The biomedical engineering department's BME Industrial Internship Program provides undergraduate biomedical engineering majors an opportunity to obtain practical experience in a corporate setting. Fifty-two students have participated since the program began five years ago.

Last summer, 16 students were placed in 10 companies, including small, start-up companies - like Targeson in Charlottesville and "Big Pharma" companies like Bristol Myers Squibb in Princeton and Boston. The uniqueness of the program is that each project is created specifically for the individual student. Bobbe Nixon, BME's director of internships and corporate outreach, works directly with each company to fit company needs with student strengths and interests.

"Combining practical experience with a strong academic preparation is critical to our mission," said Tom Skalak, chair of the department of biomedical engineering, which is a joint program of the Engineering School and the School of Medicine. Skalak believes the internship program will attract new students to U.Va. and that the experience the program provides students is extremely valuable.

In 2003, The Whitaker Foundation's Industrial Internship Program awarded $180,000 for a three-year grant to Skalak and Nixon. Some of the funds are used as matching funds to reduce student salary costs paid by the company. "It is an attractive opportunity for companies to receive an excellent summer employee and have part of the student salary paid by the grant," said Nixon. This summer, the John J. Barcklow Foundation became an additional sponsor of the BME intern program. In earlier years, student support was made possible through Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology's internship program.

"The internship program creates opportunities for partnerships between students and companies that can create future permanent job opportunities," said Nixon.

Brian Seavey, who graduated in 2004 with a degree in chemical engineering, did an internship over the summer of his junior year with Mikro Systems Inc., a biomedical research company. Seavey's project was to improve a device that takes X-ray images of drugs marked with radioactive isotopes. The device, a pinhole collimator, is used to track the movement of cancer drugs in mice.

Jim Atkinson, vice president of research and development for Mikro Systems, said Seavey accomplished more than expected. "We wanted to get a young, bright person and Brian was the best fit in terms of background and education," Atkinson said. "The collimators we made will produce sharper, better images and have potential applications in nuclear medicine, mammography, and CT scans."

Seavey said his internship was a great experience. "I learned a lot from the real-world perspective, like planning experiments and learning how to be patient when they go wrong," Seavey said.

After the internship, Seavey worked part-time with Mikro Systems during his fourth year of school and during the summer after graduation. Now serving as a Peace Corp volunteer in sub-Saharan Africa, he remains enthusiastic about his internship experience. "Hopefully, one day my research in small-animal imaging will result in cheaper and more precise detection of cancer in humans," he said.

In early September, during a BME Internship Poster Session, this past summer's 16 interns gave brief presentations and prepared posters on their summer's work. More than 60 undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, corporate sponsors and invited guests attended the session.