Alec Sciutto is a third- year student in the FHC majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Italian. He currently works in Dr. Franca Cambi’s lab studying the role of oligodendrocytes in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease. In the future, he hopes to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience and a career in research studying neuron-glia interactions.
Participating in the Summer Internship Program (SIP) at the National Institutes of Health (SIP) has been instrumental in shaping my desire to pursue a career in neuroscience research. SIP is an 8-week program consisting of an intensive research experience in the lab of an intramural investigator culminating in a final poster session presentation. I came across the NIH SIP during my freshman year while I was looking for summer internships, and my research mentors encouraged me to apply. The Office of National Scholarships was tremendously helpful in me putting together a competitive application. Unlike most summer programs, applications are selected by the investigator you will work with rather than a committee, which I appreciated.
I reached out to around 10 investigators and was interviewed /selected by Dr. Serena Dudek at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). There I studied synaptic plasticity in a distinct subregion of the hippocampus known as CA2. Working on this project strengthened my understanding of hippocampal anatomy, which I have found immensely helpful not only in my ongoing research at Pitt but also in my neuroanatomy class. The breadth of resources and facilities that NIEHS offers fosters a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment where I was able to learn about scientific research even beyond my own project. For instance, I had the opportunity to observe techniques in spatial transcriptomics and electrophysiology, which represent fields of neuroscience that were previously unfamiliar to me. I also participated in a statistics journal club where we met to discuss best statistical practices in the biological sciences, and I have found this improved my ability to analyze papers with statistical rigor and has been helpful in the process of making my own figures for publication.
My experiences outside of the lab were equally as special as those in it. Moving to a new city alone for the summer can be daunting, especially as a freshman, but my coworkers welcomed me into the lab with open arms and took me to baseball games, trivia nights, game nights, and made me feel at home. I am truly so lucky to have spent the summer learning from and having fun with such an amazing group of people. While I gained valuable technical and conceptual skills in neuroscience from this experience, I, perhaps more importantly, learned that scientific research is about collaboration, community, and that a career in neuroscience research was the right path for me.