Undergraduate Intern - C-SIG Research

Mayo Clinic•Rochester, MN

About The Position

The Mayo Clinic Center for Cell Signaling in Gastroenterology's (C-SiG) mission is to improve understanding of the signaling pathways that control the function of gastrointestinal cells in health and disease. A portion of our C-SiG resources are focused on supporting the development of biospecimen collections related to microbiome research. The human microbiome is a collection of all the microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, eukaryotes, and archeae) that live in and on our bodies. An interesting fact is that because of their small size there are 10 times more bacteria in the average human body, than there are human cells. In general, these microbes are not harmful to us, and they are often essential for maintaining good health. The C-SiG Clinical Core provides services to researchers who are interested in collecting stool samples to characterize the human microbiome in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and analyze its role in human health and disease.

Requirements

Attention to detail is essential while dealing with multiple tasks.
Flexibility is important in adjusting to frequent changes in work volume.
Once trained in you will work relatively independently but will have access to support if you have questions or a new situation you have not encountered arises.

Responsibilities

Performs a variety of clerical and support functions to researchers such as database entry, abstracting of disease diagnosis, performing clinical database searches, guiding participants to where they have their blood drawn, assists with collection of tissues in the endoscopy suites.
Performs various support functions in a research laboratory using proper procedures to avoid the risk of laboratory-acquired infection or sample-to-sample contamination.
Builds stool collection kits; maintains and restocks stool kit supplies; logs stool samples sent to laboratory, stores samples arriving at the laboratory in the freezer, and maintains a computer database and log book.