LHSI Intern: Research Internship in Systems Immunology of Malaria Infection and Vaccination

Program Summary:  

This internship is offered as a part of the Life-Health Sciences Internship Program (LHSI). This program connects 125 IUI undergraduates per year with internships on campus with faculty and staff in a variety of health and science related campus areas/programs. All LHSI internships start in August 2025 and end in May 2026 and are paid $13/hour for up to 10 hours per week. Work-study is accepted but not required. 

Supervisor: Tuan M. Tran

Department/Office: Medicine; Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases

Overview of the internship site: Malaria remains a major global public health threat with renewed relevance in the United States as both international travel and the probability of warmer temperatures continue to rise. Thus, there is a need to understand the human immune response to this potentially fatal parasite infection to develop better therapeutic strategies and more effective vaccines. We use systems biology to better understand the human immune response against malaria parasites,  chiefly <i>Plasmodium falciparum</i>, with the overarching goal of identifying immunological features that can predict protection from malaria infection and disease. We do this in the context of both naturally acquired and vaccine-induced immune responses and leverage well-designed human cohort studies to do so. Our lab members perform laboratory benchwork to generate the high dimensional -omics data, the computational analyses needed to visualize and interpret the data, and the corroborating experiments to validate the hypotheses generated from this results. Identifying key host features that reliably correlate with protection against malaria will faciliate the development of benchmarks for evaluating the efficacy of next-generation malaria vaccines. 

Website for more information: https://www.tranmalarialab.org

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: The intern can choose to be involved with any or all of the following duties that our lab routinely conducts:

• Assist with sample organization and processing to be sent for assays done by collaborating labs
• Become familiar with the biology of the malaria parasite as it relates to human disease
• Learn how to design scientific experiments to address specific hypothesis and ensure rigor of data
• Learn and conduct standard molecular and immunological procedures and assays
• Become familiar with generating and processing high-dimensional data from experiments for analysis
• Become familiar with R programing
• Clean and process high-dimension datasets using R
• Basic analysis of data using R

Work Environment and Dress Code: The work is performed primarily in a lab setting and an office setting; with dress code casual, long pants, closed-toe shoes, lab coat if doing benchwork.

Hours per week: 10; Lab and 1:1 meetings would be within work hours; non-lab based work can be outside regular work hours; anticipate 10 hours/week

Project-specific qualifications: 

• Qualities: Attention to detail, Maturity (promptness, courteous towards peers), Effective communication, Integrity
• Background knowledge: Basic molecular biology, Basic genetics, Motivation to learn immunology
• Optional skills that would be very helpful: Prior programming experience (Python, Java, etc) that would help the intern learn R

By the end of the LHSI program, you will:

• Carefully consider, explore, and articulate your career goals, including an analysis of how you arrived at that path and what steps you need to take next. (Community Contributor, Communicator)
• Understand your role and strengths on a professional team and analyze who you would like to become as a professional. (Communicator)
• Gain and strengthen skills relevant to next steps after graduation, such as communication, collaboration, teamwork, analysis/synthesis/evaluation, independence, confronting/challenging failure, problem-solving and perseverance, and constructive criticism. (Problem Solver, Communicator)
• Convey ideas and knowledge effectively through an ePortfolio and presentation of your internship work. (Problem Solver, Communicator)
• Set and meet your own additional learning goals identified with your supervisor.

LHSI Qualifications  

• must be graduating May 2027 or after (usually a current freshman or sophomore in Spring 2025)
• Current full-time IUI undergraduate
• minimum overall GPA of 2.0
• All majors welcome

To apply:

LHSI accepts at least 125 interns per year. Complete the application for LHSI at go.iu.edu/lhsi and select 3-4 internship sites on that application. All available sites are listed in Handshake and will start with the position title “LHSI Intern.” You will meet with at least 2 of these if selected for interviews.