Whether it’s in a flowerbed or an art gallery, former Werner H. Kirsten (WHK) student intern Nathalie Walker can’t help but to cause a buzz. Since completing her WHK internship in the summer of 2015, Walker has been attending Loyola University Maryland, where she is striving to make a positive impact on campus.
Emily Burnett, a five-time intern with NCI at Frederick’s Occupational Health Services (OHS), says the Werner H. Kirsten Student Intern Program program helped shape her current career trajectory. When she began her first OHS internship in 2015, her heart was set on becoming a nurse. However, after working with mentor Sarah Hooper and secondary mentor Patricia Claude, she decided to pursue a “higher level of medicine”—physician’s assistant.
Former Werner H. Kirsten (WHK) intern Julianne Heberlein—who worked in the Frederick National Laboratory Public Affairs and Communication Office under Frank Blanchard—credits the WHK program with setting her apart from other applicants when applying for her recent internships.
Dolph Hatfield, Ph.D., doesn’t let much slow him down. Outside the lab, the newly minted octogenarian, a scientist emeritus in NCI’s Center for Cancer Research, has spent much of his life traveling the world and completing exploits of athletic endurance. So it’s only fitting that he would celebrate his latest birthday by bungee jumping off the Macau Tower in China.
For Jennifer Marshall, the skills learned through an internship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at Frederick have prepared her for the next step of her life—medical school. Marshall, who will be attending the West Virginia University School of Medicine in the fall, spent three summers in NCI at Frederick’s Summer Internship Program expanding her love and passion for science and the medical field.
Changes are coming to the Discovery Café on the National Cancer Institute at Frederick campus and to the Grab n’ Go at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, improvements that will increase the variety and quantity of food available—and make those enhanced options more accessible.
Nuisance critters and creepy crawlers aren’t a problem at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at Frederick, and that’s largely thanks to the efforts of Douglas Vaughn, the institution’s pest controller. Endearingly known to some staff as “Doug the Bug Guy,” Vaughn has been doing pest control for 39 years, 22 of which have been at NCI at Frederick. However, he doesn’t just handle bugs, and he isn’t the average exterminator.
Two Werner H. Kirsten Student Interns were recently named Top Scholars in the 2017 Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation’s most prestigious science and math competition for high school students.
You know what they say about all work and no play. And without a doubt, science requires constant hard work. But the NCI at Frederick has an antidote to the serious side of science: Howard Young.
Young, Ph.D., Senior Investigator, Cancer and Inflammation Program, is a serious scientist in his own right. He was part of the team that characterized and cloned the RAS oncogene, he developed a mouse model of lupus, and he was the first to show a clear sex bias, similar to that seen in patients, in what has been called the best mouse model for primary biliary cholangitis.
Many Frederick National Lab employees have a favorite cause to which they volunteer a significant amount of time. For Dianna Kelly, IT program manager/scientific program analyst, Office of Scientific Operations, and Courtney Kennedy, associate technical project manager, Business Enterprise Systems, that cause is dog rescue.
