When she was in high school, Sumedha Reddy Sudini went on a field trip in which her class toured the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology.

The lab, located near her hometown in Hyderabad, India, does work in structural, stem cell and molecular biology.

"I was just in grade eight or nine, so it was all intriguing for me," says Sudini, a fourth-year biology student at Northeastern University. "It was all new and fascinating."

Sudini always knew she wanted a career in science. So in high school, she reached out to the center and inquired about doing an internship there, but it didn't have positions for high school students.

But Sudini didn't forget about the lab.

After doing a clinical co-op at Northeastern, she took a lab course and decided she wanted to do a co-op in a similar setting to build up her research skills. When it came time to apply for co-ops, she remembered her trip to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology. She looked into the lab and found out it was doing work that interested her, so she reached out about doing her co-op there. The lab only had summer internships, but they were able to create a position for her.

The lab's work was appealing to Sudini, particularly the stem cell research on developing immunotherapies that can be used to treat certain types of cancer.

"I lost my sister to cancer, so when I read about that (work), it was something I wanted to learn more about," she says.

While on co-op, Sudini spent her time doing research in cellular molecular biology, working specifically on a study designed to see how oxidative stress affects the expression of specific proteins in cells. This is important for understanding the metabolic process.