Rachel Myers, ChemE BS, completes online internship with MIT

Rachel Myers was just 3 years old when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Already a science-minded kid, watching her mom's resilience in the face of the invasive treatments made her intimately familiar with the symptoms and side effects of cancer treatment. During a high school internship at the National Institutes of Health she fell in love with biomedicine -- "I saw people that looked like me in the field, which wasn't something I was used to before" -- and decided to follow her personal connection with science into a career.

Now a junior at University of Maryland Baltimore County majoring in chemical engineering, Myers is one of seven undergraduates from around the United States to participate in the new Materials Initiative for Comprehensive Research Opportunity (MICRO) program, a fully remote, online research internship from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). Myers' research interests are focused on using nanoparticles as drug delivery therapeutics for breast cancer and other chronic diseases, and the MICRO program offered an unprecedented opportunity to access expertise, mentorship, and approaches to biomedicine that might otherwise have stayed out of reach for undergraduates.

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One semester into her internship, Myers has found the online program both rigorous and uniquely rewarding. The internship has two components: research -- working directly with MIT faculty, and education -- general assignments to give the students a solid understanding of materials science as a field.