RIVER FOREST, lll. -- Dominican University softball's
Delaney McRiley takes her talents to the Ivy League in this week's Internship Spotlight, serving in a summer role at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.
What type of role are you serving in with your summer internship? Name of organization, position, roles/responsibilities.
This summer I am working in the Girgenti lab at Yale University as a part of an REU Site program. The program matches an undergraduate student with a mentor, typically a graduate student, for 10 weeks. My mentor and I are working on identifying a protein located within the neurons of the brain - HDAC-6 - and its potential correlation to severe PTSD. The project itself is extensive and has a lot of different components, both with animals (rats) and humans. I am part of the animal side of the project, so I work with behavior analysis, animal training, PET scans, and post-mortem brain analysis using immuno-histochemistry staining. Despite working primarily with rats, I still aid in the human aspect through more immuno-histochemistry staining and image analysis.
How do you feel your experience as a student-athlete has helped prepare you for this?
Going into the program, I didn't realize how much being a student-athlete was going to help me in the lab. Communication has been a huge part of being successful and comfortable. I'm left to run parts of the experiment on my own, but when I get stuck or need someone to check a protocol I made, I need to be able to effectively communicate what I am trying to do - which is a skill I've learned largely due to athletics. I also like to say that coach-ability is something that I took with me from athletics. When you play a sport, applying instruction and advice quickly is important, for example, changing your swing in the middle of the game. Similarly, the lab is very fast-paced and it is expected for you to be able to keep up starting on day one.
What type of knowledge/experience will you gain here that will help to set you up for future endeavors?
I think that the biggest takeaway from this program is the experience of working in a lab itself. Going into the Yale program I wasn't super confident in what I wanted to do after graduating from Dominican. However, now that I have had this experience, I'm way more confident in my next steps after graduation. In addition, I have also been able to observe the differences between working on a Ph.D. at a small versus a large institution. I have been lucky enough to be a part of research at Dominican, which gave me a feel of what research is like in a smaller lab, and now I have experience in a larger lab. To be honest, I knew that having research experience would look good on future applications and this program gives me the opportunity to add to my resume. By the end of the program, I will be credited on two publications, and I will also have given a couple of presentations on my research.
How did you secure this opportunity?
I came across a Yale program when I was just generally searching for summer research opportunities. I ended up applying to the Yale SUMR program even though I didn't think I was going to get in. Then a few months later I got an email asking to have a follow-up interview where they told me they thought the REU program would be a better fit for what I wanted. The next day I got an email from Yale saying that I was accepted into the REU program which has turned out to be a great fit for me. When I think about how I got so lucky to be here, I can't help but think that the hands-on lab experience I got at Dominican really helped make me stand out from other applicants.
