Internships
Master students are welcome to perform internships in the Cell Biology group. We support master students from the Utrecht University Graduate School of Life Sciences (GSLS). from Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences (MCLS) and Cancer Genomics & Developmental Biology (CG&DB) as well as from other research Master programmes are welcome to apply.
Students from outside the GSLS are welcome to apply for 6-9 months internships or writing assignments, however positions are limited due to the high number of GSLS students.
How to organize an internship at the Cell Biology?
If you are interested in performing an internship in the Cell Biology group, please have a look at the research projects performed in the respectable research groups.
Next, contact the PI responsible for the research you are most interested in. Do this by writing an e-mail, in which you explain your background education, your preference for a minor or major research project, and the anticipated starting date. You will receive an invitation from this PI to meet and discuss the research possibilities.
What will you learn?
You will learn how to plan and carry out an experimental research project on molecular and cellular biology or cellular biophysics. All master students working in Cell Biology group will have their own personal supervisor. This can be a postdoc, a PhD student or a technician. Together with your supervisor you will formulate your own research project: you will be responsible for this part of the research, and you will be a member of the research team of your PI. You will learn the required techniques and receive information about the theoretical background of your research. As a team member you will learn how to present your experimental results and you will take part in the work discussions of your team and of the Cell Biology group. At the end of your internship you will write a report (as a scientific paper) and give an oral presentation of your work.
Example Internships
Internships Kapitein lab
Computational analysis of microscopy images and movies
In the last 20 years technological advancements drastically changed the field of the modern biological microscopy. It became possible to observe and record structures and processes in unprecedented environments, on nanometer scales and at very high rates. Introduction of genetically-encoded fluorescent labels allowed labeling of individual organs, cells and molecules inside living organisms. Recent developments of microscopy techniques made it possible to record in high-resolution and in three dimensions a beating of heart, work of a brain or the development of a whole organism. Currently modern microscopy needs to deal with huge amounts of visual data presented in digital form. The efficient analysis of these data represents an unprecedented challenge.
In our lab we employ a number of microscopy techniques ranging from live confocal 3D to superresolution to study the structure and behavior of proteins at the sub-cellular level in cultured cells and in neurons. Using our setups we can generate data flows of up to 1 Gb per second. These images and movies should be efficiently analyzed. More specifically by analysis we mean development and implementation of algorithms for feature extraction (dots, lines, etc), intensity quantifications, patterns recognitions and visualization of results. To make analysis fast at such big volumes of data, these algorithms needs to be adapted to work on GPU and preferably written in Java. We are looking for an enthusiastic student who would develop software analysis workflow in collaboration with experimental scientists. Programming experience is a requirement and basic knowledge of mathematics and physics is a plus. If you are interested, please e-mail Lukas Kapitein (l.kapitein@uu.nl) or Eugene Katrukha (y.katrukha@uu.nl).
Internship Kole lab
Brain cells store and retrieve information by means of electrical excitability. The primary electrical event underlying the temporal- and rate coding schemes of single neurons is called the action potential. Over the last decade, high-resolution electrophysiological and imaging studies, including the findings from our laboratory (Kole et al., Neuron, 2007; Hallermann et al., Nat Neurosci, 2014), demonstrated that within neurons the action potential initiation site is spatially constrained to the axon initial segment. This unique domain is defined by a dense actin-spectrin filament network anchoring voltage-gated ion channels regulating voltage threshold and integrative properties of neurons. More recent developments in our group focus on newly identified ion channels and the contribution of glial cells to action potential generation. Using live electrophysiological and imaging methods together with high-resolution anatomical and computer simulations we characterize the structure-function relationships of channels and cellular structures and determine their contribution to the computational features of single neurons.
In our group we have a position available for a highly motivated master student, either for a computational or experimental project. Experience with electrophysiological recordings or live imaging would be an advantage but is not required. In the internship, students will be trained in the current physiology techniques. For more information and contact (m.h.p.kole@uu.nl).