Summer Interns in the Chemoprotection Center

April showers bring May flowers.  And June brings summer interns, eager for laboratory experience.  We welcome Dana Pham-Hua from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (USA), and Elodie Viellet from Polytech Nice Sophia in France.

Dana has just arrived, having completed her junior year at UAB where she is an American Chemical Society Officer, a Science and Technology Honors Student, a straight A student, a Chemistry Scholar, and a budding expert on nanotechnology.  She has been working on a project to explore the role of a plant-related antioxidant to dampen the immune response, in the search for a long-term treatment of Type I Diabetes.  She has her sights set on an MD/PhD program and we aim to help her develop her scientific skills so that she will be a successful applicant.  In our Center she will be helping us develop protocols to score nuclear dysmorphy (misshapen and distressed nuclei) in primary cell cultures from Progeria patients. She will utilize fluorescent microscopy and specialized measurement algorithms to try to measure the effects of sulforaphane and other related compounds on nuclear damage in this rare inherited disease.