By Karla Stucker and Erika Munson
The number of students participating in summer internships continued to increase this summer, with Waterford students gaining advanced practical and professional experiences across STEM and humanities fields. Some of these internships were sponsored by Waterford School, while others were obtained independently by students. The tenth year of the Waterford-sponsored Pharmacology Internship Program successfully expanded beyond the University of Utah’s College of Pharmacy to also include labs in the Department of Chemistry, College of Science. We continued our long-standing partnerships with the Salt Lake County Mosquito Abatement District and the International Rescue Committee, and added a new ecology internship with the University of Utah’s Science Research Initiative and the Sageland Collaborative. Multiple students obtained their own internships, either through the University of Utah’s College of Pharmacology or their College of Engineering Summer Research Internship.
We would like to send a huge thank you to all organizers, principal investigators, laboratory personnel, and other advisors who trained and supported our students this summer. Waterford School, the students, and the students’ families all greatly appreciate the phenomenal opportunities you have provided for them. Please review the list below to see the range of experiences our students were involved in this summer.
Many of these students will be presenting their internship work and experiences at the Summer Intern Showcase on Thursday, September 4th from 11:40 am to 12:40 pm outside the new Miller Student Commons building on the humanities quad. Please come talk with them to learn more!
If any additional Waterford students participated in independent summer internships and would like to have their project highlighted here, please email details about the internship to Erika Munson.
Waterford-sponsored Summer Internships
Student: Maggie Adams (full time)Project: International Rescue Committee, Immigration InternSupervisor: Dylan Cole, International Rescue Committee
Student: Cooper Benedict (full time)Presentation: Kinetics of Hafnium NanoparticlesPrincipal Investigator: Scott Anderson, Department of Chemistry, University of Utah
Student: Zoé Brewer (full time)Presentation: Electrochemical Thiolation and Amination Using Commodity ChemicalsPrincipal Investigator: Qilei Zhu, Department of Chemistry, University of Utah
Student: Rosy Harris (part time)Project: Sageland Collaborative Wildlife Watch – Camera Trapping and Image AnalysisPrincipal Investigator: Austin Green, University of Utah’s Science Research Initiative and the Wasatch Wildlife Watch at Sageland Collaborative
Student: Keean Kawamoto (full time)Presentation: Synthesis of Heparan Sulfate Carrying 3-O-Sulfation and 6-O-SulfationPrincipal Investigator: Kuberan Balagurunathan, College of Pharmacology, University of Utah
Student: Logan Schlichter (full time)Project: Mosquito trap development | Surveillance for West Nile VirusSupervisor: Ary Faraji, Salt Lake County Mosquito Abatement District
Student: Lisa Song (full time)Presentation: OMIEC Experimentation: Effects of Sulfonated Ions on OMIEC Performance | Influencing Crystallinity via Solvent EngineeringPrincipal Investigator: Connor Bischak, Department of Chemistry, University of Utah
Independent Summer Internships
Student: Toby BookmanPoster: Simulating Urban Wind Patterns with Fan Array Wind TunnelsPrincipal Investigator: Agastya Balantrapu, TRACE Lab, Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah
Student: Tindur ChristiansonPoster: Improving the entrained flow gasification process through research into characteristics of various bio-liquid mixturesPrincipal Investigator: Kevin Whitty, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Utah
Student: Jack KhachatryanPoster: Evaluating Post-Concussion Reactive Balance ControlPrincipal Investigator: Peter C. Fino, Neuromechanics and Applied Locomotion Laboratory, Department of Health and Kinesiology, College of Health, University of Utah
Student: Aiden PanPresentation: Understanding the Changes in Tumor Biomarkers for Malignant Rhabdoid TumorPrincipal Investigator: Shreya Goel, MINI Labs, Department of Molecular Pharmaceutics, University of Utah
Student: Meryam ThulficarPoster: Conversion of Waste Plastics to Oils for Feed to High-Pressure GasifiersPrincipal Investigator: Kevin Whitty, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Utah
Student: Juan Luis Bonifasi ZhangPoster: The Advantages of AI in ImagingPrincipal Investigator: Rajesh Menon, Menon Lab, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Utah
Karla was born and raised in the foothills of the Adirondacks in upstate New York. It was there that she developed a curiosity and love for our natural world. She particularly loves biology, which she chose to pursue as her undergraduate major at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Throughout her undergraduate studies, Karla pursued her interests in biological research, veterinary sciences, and medicine. This prepared her to join the inaugural class for Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine’s combined DVM/PhD program. During her combined degree training, Karla pursued a mixed small and large animal pathway during her clinical rotations, completed a dissertation on the evolution of canine parvovirus, and developed her pedagogical skills as a future faculty fellow. After earning her veterinary degree, Karla worked part time for Shelter Outreach Services in Ithaca, New York, providing spay/neuter surgeries and infection control support for regional animal shelters. After earning her PhD, Karla completed her postdoctoral studies at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, where she continued studying viral evolution and host switching, as well as genomics, bioinformatics, and microbiome sciences.
Driven in part by the need to get students interested earlier in biomedical and health sciences earlier and her love for teaching, Karla chose to move from higher education to secondary school education. She was a science teacher and dorm parent at George School, a Quaker boarding and day high school in Pennsylvania, for five years before joining the Waterford School faculty for the 2020-2021 school year.
In addition to teaching, Karla enjoys spending time with her dogs, Fig and Fern, Nordic skiing, hiking, reading, and solving puzzles. She is also thankful for the opportunity to work once again as a part time small animal veterinarian.
Erika Munson is a graduate of Harvard University where she received a B.A. in Fine Arts. She began her career in the Park City School District where she was a reading intervention specialist at a Title I school. She joined the Waterford English Department in 2011 and in addition to teaching she is Class IX Dean, Middle and Upper School Librarian and Internship Coordinator. In 2016 she was awarded an Oxbridge Teacher Fellowship for summer study focusing on The Library and the Academy at Oxford University. She spends weekends and vacations bringing diverse communities together for conversations around faith, values and identity. She is a co-founder and board member of Emmaus LGBTQ ministry and Utah State Coordinator for Braver Angels, a citizens movement to strengthen democracy by teaching individuals to listen to each other across political divides. Erika is a mother of five and grandmother of three. She and her husband Shipley live a few blocks from Waterford where they garden, read, and walk their rescued greyhound together.
March 29, 2023
February 10, 2023
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