Our latest cohort of summer interns have started at the Appalachian Laboratory!  Eight undergraduate interns started their summer of learning by participating in orientation on May 29-31. Interns completed safety training and onboarding tasks and participated in various team-building activities with graduate student mentors, including a scavenger hunt at Finzel Swamp Preserve. Please join us in welcoming them to the UMCES community!

To help us get to know them better, we asked each intern to answer the following questions for us:

1. Where are you currently attending school and what are you studying?
2. Who is your AL mentor?
3. What is your favorite hobby?
4. When you were in elementary school, what did you want to be when you grew up?
5. What topic could you give a 15-minute presentation about with no advance preparation?
6. What is the best concert you have ever experienced?
7. How many different states have you lived in?
8. What is the best thing to have happened to you over the past week?

Quinton Browne

1. I just completed my Bachelor’s at Frostburg State in Biology with a Chemistry minor.
2. My mentor is Sarah Endyke, and I am working on stable hydrogen isotope analysis of barred owl feathers.
3. I am very interested in ceramics and enjoy throwing.
4. I desperately wanted to become a paleontologist.
5. Erotics in High Renaissance Depictions of Martyrdom.
6. The second time I saw the Mountain Goats I had literally been broken up with (by someone I had been dating for 5 years) fewer than 24 hours previously. I will never recapture that specific emotional state.
7. One, though I did also work in Nebraska for a summer.
8. Sitting in on various lab meetings where I get to listen to interesting people talk about the exciting work they’re doing.

Nick Caceres

1. I am attending school at Purdue University in Indiana (Boiler Up!) and am studying Industrial Engineering.
2. I am currently being co-mentored by Dr. Xin Zhang and Dr. Sarah Garvey and I plan to help them with everything they have going on at NICCEE.
3. My favorite hobbies are playing guitar and going on runs in parks around the area I live.
4. When I was in elementary school I wanted to be a soccer star in Europe until I realized I enjoyed helping people more.
5. I could give a 15 min. presentation on anything about guitar or the scientist Galileo.
6. The best concert I have experienced so far is watching a band called Royal Blood in Indianapolis with opening act Bad Nerves (both British rock bands and both were amazing).
7. I have lived in 4 different US states (Connecticut, Minnesota, Maryland, and Indiana).
8. The best thing to have happened besides being able to participate in NICCEE’s summer institute this week is getting to catch up with friends at a pool party as I hadn’t seen them since the start of the school year.

Liv Childs

1. I’m going to Frostburg State University with a major in Emerging Media (previously known as Mass Communication) and a focus in video production.
2. My supervisor at AL is Katie Kline, and we are working together to create a series of safety videos focused on eye safety in the lab.
3. I’m indecisive and can’t choose a favorite hobby. I enjoy listening to music, editing videos, playing video games, and collecting various things.
4. When I was a kid, I really wanted to grow up to be a famous singer.
5. I could probably give a 15-minute presentation on my favorite video game series, The Legend of Zelda, with no preparation in advance. I’ve been playing the games since I was six years old.
6. The best concert I’ve ever experienced was when I went with my friends to see my favorite EDM DJ, Seven Lions, for my birthday in 2018.
7. I’ve lived in four different states. (Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Florida)
8. In the past week, I’ve booked my flight for a weekend vacation coming up and am really excited about it.

Anna Cullen

1. Allegany College of Maryland ~ Forest Technology
2. Joely DeSimone and Brian Tsuru are my mentors. I am helping with vegetation plot surveys at the Powdermill Avian Research Center and organizing flight call data as well!
3. Anything artistic, but mostly sculpting.
4. A large animal veterinarian.
5. Anything about trees or forested systems.
6. The 1975
7. Just Maryland!
8. I had a hummingbird take off from my hand after being caught and banded.

Rob Knotts

1. I’m currently attending Frostburg State University studying Computer Science in the 4+1 program for both my graduate and undergraduate degrees.
2. My (co)mentors this summer are Tan Zou and Xin Zhang, and I plan to work on, among other things, a user-friendly interactive dashboard for viewing agricultural nitrogen statistics.
3. My favorite hobby is tinkering with/building computers.
4. When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an artist.
5. I could give a 15-minute talk about the Godzilla franchise without any advance prep.
6. The best concert I’ve ever experienced is no concert, I’ve never actually been to one.
7. I’ve lived in 3 states, Maryland, Virginia, and Arizona.
8. The best thing that happened to me over the past week has been meeting everyone in the program/at the lab, and getting to know them.

Jay Miller

1. I currently attend Frostburg State University and am studying computer science, with a minor in cyber security.
2. My AL mentor is Dr. (Matt) Fitzpatrick and I have begun working on learning the coding language R. This will help me in importing data samples from the Arctic Ocean, and creating a visualization of this data and its change (if any).
3. My favorite hobby is fishing.
4. When I was in elementary school I wanted to be an actor and some type of game developer. I still plan to do both!
5. I could give a 15-minute presentation on why cars from the years 1960-1979 were the greatest cars to ever be made with no preparation.
6. I have only ever been to one concert and it was a “Smash Mouth” one in Morgantown, WV.
7. I have lived in 3 different states.
8. The best thing to have happened to me in the past week was that I started at the Appalachian Laboratory!

Maddy Painter

1. I recently graduated from Allegany College of Maryland with an Associate’s Degree of Applied
   Science in Forest Technology and am now entering as a junior at West Virginia University, my
   major being in Forestry with a concentration in Forest Management.
2. My AL mentor is the awesome graduate student Sarah Roth, who is mentored by Dr. Mark
   Cochrane. This summer we plan on working in both the field and here at the lab to gather data
   that gives more insight into the use of fire on the landscape and how plant life is expected to
   react beneath the forest canopy.
3. I do a lot of theater productions in the local area, mostly in Cumberland! In my spare time, I
   enjoy doing anything outdoors.
4. I wanted to be a marine biologist!
5. Probably different fire dependent ecosystems around the U.S! Or maybe the history of Forestry?
   Something along those bounds.
6. Elton John in Pittsburgh!
7. Just Maryland! Born and raised!
8. Getting to socialize with students, interns, and faculty of all kinds, I love hearing about all their
   projects and what they do here at AL!

Jules Schmitt

1. I am currently attending Frostburg State University pursuing my BS in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology.
2. My AL mentors are Sarah Endyke and Dr. Dave Nelson. I will be working in Dr. Nelson’s Stable Isotope Ecology lab, studying the movement of free-tailed bats using hydrogen isotopes.
3. My favorite hobby is hiking. I love any activity that gets me outside enjoying nature, so hiking is perfect for me.
4. I wanted to be a veterinarian!
5. I could probably talk about river otters for a good amount of time, maybe more than 15 minutes.
6. haven’t been to many concerts, but I did see The Travelin’ McCourys at Delfest in Cumberland MD one time. They were great and it was just a super fun experience.
7. I’ve only ever lived in Maryland.
8. I’d have to say starting this internship and learning about the research I’ll be helping with. It’s also been super fun getting to know the other interns.