My first week at Mayo Clinic was incredibly exciting! It all began with getting my ID picture taken and meeting my site supervisor, Dr. Erik St. Louis, along with my research teammates. A pleasant surprise was meeting Makayla Kelleher, a ‘23 Cornell alum who did this internship two years ago and now works as a Research Assistant.
Our research team includes interns from different universities: Laura McLees, also from Cornell, two students from Boulder University in Colorado, one from Carleton College in Minnesota, and two more interns from St. Olaf expected next week. We quickly introduced ourselves, shared our interests and majors, and hit it off right away.
The first day was particularly thrilling with a shadowing experience just a few hours after we started. Shadowing Dr. St. Louis in a case related to our research on REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) was fascinating and became a great reference point during the subsequent lectures.
Throughout the week, we attended lectures to deepen our understanding of RBD from a physiological perspective. The main goal of this internship is to gain competence in sleep scoring. For those unfamiliar, sleep scoring helps define sleep stages and identify any sleep-related disorders, particularly in the brain. This is achieved using technology such as sensors and software. Dr. St. Louis even showed us how scoring was done on paper in the past, providing a glimpse into the history of sleep research.
Here is an example of an old sleep scoring record:
Dr. St. Louis also took us to three different talks at Mayo, covering current research in the publication phase and global topics like AI. These talks were incredibly informative and helped us get accustomed to the research field's culture. We also had a journal club discussion about a paper Dr. St. Louis assigned, which deepened our understanding of sleep medicine techniques.
Later in the week, I finally received my ID badge. I couldn't resist taking a mirror selfie to celebrate being able to use the Mayo staff elevators and access staff-only areas. I felt a boost of confidence walking around with my badge (hahaha).
Here is my picture with the badge:
To wrap up the week, my teammates and I went out for dinner. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture, but it was a fantastic time to bond and recharge for the coming week, which promises to be packed with more scoring practice and learning opportunities. I can't wait to continue this journey with my amazing team!