Careers - Internship Program

The Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine is a globally recognized center of scientific research, led by Dr. Claire M. Fraser. IGS scientists apply the powerful tools of genomics and bioinformatics to biomedical and environmental challenges, and collaborate with world-renowned researchers in immunology, virology, infectious disease, and epidemiology.

Our internship program provides opportunities for students at all levels to participate in IGS research. Interns are matched to a faculty or senior staff member who is working on projects most suited to the intern's area of interest.

If you are interested in being part of the cutting edge research at IGS, please fill out and submit the internship application form. We will review your areas of interest and skills and contact you if we are able to make a match with one of our available opportunities. Please bear in mind that we have more applicants who wish to work with us than we have available internship positions so only a subset of applications will result in placement.

Please click on the three areas of research below to learn more about our internship research opportunities:

Bioinformatics is the application of information technology to biological data, typically using computational and statistical techniques to better understand complex data. The Informatics Resource Center (IRC) at IGS provides annotation and analysis of genomic data for projects locally and internationally, using state-of-the-art computational infrastructure. The IRC has developed and maintained several tools and pipelines to facilitate research. IRC scientists are contributing to research in infectious disease, epidemiology, vaccine development, cancer genomics, evolutionary analysis, systems biology, the human microbiome and many other areas.

  • Analysis Activities
  • Genome functional annotation and curation
  • Gene prediction and gene model curation
  • Comparative genomics analysis
  • Biological ontology development
  • Assessment of new tools
  • Assessment of new evidence sources for annotation
  • Epigenetics analysis
  • Analysis of transcriptome data
  • Engineering Activities
  • Web page development
  • Development of new annotation or analysis tools
  • Incorporation of new tools into annotation pipelines
  • Development of visualization and editing tools for genomic data

The Genomics Resource Center (GRC) is a high-throughput laboratory and data analysis group supporting the scientific programs of IGS and its research collaborators. The GRC occupies custom-designed BSL-2 research space within the newly completed BioPark II facility. With state of the art instrumentation and extensive expertise in sequencing and analysis, the GRC provides high quality, cost-effective sequence data production and analysis services.

  • Whole genome sequencing
  • Human exome sequencing
  • Transcriptome sequencing
  • Environmental and organismal metagenomic sequencing
  • High-throughput PCR methods
  • Sequence data assessment and validation
  • Comparative sequence alignment
  • Genome sequence assembly
  • Genomic database and software pipeline development

The Biological Research Groups at IGS are led by faculty members of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and encompass a number of exciting topics in the field of genomics. This cluster of highly interactive research groups has bioinformatics as a unifying theme, and most groups use both computational and wet lab techniques in their research. The goals of each internship, and well as the methodologies used, will reflect the intersection of the research group priorities with the student's strengths and interests.

  • Microbiome composition in health and disease—respiratory tract, digestive system, uro-genital tract, and more
  • Metagenomics of infectious diseases
  • Role of mobile genetic elements in human disease
  • Role of lateral gene transfer in disease and vaccinology
  • Genetic correlates of pathogenicity—Borrelia, Chlamydia, E. coli, Shigella, Salmonella, and more
  • Vaccinology and reverse vaccionology of bacterial and eukaryotic pathogens
  • Comparative genomics of eukaryotic pathogens - fungal infections, malaria, East Coast fever, babesiosis, and more
  • Genome evolution in host-pathogen interactions
  • Plant genomics and epigenomics towards crop improvement