Gabe Bernstein

he/him
High School Apprentice
Mosquito Team

How did you get here? What brought you to Tyson?

I was interested in environmental summer programs and asked my chemistry teacher if she knew any. She recommended SIFT to me and now here I am as a TERA. I didn't know how great the TERA and SIFT programs would be because I'm having an awesome time. SIFT started out as a training program and I feel like this is what it's been leading up to. We get to be active participants in real experiments and data collection. Even though I’m used to a more strict professional environment everyone here is very comfortable around each other, which is great if I’m confused about anything, because it doesn’t feel stressful to ask questions.

Why did you choose your specific team?

I picked the Mosquito Team because I've always worked in plant science and I wanted to see what fauna would be like. I really enjoy my medical classes as well, so I thought the interaction between animals and disease vectors would be an interesting combination of what I already know and what's completely new to me. I also didn’t think that many would've picked it, which is kind of ironic because I think a lot of people chose it as their first choice. It's really interesting because you work a lot more with the behavioral aspect than just the experimental design or manual labor of the experiment. I love it so far.

What has surprised you about this summer?

Definitely how cooperative and how fun it is. For one, we all help each other out. During lab meetings, we offer insight into each other's experiments, which is way different than what I'm used to. At another lab I work with, it's a much bigger experiment, but it's extremely developed already. For the lab technicians, even though they might have lots of experience and education, there isn’t a lot they can truly contribute to the experiment besides labor. So this is a lot more like going through the procedures and helping each other out with not only the labor, but the design as well. At this lab, I really like the field work because you get to see both sides of experiments; the field and lab work. Not only that, but all the lab members are also very friendly. We like to hangout and work together and have begun to plan days to go have potlucks and go get ice cream.