Listen to Cindy (2020) talk about her work at the Duke K--Lab in sports medicine this past summer.

Transcript: Stephanie: You're listening to Gear up. The Duke Career Centers podcast showcasing real student internship experiences. My name's Stephanie Mayle and today we're talking to Cindy, who interned at a Duke research lab this summer. Oh, yeah. Can you introduce yourself?

Cindy: Sure, I'm Cindy Pan, I'm a current Duke senior. I'm majoring in biology, minoring in chemistry and pursuing a certificate in marine science conservation.

Stephanie: That is a lot of things.

Cindy: Yes!

Stephanie: So where did you work this past summer?

Cindy: This past summer, I had the opportunity to do a research internship at the Mike Krzyzewski Human Performance Center, which is affectionately known as the K Lab. And we test athletes, general population members and other athlete types such as middle schoolers, high schoolers in order to look at their stability, balance and strength for a variety of tasks to get a good grasp on human performance and athletic recovery.

Stephanie: And how did you find out about this position?

Cindy: I initially found out about this position through my physical therapy advisor. She introduced me to the lab, brought me over to visit, and I became interested in their research because it aligned with a lot of my goals as a physical therapist. So I got the opportunity to interview with the P.I. at the lab and eventually got the summer internship for the following summer.

Stephanie: Awesome! And so what were you actually doing day to day, would you say?

Cindy: Right, so I would go into the research lab a couple of days a week it's located at the Duke Center for Living, right next to the surgical center for athletes. So we get a lot of our patients slash research subjects from there. And I would go in and check in to see if there were any research subjects coming in, calibrate our balance in the force plate sensors that we have for the research trials and then help to process using MATLAB any data that we already had or work with the data that's already been collected to organize it.

Stephanie: And did you like it? Did you find it interesting?

Cindy: Oh, yes, I found it very interesting. I loved meeting all of the different athletes and running the tests for them. I got to learn a lot more about different sports and also where injury was most common and what physical therapists and doctors were doing to work to kind of combat these injuries.

Stephanie: And so did you like the culture of the research lab in general? Were you working with any other students or was it mostly researchers and in physical therapies?

Cindy: Yeah, I think we had a really great diversity there.

Cindy: I loved the culture. There was one kind of primary investigator and a lab manager, then the other interns. Some were Duke students, one was from UNC, another one came from NC State and those were all college students. We also had two medical students who were in their third year, which is very exciting because a lot of us were premed and got to ask questions to them. And then for the high school students, I think it was just a great experience to learn more and get hands on experience with research. We also got to interact with other medical students and doctors at our weekly seminars. So we got to hear from the doctors doing firsthand surgery and having those experiences talk through them and present them for us in a seminar setting and just learning from all of the research subjects that came in too.

Stephanie: Well, so were you at all surprised by the work you were doing or was there anything unexpected about it?

Cindy: I was pretty surprised that the work culture was pretty amazing. I got along really well with all of the other interns and seeing them around campus has been really fun from this summer and getting to work with them again, this school semester because I'm staying at the lab for an i