Nicole Sevilla is building a device that will take high resolution photos of cervical cancer cells to assist in diagnosis.
She is a researcher in biomedical engineering professor Jessica Ramella-Roman’s Medical Photonics Laboratory.
Nicole is the first student from Florida International University's College of Engineering and Computing to be accepted into the Exceptional Research Opportunities Program through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Bright undergraduate science students from poor backgrounds often have a hard time getting summer research experiences.Since 2003, when the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) founded its Exceptional Research Opportunities Program (EXROP), 930 undergraduates from 175 colleges and universities have been matched with 243 HHMI investigators, professors, early career scientists, and Janelia group leaders.
Janelia group leaders are independent scientists who direct a team of researchers. Group leaders are at all career stages, ranging from those who have just completed their PhD to more senior scientists, similar to HHMI investigators.
Last summer, Nciole took part in Exceptional Research Opportunities Program's 10-week research internship at an Howard Hughes Medical Institute lab. She also received a $5,000 award and a housing stipend.
“Getting involved in this lab is actually making me see if I really want to follow neonatology as one of my professions,” Sevilla told FIU News. “I’m also considering now OB-GYN, since it also involves babies and what I’m actually doing in my research, which I’m really enjoying.”
Ramella-Roman, who nominated Sevilla for EXROP, was impressed by her initiative to expand the scope of the original project, which was started by a previous student in the lab. Sevilla is working to make the device non-invasive.
“One of the reasons why I nominated her was because she’s a really independent thinker,” Ramella-Roman said.
Sevilla wants to design diagnostic devices for her field, so working in Ramella-Roman’s lab has allowed her to gain valuable career experience early in her studies.
“She cares a lot about us,” Sevilla said of her mentor, “and I think that’s really important, especially for professors and mentors, to actually be so involved with their students.”
Sevilla was matched with Dr. Rebecca Richards-Kortum at Rice University researching neonatal technologies, her top choice for the EXROP program. Richards-Kortum’s lab researches cost-effective imaging devices, so the work she will do there directly relates to what she does at FIU and what she wants to do in the future.
EXROP will offer Sevilla an opportunity to network with and learn from scientists who are leading experts in their fields. That, combined with EXROP’s research component, will play a key role in setting Sevilla’s resume and graduate school applications apart from the crowd.
“The scientists that belong to [the HHMI] consortium are extraordinary,” Ramella-Roman said. “Just the fact of being able to work with one of those investigators is an exceptional opportunity.”Jung added: “The EXROP program will offer Nicole an outstanding opportunity to learn from the best. This is what we want—preparing the brightest minds to become innovation leaders in science and engineering.”
“It’s pretty exciting to set ground for this and to be an example,” Sevilla said of being FIU’s first engineering student to participate in EXROP. “I want to make sure I do everything correctly, and that I bring to FIU something that I gained knowledge from and can give back.”
Exceptional Research Opportunities PROGRAM BENEFITS
ELIGIBILITY
HHMI’s EXROP Program is open to undergraduate students who are (i) from racial, ethnic, and other underrepresented groups in the sciences.
Two hundred sixty-five of the 555 EXROP alumni who have earned a baccalaureate degree have gone on to graduate programs.
