Fischell Institute Welcomes Five Summer Research Interns

The Fischell Institute welcomed a new cohort of five summer research interns for 2025, selected from a competitive pool of more than 100 applicants. Interns gain hands-on research experience and guidance on their careers while working on unique projects in Fischell Institute-affiliated labs.

In Fischell Institute Director Bill Bentley’s Biomolecular and Metabolic Engineering Lab are Noah Cauchi, a rising senior in computer engineering at UMD, and Joshua Dayie, a rising senior in chemical engineering at UMBC. Cauchi is working with lab member Ben Wu, a fourth-year bioengineering doctoral candidate, on a project using vision language models, an artificial intelligence technology similar to ChatGPT, to interpret electrochemical data.

Dayie is collaborating with lab member Alex Compean, a third-year chemistry doctoral student, to regulate pyocyanin—a pigment made by some bacteria that helps it communicate and respond to stimuli—biosynthesize using an electric signal, with the goal of influencing a key enzyme in the pathway to ultimately change how bacteria behave at the population level.

Kaitlyn Ro, a rising junior in bioengineering, joins Fischell Institute Fellow and Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) professor Greg Payne’s lab to study oxidative stress in relation to the gut-brain axis to generate systems-level measurements that can help to understand interactions between diet and mental health.

In Department of Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor and Fischell Fellow Davis McGregor’s Manufacturing Intelligence Research and Advanced Geometry Evaluation (MIRAGE) Lab, Christine Needham, a rising senior in bioengineering, is leveraging artificial intelligence to design additively manufactured lattice structures with functionally varying stiffnesses, for use in prosthetic interfaces—where prosthetics attach to a body part—and orthotics. These foam replacements offer patient-specific interfaces that can conform to the body, reducing pressure points and improving patient comfort and outcomes.

Rising chemical and biomolecular engineering senior Robert Ballentine will work in Affiliate Fellow and Department of Biology Professor Ricardo Araneda’s lab, researching neuronal plasticity in the olfactory system in a model of early life adversity by quantifying changes in excitability in principal neurons of the olfactory bulb in socially isolated animals.

Published June 20, 2025