Each summer, students in the S. Daniel Abraham Honors Program at Stern College for Women participate in a wide range of internships in the United States and abroad. Below is a sampling of students and their impressive internships in which they acquired important skills that will help them as they pursue their professional journeys.
Esther Nahon interned in the Okun Lab at Bar-Ilan University as part of the BIU-YU Summer program researching Alzheimer's disease using animal models. The biology/neuroscience major found the research very relevant to her studies.
She learned skills such as microtome brain slicing, immunofluorescence staining, as well as ELISA immunoassay techniques while working alongside some of the university’s very accomplished researchers and graduate students. “Overall, it was an incredible experience that definitely catered to my field of interest,” said Nahon. “I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to have learned at, and been a part of, a real-life lab setting, which opened my mind to such a unique and integral part of scientific research.”
Chaya Sara (Sarale) Goldberger, a senior and computer science major, also had a rewarding summer experience working as a research assistant with professor Alan J. Broder, chair of the Stern Computer Science department. Her work focused on exploring the current and potential applications of quantum computing to financial fraud detection and prevention. “Through this experience, I was introduced to the vast and rapidly emerging world of quantum computing, gaining a fundamental understanding of both quantum hardware and quantum algorithms,” Goldberger explained. During her internship, she became fascinated with how quantum computers are built on unique quantum mechanical phenomena, “utilizing principles like superposition and entanglement to achieve exponentially enhanced computational speed and accuracy, compared to the classic computers in use today.” Thanks to this internship, she fell in love with all things quantum, and added, “my newfound passion has helped shape my career goals for after graduation.”
Another honors student, Mijal Gutierrez was fortunate to have the opportunity to intern at Assemblymember Yudelka Tapia’s office in the Bronx as part of the Simon Wiesenthal Government Advocacy Program. Her work centered around two roles–public policy and constituent services–and included reaching out to constituents, researching bills, managing constituent cases, assisting at community events and contacting news sources for media coverage. “I had the opportunity to work with constituents face to face,” commented Gutierrez, “and as a native Spanish speaker working in a significantly Hispanic district, I often played the role of translator between constituents and members of the office.” She also attended events with the assemblymember and office staff such as park renovations, July 4th celebrations at senior centers and judicial seminars.
Gutierrez was also involved in conducting extensive research on uncompleted bills of exiting assembly members, “collecting those which were plausible for the office to adopt and compiling them for the assembly member to review.” There were also numerous opportunities for Gutierrez to learn from influential and successful Jewish leaders, including Councilmembers Lynn Schulman and Eric Dinowitz. “One key discovery during my time interning at Assemblymember Yudelka Tapia’s office was the crucial role that emotional support, understanding and patience play when dealing with constituent services,” she noted. “Simply approaching people in a caring manner creates a great positive impact in their lives.”
Also interning in New York City was Hadassah Mayerfeld, who participated in the Summer Research Program at the Irving Institute of Cancer Dynamics at Columbia University. She conducted mathematical and computational biology research under the mentorship of Dr. Andrew Blumberg, from the mathematics and computer science departments, and Dr. Bianca Dumitrascu, from the statistics department.
Her research focused on evaluating the use of optimal transport (OT) techniques for cross-species reference cluster mapping. “While OT is widely used to mathematically represent matching problems, I explored its performance and biological relevance when applied to scRNA-seq data,” she explained. Additionally, she investigated how different embedding methods—both linear and machine learning approaches—affect OT’s ability to accurately transfer cell type labels across species. To enhance the utility of the algorithm, she also developed a certainty score that quantifies the confidence of the cell type label predictions, helping users better understand the reliability of the algorithm’s results.
Also, at the intersection of medicine and public health, Allison Warren participated in the Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research (iCORE) program at Mount Sinai Hospital, assisting in clinical research alongside Dr. Rachel Solnick. Her work involved studying callback success of patients who tested positive in the ER with a sexually transmitted infection. In addition, she and her team measured the HIV cotesting rate for those being tested for an STI, then analyzed patient demographics to determine what may be a predictor for a successful callback.
Lastly, taking the prize for the most internships, Gabrielle Green completed three this past summer: one at JScreen (a national nonprofit focused on creating awareness around genetic screening and genetic counseling), where she conducted research for the organization’s reproductive and cancer screening presentations; the second at Mount Sinai in the Medical Genetics and Genomics department, where she participated in a pancreatic cancer research project, compiling, organizing, and analyzing data; and the third was at Englewood Hospital, where she shadowed Dr. Tamar Goldwaser, a medical geneticist, and her associate genetic counselors in the maternal fetal medicine unit and the cancer genetics department. That internship was closely related to her research through the honors program, which focuses on Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and the many gene mutations that can cause the syndrome.
