Eberly Alumnus Provides Cedars-Sinai Student Research Opportunity
Three Eberly College of Science undergraduate students spent the summer as clinical research interns in the Department of Surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
The three students who participated in this summer’s internship opportunity were Ainaa Ibrahim, a biology major; Lohit Velagapudi, a student in the accelerated premedical-medical program; and Vivian Xu, a biology major.
This research opportunity was made possible by Dr. Bruce Gewertz, alumnus of the Eberly College of Science’s accelerated premedical-medical program and current chief of surgery at Cedars-Sinai. Dr. Gewertz works with Ronald Markle, adviser for premedicine students in the college, to connect Penn State students interested in medicine with this opportunity to intern with researchers at Cedars-Sinai. This is the fourth year Dr. Gewertz has invited Penn State students to intern at Cedars-Sinai.
The opportunity gave Ibrahim a chance to learn new skills and improve on others. “I have always had a weakness in reading and understanding scientific papers. Through this experience, I was able to not only read and understand the papers, but also to do it in a shorter amount of time, extract more core information from the papers, and be able to summarize them,” said Ibrahim. “This increased my confidence tremendously.”
She also learned the value of time management. “I was able to set my own time of the day
able to manage my time well at first, but later I learned this was something that my professor was trying to teach me—time management,” she said.
Xu enjoyed the hands-on surgery experiences the best. “My favorite part about this internship was the hands-on work that I got to do with ca- davers. I love learning about the human body and have been obsessed with surgery ever since I observed an artificial knee replacement when I was sixteen,” she said.
For Velagapudi, being able to network with others topped his list of things he enjoyed. “My favorite part of the internship was definitely presenting my work to other scientists. I was able to present the program that I developed to visiting urologists and oncologists from the UCLA Medical Center as well as pathologists and surgeons from different departments in Cedars-Sinai in order to evaluate its potential for use in surgical and diagnostic procedures,” he said. “Watching them get excited about my product and its uses made my work pretty ful- filling.”
Xu was also able to benefit from giving presentations during the internship. “I gained valuable research skills and became more confident in myself after presenting my research and placing as a finalist among several interns at Research Intern Poster Day,” she said.
The experience solidified the choice to have a career in medicine for the students, and expanded their ideas of where it can take them.
“Developing tools for surgical and diagnostic use has allowed me a new perspective on the field and its development,” said Velagapudi. “Being at the cutting edge of development in the field I want to work in was definitely very exciting.”
The internship confirmed for Xu that she’s on the right career path. “This internship not only verified but also greatly intensified my passion for orthopedic surgery,” she said. “I held the retractors during a number of open-knee cadaveric surgeries and couldn’t help but imagine the day where I would be the surgeon working on such a study.”
Working closely with her principal investigator at Cedars-Sinai also taught Ibrahim that she needs to alter her educational course a bit to help herself stand out as she applies to graduate school.
“There is more competition in the field nowadays, due to factors like reduced funding and an increased number of applicants and researchers compared to 50 years ago,” she said. “This insight from my principal investigator made me rethink my plans to achieve my goals. Instead of just taking the courses required to graduate, I will have to take courses to acquire the skills that are in demand in the current market and those that interest me at the same time.”
Since its inception in 2013, Dr. Gewertz’s clinical internship program has provided research experiences to twelve students, including four accelerated premedical-medical program students (Kevin Chen ’16, Jessica Siak ’16, Derek Ho ’15, and Venkat Masarapu ’15), and students majoring in biology (James Sharer), mathematics (Ailaura Donahoe), premedicine (Luke Hess ’16), and science (Gurmehr Kaur ’16 and Christine Scaglione).