Penn State graduate students Natalie Ford and Mackenna Yount will spend this summer engaging in hands-on research with industry experts at the Hilden, Germany, headquarters of QIAGEN, a global leader in biotechnology for life sciences diagnostics, equipment and research.
They are the latest interns for a program launched in early 2024 through a formal partnership agreement between world leaders in the microbiome sciences: QIAGEN and the One Health Microbiome Center (OHMC) at Penn State. This multi-layered partnership spans research, education and collaborative outreach projects, focused on building and strengthening industry-academia alliances. Ford and Yount will be the fifth and sixth interns in this program, continuing a three-year summer tradition between the OHMC and QIAGEN.
Both Yount and Ford are trainees supported by the Biotechnological and Integrative Opportunities in Microbiome Sciences (BIOMS) training program, a National Institutes of Health-funded predoctoral training program operated by the OHMC.
Ford and Yount will undertake a six-week internship at the QIAGEN Microbiome Products Research and Development (R&D) Laboratory. During their time in Hilden, Ford and Yount will embed with industry experts to gain in-depth experience and product development in molecular diagnostics and assays, as well as learn about the broader R&D pipeline. The interns will also learn new laboratory techniques and skills that they can bring back to Penn State and apply to their own research.
"I'm really looking forward to learning how ideas become products, and how that process can make research more accessible and impactful," said Ford, a doctoral student in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology with a dual title in microbiome sciences. "This internship will help me better understand how industry research can shape the future of microbiome science."
Ford, advised by Associate Professor Francisco Dini Andreote, studies how environmental stressors affect soil bacteria and subsequently their interactions with plants. She is interested in understanding how multiple stressors might simultaneously act to alter an ecosystem and how the microbial ecosystems respond.
Yount, a doctoral student in the College of Agricultural Sciences' Department of Food Science with a dual title in microbiome sciences advised by Associate Professor Jasna Kovac, focuses her work on Listeria monocytogenes, a foodborne pathogen which can be difficult to remove from food processing environments due to its biofilm-forming abilities.
"The Qiagen internship will give me an experience to really see what that looks like and an opportunity to transfer my skills to an R&D setting," Yount said. "I am looking forward to meeting the group in Germany and I'm excited to see the research that I do contribute to QIAGEN products."
According to Seth Bordenstein, OHMC director and professor of biology and entomology and Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Microbiome Sciences, the OHMC-QIAGEN internship program is a flagship component of the industry collaboration as it addresses a critical gap in graduate-level professional development, namely providing experiential training at the interface of academic microbiome research and industry application. This internship opens new avenues for career exploration by exposing trainees to the translational potential of microbiome science, Bordenstein explained. By bridging academic training with industry experience, the program aims to equip participants with a broader skill set and a clearer understanding of diverse career trajectories in the microbiome field.
"The future of microbiome science depends on scientists who can speak the languages of both discovery and industry," Bordenstein said. "Our partnership with QIAGEN provides a unique trajectory for students to become leaders: they move beyond the lab and their own data into a collaborative, industry community. This hands-on experience with cutting-edge diagnostics and assay development ensures our researchers are at the forefront of the combined biotechnological and microbiome revolution."
About the OHMC
As one of the largest and most active units in the field, the OHMC is on a global mission to define the future of health and build a legacy of contributions that promote the general welfare of humans, agriculture and the environment. Learn more on the OHMC website.
