Editor's note: Ron Defelice, a 42-year employee of the National Cancer Institute at Frederick and the facility's first Contracting Officer, passed away on December 21, 2018. You can read his obituary here. For the Poster, we’ve chosen to remember his invaluable contribution to the cancer research community.

Standing outside of Building 362, there was little to indicate anything out of the ordinary, but inside, a holiday mascot had run over Grandma with a golf cart. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, even though the wrecked cart and the crime-scene outline of Grandma’s body on the floor suggested otherwise. Nearby NCI at Frederick employees offered assurances that it was all in good fun.

Former Werner H. Kirsten (WHK) intern Kaylee Towey spent her most recent college semester drafting policy proposals to solve education issues in Prince George’s County. It was part of a semester-long project for the Public Leadership Scholars Program, an extracurricular activity she fits into her busy schedule as a student at University of Maryland, College Park.

In retrospect, it’s not surprising that Smruti Hariprakasha, the daughter of two scientists, ended up at the National Cancer Institute as a Werner H. Kirsten intern. She says that the family profession spurred her interest in science from an early age, and her experiences on the NCI at Frederick campus, such as attending Take Your Child to Work Day with her parents when she was young, helped her feel at home when she began her internship.

Every Monday morning, Ulrich Baxa, Ph.D., and his colleagues enter their Gaithersburg, Md., laboratory and begin calibrating their Titan Krios, a massive, $7-million transmission electron microscope that can capture high-definition images at near-atomic magnification. They load several flash-frozen biological samples into the Krios and, by 5 p.m., program the instrument to collect data. As the team leaves for the evening, the Krios begins shooting beams of energy into the samples and taking photos.