Presenter: Sapna David, Public Health Science, Global Public Health Scholars
This past summer I interned at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, specifically the Structural Biology lab which is managed by Dr. Gordon Joyce. During my time at the lab, I shadowed my mentors Dr. Agi Hadjuckzi and Dr. Wei-hung Chen, performing various lab practices such as column chromatography and protein purification. This was all done in order to study antibody interactions of sharks to see if they could potentially be used in a human vaccine against COVID-19. This connects to public health because COVID-19 is still very much prevalent and there are countries that are yet to receive an effective vaccine. I was able to build upon previous lab skills as well as learn new ones, such as Octet binding assay. I was able to see an overlap of marine sciences and epidemiology which I had never seen a connection there before.