CC Summer Interns have Impressive Showing at Poster Day

Episode # 26
Uploaded: 8/26/2009
Running Time:  4:00

MARTINO: From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. Every summer, thousands of students apply for the chance to spend 10 science filled weeks interning at the National Institutes of Health. For these Intramural Research Training Assistants, the summer culminates in an annual Poster day where Clinical Center student's display and in many cases, explain their summer projects to onlookers. Tracy Norman is a Penn State Graduate who is currently a "Teach For America" teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina. She teaches 7th and 8th grade science, but this summer she worked in the Clinical Center's Rehabilitation Medicine Department with Dr. Diane Damiano. Her poster's title was "Kinematic comparison of cycling, stepping, treadmill and over-ground walking"

NORMAN: This summer I had the opportunity to see an entire study through in the functional applied biomechanics section It was really great because I was able to be involved in the planning of the study as well as the data collection, the processing, the analysis so I got a really broad picture of how actually research is done and all of the steps needed in order to actually come up with a good result.

MARTINO: Tracy was just one of the Clinical Center interns with an impressive display of work on poster day.

WHETSTONE: I worked on a project about PTSD and alcoholism because I worked on the alcohol unit and I wanted to know the comparison of PTSD and alcoholism in combat veterans and in civilians such as natural disaster, sexual assault or physical abuse.

MARTINO: That was Morgan Whetstone; she worked with Judy Johnson in the nursing department on the 1SE unit. Her poster was titled "Comparison of the Comorbidity of PTSD and Alcoholism in Combat Veterans versus Civilians." She is starting her senior year at the University of Maryland in the fall, pursuing a degree in hearing and speech sciences.

DATTOLI: My name is Meredith Ditaolli and I am going to be a sophomore at Fordham University in the Bronx in the fall and my major is going to be international political economy, the title of my poster was "Utilizing social media in patient recruitment" and basically what we looked at is how social media sites such as twitter and you tube specifically can be used to target specific audiences and hopefully get a greater response to get people to participate in various projects.

MARTINO: Tracy, Meredith and Morgan are just a few of the Clinical Center high school, undergraduate, and graduate students who applied and were selected to spend the summer at NIH. Each seemed grateful for the opportunity to work side-by-side with some of the leading scientists in the world in an environment devoted exclusively to biomedical research. According to Walter Jones, director of diversity management and minority outreach in the office of clinical research training and medical education, the Clinical Center summer students had the second highest number of posters at poster day of all 27 institutes and centers.

JONES: The NIH clinical center is one of the best kept secrets of not only the federal government but also the research community and when we are able to recruit the best and the brightest and give them the opportunity to work along side mentors in various research capacities it provides an opportunity for the clinical center to serve as a springboard for creating the next generation of clinical researchers.

MARTINO: To learn more about the NIH Clinical Center's summer internship  and training opportunities, or receive updates from Clinical Center, including news about the medical research going on here every day, log on to http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov.  From America's Clinical Research Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER RADIO.  In Bethesda, Maryland, I'm Nicole Martino at the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

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