BME Research Specialist Highlighted in KEYS Internship
BME research specialist Ricky Cordova's first experience with the University of Arizona was a seven-week intensive summer program that allows students to work alongside research professionals. For Cordova, this was the perfect combination of learning opportunities.
Cordova entered the KEYS Research Internship Program, led by the BIO5 Institute, in 2012 as a sophomore at Ironwood Ridge High School. This feat was something to be proud of considering that sophomores only make up 9.4% of all students who have been accepted to the program. Despite his age, Cordova’s KEYS experience proved to be beyond his wildest expectations. He was no longer just a high school student – he was a scientist.
Cordova was assigned to work in the lab of associate BME professor Urs Utzinger, where he studied the use of quantum dots for the detection of colorectal cancer. While waiting for a shipment of research materials that were essential to his intended project, Cordova was assigned to work with various graduate students and research staff. This opportunity gave him unanticipated exposure to the variety of work the entire Utzinger lab was conducting.
Weeks of hands-on experience with multiple experiments allowed Cordova to gain skills like coding and working with electronics in a laboratory setting – skills he might not have gained without the delayed shipment of lab materials for his own project. These diverse skills, along with his work ethic and adaptability, led to him being offered the opportunity to continue working in the Utzinger lab during his final two years of high school.
Today, Cordova has truly come full circle. Seven years after his own KEYS internship, he is a full-time research specialist in the UA Tissue Optics Laboratory. He engages in collaborative projects between BME and the College of Optical Sciences under the direction of Jennifer Barton, director of the BIO5 Institute. He also serves as a mentor to his own KEYS interns.