New QB3 Biotech Undergraduate Summer Internships program connects students with hands-on work experience

This summer, QB3 at UC Santa Cruz launched the QB3 Biotech Undergraduate Summer Internships program, designed to give students work experience in the biotechnology field. 

QB3 is a nonprofit research and technology institute across UCSC, UC Berkeley, and UC San Francisco. The UCSC branch supports researchers and Bay Area entrepreneurs in launching startup companies and collaborating with industry partners.

The program connects students with paid internships at local biotech companies and UCSC labs. Over 10 weeks, the students engage in full-time, long-term research projects and receive financial support from a $10,000 fellowship.

By working alongside experts in the field and utilizing advanced laboratory facilities, students build their technical and networking skills, preparing them for careers in biotech. 

More than 165 undergraduate students applied for the QB3 internship program. Of the 24 interns selected, 13 were Baskin Engineering students who interned at companies such as Cantata Bio and Capstan Medical.

Two of these students made impactful contributions in the fields of AgTech and genomics—areas in which Baskin Engineering excels in research and technological advancement.

Building a virtual testbed for robots

Interested in the physical side of computer science, Michael Xiong (B.S., Computer Science, ‘25) marked Farm-ng as a top choice for his internship. Farm-ng, based in Watsonville, CA, develops affordable robotics technology to transform the agricultural food system.

“At Farm-ng, we do work related to agriculture, but in order to do things like make a robot perform the way we want, we need computer science skills. This cross-major functionality is what I really enjoy and that’s what made QB3 stand out to me,” Xiong said.

During his internship, Xiong developed a simulation for Farm-ng’s Amiga robot, which is an all-electric micro-tractor designed for agricultural tasks. The simulation is a virtual environment that will allow users to navigate a remote Amiga robot and collect sensory data that mirrors what an actual robot would gather in the field.

Xiong’s tool will serve as a testing ground for software intended to operate on the actual Amiga, allowing Farm-ng to mimic real-world scenarios and assess the software’s performance under different conditions. 

“For now, this will be an internal tool, but in the future, Farm-ng envisions this project to become open-source. So, any customer who uses the real Amiga could use this tool to test their own applications,” Xiong said. 

Reflecting on his internship, Xiong was surprised to gain more than technical skills — he became comfortable with networking and applied what he learned in his classes.

“At school, you learn a theoretical concept, and you do a test on it. Here at work, you’ve got to bring the theoretical knowledge you’ve learned to life. Working at Farm-ng put all my knowledge from school together.”

Now, Xiong plans to leverage this internship and pursue a career in industry after he graduates.

Studying soil metagenomics

Baskin Engineering student Tanvi Damle (B.S., Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics, ‘25) chose RealSeq Biosciences for the opportunity to work in the wet and dry lab. 

During her internship, Damle analyzed soil samples that will serve as a baseline for a long-term ground study.

In the wet lab, Damle extracted samples of DNA and RNA from the soil, performed PCR amplification — a technique used to create copies of DNA segments — and converted this genetic material into a sequencing-ready format, through a process called library preparation. 

Then, Damle helped process, visualize, and interpret this data in the dry lab using bioinformatics tools.

“The bioinformatics part is my major, it’s what I plan to pursue in the future, but the wet lab has always fascinated me. It’s been fun to see how raw samples get turned into figures and data and are used to further analyze things,” Damle said. 

The internship also helped Damle see a wider range of potential career paths.

“I wasn’t aware how large the bioinformatics field is, there are so many different things you could do with a bachelor’s in bioinformatics. I worked very closely with everyone at RealSeq and talked to them about their experiences and career paths. That was a really valuable experience that I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.”

Entering her final year of school, Damle realizes the impact her classes have had on building transferable skills.

“At RealSeq, I’ve been able to use problem-solving skills that I gained from school. I’ve had to be a problem-solver, just like I would when tasked with a coding problem or an assignment in school. I didn’t realize that I’d gained this ability until this internship and I thought, ‘Oh, this is not as daunting as it would have seemed 4 years ago.’”