Name: Divya Sundararajan
Class Year: 2021
Major: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Minor: Child and Family Studies
Hometown: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Internship Organization:
Job Title: Pediatric Endocrinology Summer Research Intern
Location: Aurora, Colo. (remotely!)
What’s happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
2020 has been a pretty eventful year for many people worldwide. It’s personally been a rollercoaster despite only being halfway through the year! I had been spending the spring semester studying abroad in London but ended up having my experience cut short by COVID-19 in March. Unfortunately, my finals followed me until the first week of June, even though my classes ended in March as per the British system. After spending more than two months at home, I was looking forward to interacting with people who weren’t a part of my family.
I started working on June 1 as a research intern in the pediatric endocrinology department under Dr. Melanie Cree-Green, a Bryn Mawr alumna (’99)! Her research focuses on polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a common hormonal disorder, and some of her work is with a multidisciplinary PCOS clinic at Children’s Hospital Colorado. This clinic allows patients to see a number of specialists, from a dermatologist to an endocrinologist to a psychologist, to allow them to treat all aspects of their PCOS.
My part this summer has been adding to data of adolescents with PCOS through patient charts from PCOS clinic visits and analyzing them to characterize the patients that come to the clinic to find out more about what PCOS-associated conditions they have, what medications they take, etc. I have also gotten to remotely attend multidisciplinary clinic appointments, and it was a super interesting experience! I loved getting to connect the everyday work at the clinic with the research I was working on this summer.
In addition, despite the remote setting, the pediatric endocrinology department has held a number of engaging and educational events over the summer. Every week, a number of faculty have given talks about the research they have been conducting, and we have had journal clubs as well as sessions to teach us more about what is involved in medical research. It has been so interesting learning about and getting more exposure to the variety of research conducted at Children’s! I love that even though we are constrained by the remote setting, there has been such an effort to make sure we still have an amazing intern experience.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I was able to first meet Dr. Green through the Bryn Mawr Externship Program in winter 2018. She was my top choice for an extern match, as I was really interested in the work she was doing with metabolism and PCOS. I spent a week shadowing her in the hospital, and she was gracious enough to allow me to stay in her home. I had an incredible experience with her during my externship; I really wanted to work with her in the future but had already committed to another program. I was really fortunate to have the opportunity to work with her this summer instead, and I had an amazing time!
Working remotely for the first time? What has that experience been like for you?
Working remotely this semester was truly a learning curve, especially as I had not taken classes remotely the past semester (due to my study abroad classes ending earlier than Bryn Mawr’s). I definitely had to develop certain skills this summer, from keeping my mentors updated on my progress and reaching out via email with concerns, to keeping disciplined during work hours and cultivating a work life balance. I feel like the skills I’ve cultivated will help me through the next semester as well.
Was this internship what you expected it to be?
When Dr. Green agreed to let me intern with her in January, I was so excited to get to work with her this summer. With the COVID-19 situation, I was worried about how that would impact my work this summer and whether I would get all the experiences I was hoping for. I needn’t have worried—despite the difficulties of working remotely, I had so many amazing experiences and learned a lot of new things. Especially as most of my previous experience had been with traditional “bench” research, it was really exciting to see how clinical work fit into the larger research world, the different kinds of research that people were doing in the department, and what skills I could learn as a part of it.
Visit the Summer 2020 Internships page to read more student stories.