Foundation’s Summer Interns Work to Advance the Field

Key Points

• This summer, seven students from five universities joined the Foundation.
• Their projects ranged from transducer design and ultrasound wave simulation to information technology and social media.

This summer, seven students from five universities joined the Foundation and completed internship projects in a range of disciplines across focused ultrasound. Four technical interns completed projects related to transducer design, ultrasound wave simulation, and focused ultrasound for pediatric brain tumor research. The remaining three interns took on various projects, such as assisting in the IT department, managing Symposium outreach to industry, and social media initiatives.

This year, the Foundation continued partnerships that were established last year with Xavier University of Louisiana and the Economic Club of Washington’s Urban Alliance Summer Internship Program. And new this year, we hosted an intern via Virginia Bio’s STEM2VA program. In all, four summer interns were introduced to focused ultrasound through these relationships.

“This summer’s group of interns originated through several outside, like-minded institutions and produced several ‘firsts,’” said the Foundation’s Director of Extramural Research, Matt Eames, PhD. “On the engineering side, we conducted our first projects involving ultrasound simulation with k-Wave (Matlab) and our first in-house transducer build. In other areas, our interns spearheaded projects related to authoring a scientific review of focused ultrasound for deep-seated brain tumors, facilitating an in-house IT server migration, soliciting and securing industry sponsorship for our upcoming Symposium, and bolstering the Foundation’s presence on social media. We are also pleased to bring Erick Lassair on to our full-time staff for the next year to continue aiding our simulation effort.”

As an informal end to the summer, the Foundation’s Chairman Neal F. Kassell, MD, and his wife, Meredith Woo, PhD, hosted the local interns at their home for dinner.  

Learn more about each intern and their experience this summer.