Venkata Kalavacherla: Wonderful internship experience at MD Anderson as part of the CATALYST Summer Training Program

Venkata Kalavacherla, Student at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, shared on LinkedIn:

“This summer, I had a wonderful internship experience at MD Anderson Cancer Center as part of the CATALYST Summer Training Program.

I was a part of Therapeutics Discovery and Development Division in Translational Biology.

The internship ended with a great opportunity to showcase my research work on drug inhibitions targeting interactions of tumor proteins in some cancers, as part of the Poster Symposium.

How exciting it is to meet the scientist who is in your references section!?

I had a great opportunity to interact with Michael Andreeff and his team during my poster session. He is actually the inventor of the drug I used for my study, and I felt highly inspired to learn about his findings.

I am deeply grateful to Erika Suzuki and Ziheng Chen for their impeccable mentorship and their encouragement to have a knack for innovation.

Their expertise in the Drug Discovery in Cancer Research is very inspiring and the zeal they have to clarify all my doubts often during our one-on-one sessions enhanced my learning experience.

Mehak Raina made sure I got acclimatized to the team and helped a great deal in the lab.

A special thanks to everyone in TRACTION, TDD Platform, the CATALYST team, and the fellow interns for this experience that I am going to cherish throughout my career.

I shall not forget to mention Jerome for his unwavering support right from the onboarding process till the end!

My deep gratitude to the University of Houston-Clear Lake, and M. Bazlur Rashid for giving me allowances to pursue my dream internship through the Practicum course this summer.

Overall, as I wrap up this summer, I shall take all my professional learnings with pride and honour to be able to contribute my bit to Cancer Research.

I am hopeful and eager to see how I can apply this experience in my next steps.”

Source: Venkata Kalavacherla/LinkedIn