Dylan Johnson, Amber Pospistle and Alexis Soucy have earned summer research experiences at top German universities as DAAD RISE interns. The DAAD RISE program offers undergraduates in STEM fields an eight to twelve-week paid research internship under the mentorship of doctoral students.
Why it matters: DAAD RISE allows students to gain hands-on experience in their field of study and broaden their cultural understanding. Participating in this high-impact internship can help launch a student’s career in STEM.
Who they are: All three of this year’s recipients are sophomores in the South Carolina Honors College.
- Alexis Soucy is a biological sciences major working as a research assistant at the Early Social
Development lab at the Institute for Mind and Brain. She will spend 10 weeks in Berlin
working on eye movement awareness experiments. Soucy plans to become a doctor and
participate in Doctors Without Borders after graduation.
- Dylan Johnson, a computer science and mathematics double major, will work on a research project
developing multiscale finite element methods at the University of Hamburg. Johnson
is also a recipient of the McNair Scholarship, one of the university’s top undergraduate
scholarships. Johnson aims to become a computational science or high-performance computing
researcher at a government, university or corporate lab.
- Amber Pospistle is studying computational biology as a BARSC major. She is planning a research career applying computational biology tools to study neurological disorders and immuno-oncology. Amber earned the Stamps Scholarship, one of USC’s most prestigious merit-based scholarships, and was recently named a 2023 Goldwater Scholar. Although she declined the DAAD RISE internship, she will be spending her summer conducting research with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Students interested in learning more about the DAAD RISE program or other external funding opportunities for research can contact National Fellowships & Scholar Programs. Students applying for DAAD awards may also receive support from professor Michael Stoeltzner in the College of Arts and Sciences.