GROTON, Conn. – The Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory (NSMRL) hosted four college interns through the Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP) and five high school interns through the Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP) from June 11 to August 16.
NSMRL has hosted NREIP and SEAP interns annually for over a decade. Participating students receive hands-on research opportunities and one-on-one mentorships to help advance their education and expand their knowledge of careers within the Navy.
This year’s NREIP interns traveled from all over the U.S. to spend their summer in Groton. They worked with mentors from NSMRL’s two science departments: Warfighter Performance and Submarine Medicine and Survival Systems. Principal investigators Dr. Justin Handy, Linda Hughes, Dr. Jeffrey Bolkhovsky, and Dr. Brandon Casper served as individual mentors for each of these NREIP interns.
“The number one thing I appreciated was the mentorship,” said Sean O’Connell, a rising senior at the University of Georgia. “When working at academic labs, there is very little supervision. I often get assigned a project and meet sparsely with my supervisor. But at NSMRL, not only has Dr. Bolkhovsky been an amazing mentor, but the entire Human Systems Integration [HSI] team has been there every step of the way, and that close personal supervision has helped me grow more in the three months of this internship than I have my entire academic career.”
“Not only has the mentorship been so incredible for me as well,” added Emma Chow, a rising senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “But getting to do my own research project from start to finish, developing my methodology and going through the entire process of evaluating what I was able to produce, has been amazing. In undergraduate academic research, you’re not really given the opportunity to go from point A to point Z all at once, and so getting to complete my independent project at this scope has been really cool.”
The five SEAP interns attend schools around the Groton area. The high school interns worked primarily in the Warfighter Performance department, focusing on various ways to improve the Auditory Sentry Net (ASN), to develop an alternative support media tool for warfighters, and to waterproof wearable sensors for underwater use.
“We were lucky enough to have a really spectacular group of interns this year,” said Bolkhovsky. “They went above and beyond with their projects and research and integrated fully into the command. Having the interns here is so important, because it really is about the future of Navy medicine, and showing students what opportunities exist.”
NSMRL has worked to ensure its continued support of the NREIP and SEAP internship programs, which are sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). These internships introduce students to Navy Medicine Research and Development (NMR&D) opportunities they may not have otherwise known existed.
“As someone who plans to go into military medicine,” O’Connell explained, “I really appreciated getting to learn about the many opportunities there are to conduct military research. It was a phenomenal experience to see the full cycle of taking science and applying it directly to enhancing the health and mission readiness of our warfighters in the field.”
NSMRL wishes the best to all this year’s NREIP and SEAP interns, and is excited to watch their careers develop.
NSMRL, part of NMR&D, and based out of Groton, Connecticut, sustains the readiness and superiority of undersea warfighters through innovative health and performance research and works to lead the world in delivering science solutions to ensure undersea warrior dominance.
Story originally posted on DVIDS:
NSMRL Hosts Summer 2024 NREIP and SEAP Interns