Nugen Technologies Incorporated

This review is strictly for NuGEN’s 8-​week summer internship program for college students to explore a career in biotech.
Pros:
— Work individually and with others on projects within your department
— Interact with employees throughout the company
— Lunch ‘n Learn sessions provide once-​weekly brief lecture/​panel style presentations on each facet of the company; lunch is provided
— Paid above minimum wage
— Half-​time hours, so the days are short; if you really need or want the money, you could quite likely fit an afternoon job to get an extra four hours’ wage every day
— Freedom to request exploration in areas outside your assigned department: despite being an Operations intern, my supervisor (s) coordinated to get me in a lab on my last week to be trained on running PCR and bioanalyzing the resulting DNA samples
— Occasional company-​wide BBQ lunches, occasional department-​wide lunches, and donuts or pastries most Thursday mornings
— Knowledgable superiors with varied backgrounds and of varied ages so you can see how people in their 20’s and beyond are getting into the biotech industry
— Helpful superiors with a willingness to teach
— Get a true hands-​on understanding on what kinds of things go on in your assigned department from the ground up
Cons:
— Supervisors tend to be directors, making them understandably quite busy throughout most days which can leave interns with an awkward lull from time to time when projects and assignments get completed
— Day-​to-​day tasks can occasionally be mundane; in an overall week, I would likely get to work in multiple areas, but many full 4-​hour stretches were spent unstapling and scanning documents. It’s not hard work, but sometimes it’s a little underwhelming if you find yourself having to trudge through a stack of papers that might take a few consecutive days of repetitive work
Overall an excellent experience. It is clear they put effort into organizing the internship program so as to maximize what students get out of it. Despite some day-​to-​day tasks being repetitive and mundane, the experience taken as a whole was great because I had the opportunity to hands-​on get a taste for everything that happens in Operations, from QA/​QC to production and manufacturing, document control, facilities management, shipping and receiving, and more. I would highly recommend the program for students with an interest or aptitude in biotechnology and genomics.