The Andersen Lab would like to officially introduce and welcome eight summer interns selected from two programs offered by Scripps Research and the Scripps Research Translational Institute! Our interns are working closely with a mentor on either a wet lab or computational project to learn about the methods we use to study the emergence, spread, and occurrence of infectious diseases.
Selected from a large pool of candidates from around the country, these summer interns are highly motivated and eager to learn. We are very excited to have the opportunity to work with these budding scientists on important genomic epidemiology projects.
Joining us from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, Acacia Coker is a rising junior and working with postdoc Jyothi Purushotham to identify risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in Scripps Health patients. With Jyothi’s expert supervision, she will be developing her wet lab skills in viral genome sequencing and basic immunology.
Ethan Wu is a rising sophomore at Johns Hopkins University studying biomedical engineering. This summer he is working on our WestNile4k project with graduate student Nate Matteson. Ethan is learning how to sequence West Nile Virus samples from across the US and analyze the data to study the geographic and temporal transmission dynamics of the virus. In his free time, he enjoys finding new places to eat, playing with his dog, and watching movies and anime.
Alexis Ambriz recently graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in Data Science and would love to pursue a Masters in Computer Science, Data Science, or Bioinformatics. They are being mentored by postdoc Josh Levy and is helping to develop a python package that extends existing visualizations and analyses for our outbreak.info platform. For fun, they like to play video games and tennis or watch the newest season of Legendary.
Carol Zhou is a rising sophomore coming from Emory University, currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Quantitative Sciences. Josh Levy will mentor her on a project focused on the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in resource-limited settings, combining epidemiological analyses (using outbreak.info) and phylogenetics.
Camille Bell recently received a Master of Science in Applied Life Sciences and Infectious Diseases from the Keck Graduate Institute located in Claremont, CA. This summer, postdoc Jyothi Purushotham is mentoring Camille in the optimization of high-throughput “systems serology” laboratory assays aimed at extensively profiling the biophysical and functional properties of antibodies, a critical component of antiviral immunity. In her spare time, she loves to travel and visit museums.
Diya Ramesh is a rising high school senior at the International Academy in Michigan and is being mentored by project scientist Mark Zeller on metagenomic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2, including optimization of current methods. Diya is greatly interested in biomedical science, cancer biology, and genomics and aspires to one day work as a translational scientist and physician.
Sarah Randall is a rising junior majoring in biology at Biola University in La Mirada, CA and is being mentored by research programmer Chrissy Aceves. Sarah will be working with Chrissy on using the Python and R programming languages to develop computational analysis tools for COVID-19 viral genomics and other outbreak data. Outside of work, her interests include reading, music, biking, and nature walks.
Hritika Chatervedi is a rising sophomore majoring in Computational and Systems Biology at The University of California, Los Angeles and is passionate about the intersection of artificial intelligence and medicine. She is working with research programmer Emory Hufbauer to aggregate and standardize data through the outbreak.info API, with a focus on COVID-19 variant data. She enjoys hiking, long-distance running, playing the flute, photography, and sketching.
At the end of the summer, the interns will present the independent research project they developed with their mentor. We look forward to seeing the results of their hard work!
