TRAINEE TESTIMONIALS
Heather A.H. Haemig
I have attended seminars given by representatives from industries such as Cargill Dow. I had an internship lined up with Epitopix, a biotech company based in Willmar , MN , but due to their grant writing period and my thesis research progress, we agreed to postpone the internship until the first half of 2005 when it would be mutually beneficial time. Since I currently work on inner membrane transporters in E. coli , the internship will broaden my research experience to include mass spectroscopy of outer membrane proteins in pathogenic bacteria for the purpose of vaccine development.
Paul Lephart
Spring 2001, Partcipated in a 6-week internship at Elitra-Canada (formerly Mycota).Elitra Canada has developed a proprietary technology to delete genes in C. albicans. Using this technology, they have constructed more than 1000 strains which have deletions in both copies of a particular gene. I spent 6 weeks there learning to use this technology and making several strains for use in other projects including strains involved in my own thesis project. During my stay I learned about high-throughput technology, oligo based integration strategies and 3-way PCR. My mentor at Elitra Canada was John Davison, PhD.
Erin K. Marasco
This upcoming summer (2005) an internship is planned at Cargill Dow spanning six weeks. Cargill Dow is a biotechnology company focusing on the production of lactic acid polymers. During this internship I will have the opportunity to rotate through different research units ranging from molecular biology, analytical chemistry and pilot plant fermentation and thereby gain important insights into industrial research and development.
"I recently had site visits to multiple biotechnology companies to learn about current research efforts, view facilities and see how the companies apply biotechnology to product development. Companies that hosted me included R&D Biosystems in Minnesota , Gekkeikan in Osaka , and Suntory in Kyoto , Japan."
"In the fall of 2004, I went to Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) in Japan for a month long exchange. I was placed in the Sano Laboratory and did research on plant biotechnology which broadened my range of techniques and furthered my development as a researcher. Through that experience, we were able to develop a collaboration between the Schmidt-Dannert lab and the Sano lab investigating the properties of N- methyltransferases involved in caffeine biosynthesis."
Karen J. Olson
Industrial collaboration was undertaken utilizing high sensitivity detection techniques (CE-LIF) for determining subcellular localization of novel 3M imidazoquinolines. Under the supervision of Dr. Jon Inglefield, 3M Pharmaceuticals Pathology and Toxicology Department, current 3M techniques such as HPLC were evaluated with respect to CE-LIF techniques. Initial studies determined which 3M compounds are sequestered in whole cells and appropriate extraction procedures required to prodcuce the highest repeatability of CE analysis. Experiments were conducted both on 3M premises and at the University of Minnesota , as 3M does not possess similar zeptomole limit of detection CE-LIF instrumentation. Part of future collaborations may consist of assisting in the purchase and training of 3M scientists in the use of ultra-sensitive fluorescent detectors.
Howard M. Salis
May-August 2001, An industrial internship at a biopharmaceutical named Medarex ( Clinton, NJ). I worked in the R&D fermentation lab, optimizing media for the maximum production of monoclonal antibodies and other therapeutic proteins. While I gained an enormous amount of experience in culturing hybridoma cells, performing metabolic studies, and analyzing fermentation efficiency, I found the haphazard methods used to develop optimum media to be ineffective. This led to my desire to find new ways to accurately describe biological systems and the regulatory mechanisms they employ to control their metabolism, signal processing, and replication.
Susan Fugett Abu-Absi
Concurrent with my thesis research, I worked as part of a team preparing to manufacture a bioartificial liver for clinical trial use. This project is in collaboration with Algenix, Inc., a local venture capital company. I participated in writing cGMP documentation for the manufacturing process, and assisted in compiling data and writing reports for FDA submission, while playing an active role in the transfer of the process to a manufacturing facility. Mentor : Len Ruiz; Dates: July-December 2001.
Honors and Special Activities:
Passed written and oral Ph.D. qualifying exams in the second year. Ther examiners included three from engineering, and two life science faculty members.
Attended the group seminars of the engineering and microbiology trainers regularly, attended and presented seminars in the NIH training program seminars. Visited NAIST for three weeks in November 2000. Worked in cell biology laboratory and interacted with Japanese students. Visited Osaka University to attend seminar and tour facilities. While in Japan , presented an oral paper on my work with hepatocytes at the Japanese Association for Animal Cell Technology (JAACT) meeting in Fukuoka .
