When the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation appeared on the U.S. Naval Academy intranet as an internship option, midshipmen Chase Tabor and Josie Mazzeo jumped at the chance.
Both are chemistry majors with aspirations of being among the 10 or so accepted each year into the Navy’s medical school.
“I had really high expectations coming here, and I wasn’t disappointed,” said Tabor, a native of Frankfort, Illinois, who recently completed OMRF’s John H. Saxon Service Academy Summer Research Program. In the lab of OMRF Vice President of Research Courtney Griffin, Ph.D., Tabor worked on experiments aimed at preventing vision loss caused by blood vessel issues in the eyes.
“I’ve developed research techniques and skills that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise,” said Tabor. “This isn’t something that a lot of people at the academy experience.”
Mazzeo studied meiosis, the type of cell division that creates egg and sperm cells. For her final presentation at OMRF, she created a time-lapse video that tracked the movements of specific spots on the chromosome. Errors during this process can cause birth defects.
“It’s been quite interesting to better understand these processes,” said Mazzeo, who hails from Virginia Beach, Virginia. “These things we talk about in the lab are so different from what we learn in our biology classes.”
“I never cease to be amazed at how professional, mature and serious these students are,” said Griffin, who has hosted eight Saxon Scholars in her lab since the program was inaugurated at OMRF in 2009. “When they come through here, I can’t help thinking how lucky we are as a country to have these people training to be our future military doctors and scientists.”
OMRF Board Member John Saxon III, M.D., created the internship program to honor his father, a West Point graduate and career Air Force pilot who taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy. More than 40 military students from West Point, the Naval Academy and Air Force Academy have now completed the intensive summer research program.
“The cadets in our service academies are the most impressive, committed and dynamic young people America has to offer,” Saxon said. “My father told me that being a West Point graduate opened his future to a world of possibilities. The same thing can be said of these internships at OMRF.”
