balance of psychological, social, and physical aspects of an individual's life. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the relevant challenges highlighted in my literature review. My personal experiences shadowing famil ... family medicine residents in the IU Health Physicians Family Medicine clinic downtown allowed me to observe the stresses and challenges healthcare workers face on a day-to-day basis. Physician wellness and well-being are an integral part of high-quality health care, thus needing to prevent burnout, emotional exhaustion, and mental health issues for healthcare workers. High-quality health care aligns with the four pillars of the Quadruple Aim which includes reducing cost, patient satisfaction, improved health, and provider satisfaction. Considering this, a more concrete definition of wellness and well-being is needed, which can then inform initiatives and support for those working in medical settings. Read more

The research focus of Dr. Singh's laboratory is to understand mechanisms underlying secondary complications of diabetes. The vascular system provides organs and tissues the necessary nutrients to relay their functions. The skewed gene-environment int ... t interactions (aka epigenetics), predominant in diabetics, lead to deficiency in such vascular functions known as diabetic vasculopathy. My focus of research for this internship was how to detect such abrupt epigenetic changes particularly promoter DNA methylation in diabetic ischemic tissue. I studied how to detect if a methyl group is added to the cytosine residue in the promoter of vascular gene, thereby suppressing its expression. My responsibilities included learning and conducting laboratory techniques such as mammalian cell culture, collagen hydrogel preparation, immunohistochemistry, PCR, gel electrophoresis, western blotting, and bisulfite conversion for gene promoter methylation studies. In this presentation, I will be explaining how diabetes induced pathological DNA hypermethylation can silence vascular genes and can contribute to diabetic vasculopathy. Such information can be translated clinically by targeted demethylation of such epigenetically silenced genes to bring back ischemic tissue perfusion. Acknowledgement: The laboratory of Dr, Kanhaiya Singh is supported by U.S. Department of Defense grant W81XWH-22-1-0146. We express deep appreciation of Dr. Chandan K Sen, Director, ICRME for this opportunity and his support during this internship duration. Read more

“An end to breast cancer through thinking, sharing, and understanding normal.” The Komen Tissue Bank (KTB) is the only repository in the world that collects normal breast tissue, matched serum, and plasma for researchers to use as their control varia ... ble in their research. This year the KTB will hold four breast tissue collection events. Events occur at the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center in Indianapolis and in another U.S. city with high concentrations of a diverse population. I had the opportunity to help and attend two collection events with different roles each time. I volunteered as a surgical assistant my first time and I worked in the lab the second time. As a surgical assistant, I set up the room between each patient and aided the surgeon during the biopsy. As a laboratory assistant, I worked on aliquoting. Upon delivery of the blood, after centrifuge, I worked on collecting the plasma. In addition to my main two jobs, I also worked on escorting donors to the height and weight station, giving me an opportunity to speak with them and hear their inspiring reasons for donating. Read more

Being part of Ascend Indiana has provided me the opportunity to help contribute to the community by helping job seekers, including college students and un- and underemployed individuals, get jobs that require little to no experience. Being an intern ... has also developed several transferable skills that I find beneficial in my career journey. Some of them I have developed because of my projects include communication, time management, attention to detail, and Microsoft Excel. Having this internship helped me learn how to be disciplined in a professional environment like checking my work emails every morning before starting assigned projects, communicating with my manager and team members about any change in plans, etc. One of my responsibilities at Ascend Indiana is to help employees post their available jobs in the company's network to facilitate the job search for candidates, including internships, part-time, and full-time roles. I am glad I got this internship because of how it has positively impacted me. Read more

As a Marketing Intern, my main tasks were to reach out to potential clients and to create social media content. During my time at Amy Henry State Farm Agency, I had the chance to develop my skills in social media content creation and customer skills. ... I'm able to call, text, and send emails to customers confidently. I have realized that marketing and social media content creation are two things I'm thoroughly excited about, and a career I want to pursue. My co-workers were amazing at making me feel comfortable and giving me independence with how I wanted to develop as an intern. Read more

As a STEM Youth Coach, I educate school-age students on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, while keeping them engaged through fun STEM and team-building activities. During my internship, I developed my leadership skills by applying my ... experience as an executive member of a campus organization, researching STEM and team-building activities, planning the activities, and leading kindergarten to grade 8 students. I enjoyed listening, supporting, and finding solutions to their concerns and sought help from my supervisor, Felicia, and colleagues when needed. Working with the team at Hawthorne Community Center was a wonderful experience that allowed me to explore new workspaces and improve my socialization and communication skills through building relationships with students and colleagues. Read more

Ascend Indiana ensures every person who has the opportunity to work there left with growth and abilities they did not have before. I worked as a Business Development Intern and my main responsibilities were to write and post job roles as well as rese ... arch and scrape job roles. I posted job positions onto the network that allowed candidates to see what matched well for them. It was so amazing to see the number of people that apply for roles you published. As I do not see myself working here for any long-term position, I am so grateful I was given the opportunity to do the time I did. I was taught so much about the job market as well as how to treat people in a work environment. I saw different leaders and how everyone operated at a professional standpoint. I am so thankful I got to be a part of Ascend and pursue their mission to create economic opportunity for all. Read more

I currently work at the Pando location, in which is a division of Lutheran Child and Family Services. My job on a daily basis is to engage with the tenants and provide them with motivation, as well as, empower them to utilize the resources that are ... at hand. I'm also tasked with the goal of creating the BTO program [Bridges to Opportunity]. This is a project in which I recruit positive role models from the community to engage in a mentor/mentee relationship with the tenants. Read more

Going into my sophomore year, I wanted to make sure I explored different career paths through various learning experiences. Working at Hawthorne Community Center has enabled me to do that. At Hawthorne, I work as a Youth Coach to promote children's o ... 9;s overall well-being through interactive discussion-based exercises and activities. Each week, we have activities based on 1 of the 8 dimensions of well-being. Some activities include morning yoga, budget planning, waist bead making, and discussions about personal boundaries. Through this internship, I have learned how to create interactive activities suited to children through utilizing sites such as Kahoot and practicing worksheet creation. During discussions, I had to make sure I fully explained my thinking when talking to the children. Some of the topics were hard for them to think about since they never really talked about them before. So, making sure I was being thorough overall increased my communications skills to be able to hold conversations with the children. Hearing the kids' feedback, about how they enjoy talking about the topics we discuss makes me happy! I hope that after my time there they continue to incorporate things we talked about into their daily lives. Read more