On my first day, I saw three heart procedures. The first was a surgery dealing with a pacemaker and a defibrillator. During the procedure, Dr. Hamrick added a third lead to the pace maker. During this, I learned about improvements that are being made to pacemakers. Below is a picture of the beginning of nanotechnology being used for hearth surgery and pacemakers. The second and third procedures were both A TAVR. This was a value replacement via a catheter coming in from the femoral artery.
Upon my arrival at 8:30am, I was greeted by Mrs. Megan Bridges, Dr. Bloom’s assistant who I will be paired with for the next two weeks. We sat down in an empty patient room to discuss the logistics of the workplace. She showed me the “in basket,” which is a portal she uses to help schedule appointments with patients through a messaging system. Mrs. Bridges then gave me a tour of the clinic, where I was introduced to various doctors and assistants and also examined the most important rooms, such as where orthotics are made and the x-ray room. She then led me to her desk, where a seat had been added for me to accompany her. Mrs. Bridges showed me Dr. Bloom’s schedule, which consisted of 26 patients throughout the day, either every 15 minutes or every 30 minutes. I also signed a Duke Confidentiality agreement, which ensures that I will not reveal any patient information. From there, the day officially began.
Over the course of the 7-hour day, Mrs. Bridges entertained me with a variety of random facts, including the following…
My favorite parts throughout the day were the specific appointments that I was able to sit in on. These include the following…
All in all, today was a great introduction as to what my work experience will look like the next two weeks! I am excited to examine various patients each day and continue to learn what an average day is like in Dr. Bloom’s workplace.
For my work experience placement this year I have the pleasure of working with the Polanco Law firm. This firm started a few years ago made up of just 3 lawyers. It has now grown to an 8 member staff and 4 interns (not including me)! They speacialize in immigration and human rights law. To start out with, I was introduced to all of the present lawyers, paralegals, and interns that work with the firm. Each staff member had their own area of expertise, whether it was immigration, public defense, civil rights or family law. This particular firm tends to avoid family law cases because they are emtional and extremely “messy”. However, when their clients from pervious cases get involved in a family legal dispute they often take the case. I was also told about one staff member who lives near the site of an immigration detention center to challenge the human rights abuses at detainment camps. I spoke with one lawyer about the treatment of detained immigrants and the frequent abuse of their rights. Most of the lawyers and interns spoke spanish frequently with eachother, something that is extremely important as they work with clients who often only know spanish or are more comfortable with it then english. The office was very busy, there was almost always spanish chatter floating in from another room.
I spent most of the day alphabetizing closed case files and filing them away while I spoke with other interns about what it was like to be in law school and what they majored in during undergrad. While we were organizing, one lawyer walked into the room and asked another intern to call ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) to ask if their client was still detained. That moment made me realize that the cases I was filing away, these names I was alphabetizing, were real people who faced unfairness and adversity. Whether or not they won their cases, the names I held in my hands had in some way had their inherent rights violated. There were so many names to be filed away, and this was only one firm, making me realize the importance of the work that the Polanco law firm and other firms like it do every day and the massive size of the problem. Overall, it was an extremely interesting first day and I learned a lot about the state of immigration in our country and what it is like to work for a civil rights law firm. 
Today was my first day at Bavarian Nordic! Bavarian Nordic is a biotechnology company that specializes in vaccines. I will be spending the next two weeks in their clinical trials department learning about biostatistics and clinical trial managing. After struggling to find the right building, I finally found the “Bavarian Nordic” sign in front of some extremely intimidating frosted glass doors. I was rather early, so I waited outside until I saw another girl looking at the directory. I had a feeling she was the other intern from NC State. I think she had a feeling I was the high school intern too because she introduced herself. Kaitlin is very nice and passionate about statistics! We tried pushing and pulling the door for an embarrassing minute. Turns out we needed to be buzzed in. Once the lady at the front desk let us inside, we were greeted by Erika. Erika works in biostatistics and put together our whole agenda. After introducing us to everyone, she led us to the break room.
In the break room, she had set up a whole breakfast buffet to welcome us! It was very nice of her! Once we had finished eating and mingling, Erika set us up with desks and computers. However, there were some technical difficulties with sharing folders with me and Kaitlin because the IT guy is out. After we got all situated at our desks, we headed towards the conference room where we would spend the next couple hours. Ms. Handelsman started off by giving us a brief history of Bavarian Nordic and all the products it produces. Bavarian Nordic is widely known for its production of Imvamune, a vaccine for smallpox. The US stockpiles this vaccine in case smallpox gets weaponized. Bavarian Nordic also has many other vaccines still in the trial phase. The one I will be focusing on is Brachyury.
For lunch, we stopped at some food trucks because the power went out and there was no way to heat up our food. Once we ate, we went straight back to the conference room to meet with Janelle. Janelle is one of the leaders of the Brachyury project. She gave us some background on why it is being studied. Brachyury is a protein that is expressed by many types of tumors. Too much of it can make it hard to treat a tumor. Bavarian Nordic’s potential vaccine could increase survival rates in cancer because its goal is to cause a Brachyury-specific response by the immune system. I will continue to be researching and looking at data from the ongoing clinical trial in my next 2 weeks.
