As an alumnus of the DHS Scholarship and Fellowship Program, you offer exceptional skills that can help Sandia extend its legacy of providing science, engineering, technology, and analysis solutions to some of the toughest challenges confronting our nation.
At Sandia, you’ll be joining a team of exceptional people working on exceptional problems that threaten our homeland security. Like putting an end to suicide bombers. And creating smarter ways to detect WMD before they’re deployed. And collaborating with a larger group working on such projects as developing low-carbon transportation options that help address environmental and fuel supply issues.
Discover what these DHS Scholars have to say about Sandia, and learn more about our career opportunities that match your talents and expertise. Also, view the DHS Scholar opportunities at Sandia’s California and New Mexico sites for summer 2008.
Kaycie Butler
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Biochemisty
“My internship was fantastic. It was perfectly suited to my academic and professional interests, my mentor was great, and the work atmosphere at Sandia is exemplary. An overall amazing summer, and I will recommend it to others searching for a quality internship. My mentor gave me the freedom to explore my project and take it in my own direction. He gave me the freedom to make mistakes, which greatly increased my abilities as a chemist. He also was always around if I needed something or always willing to offer suggestions when I was stuck.”
Kaycie’s Sandia Project
Blocked isocyanates are isocyanate derivatives that regenerate their functionality and can react with a polyol upon the addition of heat or a catalyst. In the search for a blocking agent that would catalytically deblock at room temperature, a series of blocked isocyanates has been synthesized. By monitoring the progress of these reactions using TLC and NMR, the lowest deblocking temperatures for these different blocking agents have been determined. Catalysts used for the synthesis of polyurethane foams have been tested for the deblocking reaction as well, and all successfully deblocked imidazole-blocked isocyanates at room temperature. Other blocked isocyanates are not deblocked at room temperature, but show considerably lowered deblocking temperatures upon the addition of the catalyst.
Jaime Horton
University of Hawaii
Cellular and Molecular Biology
“My mentor was easily approachable and I gained quality information from my interactions with her. The internship experience was very beneficial to my overall career development.”
Jaime’s Sandia Project
The innate immune system represents the first line of defense against microbial pathogens. In this system, sentry cells detect pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) using membrane proteins called Toll-like receptors (TLRs). Activation of a TLR sets in motion a signal transduction cascade that regulates the host cell’s response to the pathogen and also activates the acquired immune system. This project focused on the TLR4 signaling network and its role in regulating the key effector molecules, specifically inflammatory cytokines, produced in response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation. Using murine macrophage cells as a model host system, we obtained semi-quantitative information via single cell flow cytometric analyses of intracellular TNFα and IL-6 production using the transport inhibitor brefeldin A. In addition, we demonstrated for the first time that brefeldin A does not adversely affect surface marker expression or downstream protein phosphorylation.
Jay Sy
Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University
Biomedical Engineering
“I was quite impressed by the breadth of the research at Sandia. Regarding employment following completion of my PhD, the summer experience definitely bumped up working at a national lab, especially Sandia. Overall, the fact that I had a very scientifically productive summer made this internship very beneficial.”
Jay’s Sandia Project
We have integrated a fluorescence-activated cell sorter that deflects cells using optical tweezers into a microfluidic device. In this work, we investigate the viability, activation state, and passivation of mouse macrophages after millisecond exposure time of high power infrared laser light. Our data show that viability is maintained (>80% viability) in both the short and long term. Traditional flow cytometry confirms that optical tweezing does not activate macrophages as measured by the phosphorylation of ERK, an indicator of the macrophage activation state. In addition, macrophage response to an LPS challenge was not affected by the laser, thus ruling out potential passivation. These data confirm that cell sorting using photonic forces remains a viable and powerful technique for lab-on-a-chip applications.
Kevin Fairbanks
Georgia Institute of Technology
Computer Science
“The Cyber Defenders Institute has a good program with work that is meaningful. I liked it, as well as the whole Sandia National Lab environment. My mentor was great. I don’t know that you can get much better. He almost always had an open door and I never felt as if I couldn’t now ask a question. I completely enjoyed the experience. I just wish I had more time to spend at Sandia and work on some of the projects.”
Kevin’s Sandia Projects
Network monitoring facilities provide analysts with an overwhelming amount of data on a daily basis. It is impractical to perform manual analysis of these data to look for malicious behaviors. To aid the administrator in this analysis, we implement an information theoretic framework to summarize the behaviors that occur throughout the network topology. Moreover, analysts can query for the most dominant instances of these behaviors, such as the hosts that offer a particular service or the clients that frequent a given web server. HAQ provides the power to fully understand and secure networks in a time-efficient manner.
Greg Sommer
University of Michigan
Mechanical Engineering
“I really enjoyed working in my group. The lab and resources available to me were top-notch and it’s an excellent place to conduct research. My mentor was great to work with. He had me working on a project that was innovative and interesting, as well as related to my research at school. Overall I really enjoyed working at Sandia and could see myself applying for a job here someday. It was a great summer.”
Greg’s Sandia Project
We present a method for establishing and immobilizing well-defined polymer gradients across microchannels. Microscale immobilized pH gradients (μIPGs) were generated in poly(acrylamide) gels for rapid isoelectric focusing, a technique in which analytes are concentrated and separated based on differences in isoelectric point (pI). Focusing is demonstrated with several pI markers and proteins. The approach was also used to produce gels with linearly varying pore size for the separation and analysis of proteins varying by molecular size. Both techniques represent the miniaturization of established macroscale biological assays onto microscale, lab-on-a-chip formats for faster, cheaper, and more efficient analyses.