Every summer, the Moncrief Undergraduate Internship Program welcomes a handful of students from all over the country to conduct research alongside the faculty of the Oden Institute. During this ten week program, interns delve into the cutting edge of computational science and engineering.
This summer’s Moncrief Interns are computationally modeling heart disease, using AI to predict tumor growth, exploring the foundations of predictive decision making, automating machine learning model development, and more.
“I knew I wanted to push myself this summer, so I began to look for internships that seemed interesting to me,” said Caroline Brutocao who is a psychobiology major at UCLA. “Immediately, the Moncrief Internship caught my eye. The ability to work directly with UT faculty was unlike anything I had seen in any other program.”
Caroline arrived in Austin on June 5th just in time to take part in an Oden Institute tradition: Coffee Hour in the Faculty Lounge.
In the weeks since then, Caroline and her fellow interns have been taking part in weekly workshops, panels, a fieldtrip to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC,) and socials, in between immersing in research.
“I am working under Dr. Michael Sacks doing cardiovascular modeling and simulation. I cannot believe that I get to be a part of such amazing and unique work.”
While Caroline has been modeling the heart, Jessica Lozoya has been looking into the homogenization of complex microstructure using FFT.
“I actually came across Moncrief a few days before the deadline and spontaneously decided to apply and am actually so grateful I did!” enthused Jessica who is a math major at St. Edward’s University. “Everyone has been so kind and welcoming.”
The young researcher’s new friends made sure to pull her away from her work with Dr. Berkin Dortdivanlioglu on developing advanced computational models and physics-based simulation techniques long enough to celebrate her birthday - one of four Moncrief Intern birthday parties this summer.
