Emma Figueredo participated in her internship in the summer of 2020 at the Born Global Internship in Boston.
Tell us about your experience. What were your responsibilities?
My role in this company was to research ways that larger companies and businesses could change their practices, making them more fair, efficient, and sustainable. My responsibilities were to look at different problems, and then research how we can overcome them. This involved a lot of group communication and shared documents that we worked on each week.
How has your academic background in neuroscience been useful in your research or work with coral reef systems?
I was familiar with marine biology and environmental science before this experience. I didn’t think I would be using my neuroscience background. When researching coral reef systems, I encountered an organism that used actin and myosin to move and kill off harmful parts of the reef. This played on concepts of cellular movement and pruning which I learned in recent neuroscience and biology classes.
What was the best thing about the experience? What was the worst?
The most rewarding part of the internship was figuring out how the economy and business related to biomimicry. This point was only reached toward the end, especially when we were consulted to help the engineers make their products more appealing to big businesses. It was also rewarding when I saw presentations and made a connection that I couldn’t see on paper but could when it was spoken and explained by my peers. The most challenging part of this internship was the uncertainty that what I was doing was not correct. Initially, I thought there must be a rigorous format and only one right answer. However, I learned that in this growing field, many viable answers need to be pursued.
What advice would you give to another student about making the most of an internship, job, or other career-related experience?
The internship changed my view of the world of business especially because I had never worked with a small business. I’ve seen lots of self-owned businesses and lots of large companies, but never the in-between. This experience may have changed my future career path a bit by making me think about sustainability in the workplace instead of just at home. I hope to find ways to make medicine more sustainable while keeping it safe and practical.
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