After a long day in the conference room, I was tasked with completing an online training for Clinical Research by the NIH. After a lot of reading, I finally passed and got my certificate. My certificate signaled the end of my very rewarding day. I am very excited to see what the rest of the week holds!
For the first week of the work experience program, Hern and I are working at the Integrated Pain, Lab, and Hemp Solutions center in Sanford. After receiving a brief tour of the facilities, we conducted some independent research on cannabidiol (CBD) based on a set of guidelines provided by an employee. CBD, a cannabis compound derived from hemp or marijuana plants, relieves pain, inflammation, and other ailments, and is used in conjunction with surgical procedures and movement therapy at Integrated Pain Solutions. We learned about its effects, mechanisms, and legality, along with exploring liquid and gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy. In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to see the process behind distributing the hemp oil; we helped dispense, bottle, and package a mixture of CBD oil diluted with grapefruit oil.
My first day at FHI 360 was a very fun, fulfilling experience. While there, we toured the buildings and met a lot of very cool people. One of the things I find most interesting about the people at FHI is that they all seem to do totally different jobs that all relate together in some way.
We also had a pizza lunch with members of the CTID, or Contraceptive Technology Innovation Department, and learned about various projects they do.
Lastly, we learned how to use various online software like NoodleTools to complete research papers and will be using tools like Mendeley and EndNotes to do so.
Today was my first day at Crowder Construction Co. I began the day by entering through the glass doors to be met by Therese Dean, the head of Co-Op students. After greeting her, she took me on a brief tour around the office and a crash course on Crowder’s history with builds as large as $100 million contracts! Once this 15 minute segment was completed, I met two of the three Co-Ops, Ripkin and Ryan. Today was with Ripkin in estimating.
Ripkin and I began around 9:00 with another crash course on how to figure out totals on estimates and how the contract bidding works. We promptly started calculating surface area of a wastewater purifier and injector about the size of a 3 story house. This entailed many lines of work to ultimately figure out how much the paint will going to cost. The numbers were large and the time needed was hefty but we completed the task at hand. This first day experienced taught me the basics for what I will utilize for the next two weeks. Despite the cubicles being so stereotypical (as seen in the photo below), I enjoyed my 7 hours at Crowder USA.
Today was our first day at Field2Base, a company which specializes in mobile forms, digitization of information, and sending of said information to a central location for anything from small businesses to large companies. Milen and I were introduced to the development team and to the few members of the sales team who were there at the time. We then attended the development team’s daily Agile stand-up meeting. In this meeting all the members discussed the progress they had made in the last day, any issue they had come across, and their plans for today. Then, Rachel talked to Milen and I about the history of the company, which was founded in 2002, and the company’s goals for the coming years. Rachel talked more about her personal history and why she enjoys working at Field2Base. We then went out to lunch with Rachel and two other members of the development team to Neomonde. When we got back Milen and I digitized a sample form in order to familiarize ourselves with the technology and how the admin side of the forms work as well as how employees of clients would use the software. Later in the afternoon we met the remaining members of the sales team and downloaded the Field2Base app on our phones in order to see how the forms we digitized would look in the hands of a customer. I’m looking forward to the next two weeks and learning more about Field2Base and software development!
Oh what a day it was for Natalie and I! After going on my first *real* work commute all the way out to Durham, Natalie and I were greeted with a huge smile from our new best friend, Ms. Kristi Burkett. After we introduced ourselves, she took us to her mini office/conference room for some background. She told us why she got into real estate, what drives her everyday, as well as why the market reacts the way that it does. Afterwards, she gave us an office tour and we saw all of the different cubicles that were there. Something that was interesting to me was the fact that their office was actually many different smaller teams that were all united under one umbrella company — Keller Williams. With this in mind, Kristi introduced us to many of the other agents, including two that actually are involved with land development (my hopeful career path), so it was super cool to meet all different types of agents. She then took Natalie and I out to lunch at my personal favorite, Zinburger, and we all had a super good conversation about Cary Academy (her daughter is currently a sixth grader). After lunch, Natalie and I snapped some quick photos of the office before we attended a training class centered around how to host a successful open house, hosted by a guest speaker. It was super informative and we both learned that to have a successful open house you actually should not make it very formal and honestly to make it more of a party atmosphere. We then learned about sphere of influence more in depth, something very useful regardless of fields. We are both super excited for tomorrow, where we plan to tour one to two new construction developments, as well as accompanying Kristi’s colleague, Dona, to a listing appointment!
Today was my first day of WEP and I got the opportunity to meet with Mr. John Sotomayor of Sotomayor IP consulting, LTD. We met for a few hours discussing what exactly an Intellectual Property Lawyer does and what the job entails. He walked me through an application for a patent, of which he works with on a daily basis. The application was arduous, long, and extensive. He talked to me about the intricacies that go along with making a claim/application and how important it is to be “broad and specific”, as Mr. Sotomayor put it. With IP law, I learned there are a lot of ways in which one can get approved or denied for a certain idea that they have. We also discussed the prerequisites that come along with the IP law field. One must have 32 hours of a science as well as a BS, in any category. I learned so much about what it means to be an IP lawyer/attorney, as well as a lawyer/attorney in general.