Summer 2025 Interns Welcomed

Summer 2025 Interns Welcomed

On June 2nd, the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation welcomed six undergraduate interns for the summer.  

The competitive interview process saw many applicants from various colleges and majors for the ten-week paid roles. “Leveraging the time in summer to expand skills is so beneficial for students. We are proud to be able to welcome six students this year, who will help our projects and one of the faculty pilot grant groups to move things forward because of their strong skills as students and developing researchers,” shared Dr. Karen K. Guiliano, MBA, RN, FAAN, Center Co-Director. 

The students will work on center projects in nurse-engineer teams with weekly research team meetings and professional development through scheduled training sessions and presentations. “We offer a unique opportunity to apply skills from the classroom to real-world situations where innovative thinking is encouraged and supported. We are excited to see what the summer brings with them as part of our team,” shared Dr. Frank Sup, Center-Co-Director.   

 

  Students are working on several projects including:   

  • Workarounds in the nursing environment and how innovation can create improvements to how tasks are completed that will be more beneficial than an “in the moment” workaround currently used.   

  • Training a robot to manipulate and handle medical supplies to automate tasks that support nurses.  

  • Prototyping a noise identification system used in a hospital setting to better understand sounds and their possible impact on patients’ care and healing environment.  

  • Organizing medial supply closets using tracking barcodes and robots. The robots are trained to retrieve objects using the tracking system and their trained understanding of each object’s weight, packaging, and other factors to ensure sterility and safety are maintained   

  • Using nursing and engineering to perform an analysis of qualitative farming and gardening data, comparing the Western Massachusetts region to other areas in Massachusetts and the US, to explore the effects of climate change and environment on local farms.   

 

 Summer 2025 Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation Interns and their Majors:   

  • Bryanna Breault ‘26, Nursing   

  • Aayush Rahul Deherkar ‘28, Computer Science  

  • Rose Giglio ‘27, Biomedical Engineering & Commonwealth Honors student  

  • Maya Mawla ‘27, Nursing & Commonwealth Honors student  

  • Marco Vital ‘28, Mechanical Engineering & Commonwealth Honors student  

  • Nell Woolfolk ‘26, Biomedical Engineering  

 

The interns will be guided by:  

  • Center Co-Directors and faculty - Dr. Frank Sup (Engineering) and Dr. Karen K. Giuliano, MBA, RN, FAAN (Nursing and Institute for Applied Life Sciences) 

  • Center Senior Advisor and Professor Emerita – Dr. Cynthia Jacelon, RN-BC, CRRN, FGSA, FAAN (Nursing) 

  • Postdoctoral researchers - Dr. Colin Plover, MSN, MPH, MSEd, RN and Dr. Sam Sitole 

  • Doctoral candidates - Kourosh Alimohammadbeik, RN (Nursing); Gina Georgadarellis (Engineering); Hoon Lee (Engineering); Karen Meade, RN (Nursing), and Brenda Nyarko, RN (Nursing) 

  • Dr. C.D. Guzman (Engineering faculty) and Dr. Favorite Iradukunda, RN, FAAN (Nursing faculty) who are co-leads on a Center funded faculty pilot grants: Culture, Climate Change, Farming, and Health Outcomes   

 

The ten-week internship lasts until August 8, 2025. Ongoing updates of students and their progress can be found in the updates shared on EMCNEI LinkedIn and Instagram.

 

06/09/25

 

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