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Photo and story by Jude Gustafson Ludovic Vincent, 2008 BESIP Intern, is an active participant in research going on in the Bioengineering Instrumentation and Multiscale Imaging Laboratory.

Meet Ludovic Vincent

Hailing from San Diego, 2008 Biomedical Engineering Summer Internship Program (BESIP) participant, Ludovic Vincent, will be a senior bioengineering student at the University of Pennsylvania this fall. Despite his undergraduate status, just six weeks into the 10-week program, Vincent seems right at home in the Biomedical Instrumentation and Multiscale Imaging (BIMI) Laboratory on the NIH campus.

According to Vincent, the BESIP program is a unique educational opportunity. As the details of his internship unfold, it is apparent the program is a good fit, and that it's every bit the transitional, transformative experience Vincent hoped for. He explains, "I was ready for a more independent research experience than I got working as an undergraduate lab tech at Penn. The BESIP program has exposed me to problem solving in a technology-driven research and development setting, which is much different than anything I've done previously."

Vincent is certainly not sitting on the research sidelines. With a degree of ownership, he describes his internship project. "The ultimate goal is to develop a microfluidic chip for point of care applications by shrinking a biochemical assay that's currently done in a 96-well plate down to a very small size. We want the chip to process the samples faster, while also making the analysis more robust."

The chip will reveal information about active and past infections, as well as autoimmune responses, by zeroing in on specific antigens "labeled" with an enzyme called luciferase. Additionally, the new chip will impact the bigger logistical health care picture because analysis will be more fully automated and less cumbersome than the current technique, which requires the resources of a central lab facility and two hours to run.

Vincent's BESIP mentor, Nicole Morgan, provides a more technical explanation and history, "We're working on miniaturizing a bioluminescent immunoassay that is based on current technology developed by Dr. Peter Burbelo of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). Burbelo calls it the LIPS (luciferase immunoprecipitation system) assay, and it can be used to probe for a wide variety of diseases. Theoretically, this includes anything that provokes an antibody-derived immune response."

Vincent has been able to work in the BIMI laboratory with a degree of independence that wouldn't be possible without the essential base of learning and skills he developed over the last three years at the University of Pennsylvania. He says, "I've used things I learned in biochemistry, materials science, and fluid dynamics classes, as well as labs I've taken. I've even used a little bit of math."

As Morgan points out, Vincent's internship is much more than simply developing technical skills and crunching data. She adds, "Ludo is also developing the ability to understand the larger research process and the reasoning behind protocols. It varies from field to field, but a lot of times in college, your first experience in a laboratory is working as a technician. Our program hopes to lay the essential groundwork of skills, as well as provide perspectives and concepts necessary for independent research and success in a graduate program."

Vincent agrees, "The BESIP program goes well beyond my university training in that my work involves open-ended problem solving, so I'm developing a broader skill set than I did in my undergraduate labs. It's a great stepping stone between undergrad and graduate work that has helped me decide that I really do want to go for a Ph.D. program. It's really broadened my horizons."

Calculating his strategy, he feels more certain about his academic aspirations, and much closer to a future in research. Looking past academia and a little deeper into the crystal ball, he adds, "In my future research, I want to work in an area that bridges the cellular and tissue levels, but I'd like to get close to medicine without actually being a clinician. I get excited about the bioengineering aspect of research that brings knowledge from different fields together."

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