Operating Status Summer 2024:

On-site (The internship will be performed entirely at the lab.)

Student Requirements:

Applicants must be U.S. citizens though dual citizens are eligible. Interns must be 18 years of age before the start of the internship. They must also have a driver’s license and their own transportation to the site.

Mission

To develop and evaluate novel products, pesticides, and application technologies to better protect deployed forces from vectors of disease.

About the Lab

NECE delivers force health protection through operational vector surveillance and control to enhance warfighter readiness. The NECE labs conduct tailored, collaborative studies to research, develop, and implement novel technologies which rapidly improve Force Health Protection and global public health through the reduction of vector-borne disease transmission. The lab provides expertise in direct support of NECE's operational activities and other DoD, USG, and academic agencies through cutting-edge genomic analysis and advanced bioinformatics.

What is unique about this lab?

NECE is the only DoD command dedicated to conducted entomology-focused research and is the go-to lab for testing entomology-related products for enhancing force health protection.

About the Internship

Interns in participation with NECE will receive hands-on, empirical experience in supporting projects that directly contribute to the U.S. Navy Entomology Center of Excellence’s mission to improve Force Health Protection and global public health to ensure that the U.S. Navy has the freedom of action to deter aggression, maintain freedom of the seas, and win wars. Summer interns will engage in exciting work that delves into the intricacies of combating arthropod-vectored diseases while developing a keen understanding of working as a STEM professional.

What will I do any given day as an intern at this lab?

Interns participate in lab functions in a number of ways including (but not limited to) assisting mentors with guided research projects; collecting lie arthropods in field settings; surveilling medically important arthropods; job and project shadowing with professional researchers; networking with other interns and STEM professionals; attending technical meetings, seminars and conferences; joining group mentoring sessions, team building workshops, and leadership development programs; participating at outreach events; and other professional development activities.

What majors and disciplines are a good fit for interning at this lab?

The primary fields of interest are:

• Bioinformatics
• Biology
• Entomology
• Environmental Science
• Genomics
• Molecular Biology

What will I learn as an intern at this lab?

Entomology and Environmental Science skills that an NREIP Intern could develop include:

• Identification of medically important insects and other arthropods
• Field collection techniques
• Insect surveillance systems and maintenance of collection equipment
• Training in rapid detection of pathogens using field ready molecular diagnostic equipment
• Analysis of soil, water, and other environmental factors
• Operation of imaging software and data management

What kinds of projects do interns at this lab participate in?

Efficacy of permethrin-treated military uniforms in reducing mosquito biting rates under semi-field conditions: This project aims to evaluate the whole-body protection of permethrin-treated military uniforms. Previous research established the “arm-in-cage” method of evaluating the efficacy of permethrin-treated-uniforms and applied insect repellants. However, these trials were conducted in artificial settings and may over or underestimate levels of protection in the field. This project aims to evaluate protection of the Army and Air Force OCP uniform in a semi-field cage study, which would replicate a more realistic environment experienced by deployed troops and analyze whole-body protection as opposed to single limbs. Current collaborators include NECE and academic partners as part of a Deployed Warfighter Protection (DWFP) program project.

Remote Emerging Disease Intelligence NET-work (REDI-NET): This project is a collaboration with the University of Notre Dame, Naval Medical Research Center, NECE, and academic and industry partners to “develop a collaborative network among domestic and international partnering institutions to address surveillance needs to effectively detect, predict, and contain potentially emergent zoonosis of human relevance and improve the accuracy and timeliness of the ‘data-to-decision’ pipeline.” CY 2022 saw the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2, finalizing all SOP beta testing and training NECE staff on field sampling and sequencing techniques. Phase 2 is still in progress and has resulted in the addition of multiple military installations as sampling site locations, including NS Mayport, NSA Panama City, and MacDill AFB, with many others soon to follow. Phase II also brought in new HJF personnel who serve in both the field and lab on behalf of the project, as well as one new Entomologist, expanding the number of active NECE REDI-NET personnel to four.

Vector Analytica surveillance efforts: With funding procured in August, 2022 NECE personnel in Research and Development, Testing and Evaluation, Global Health Operations, and Operational Support Forces Departments have collaborated to develop and deploy mosquito and tick surveillance software that can be utilized by both PMTs and Entomologists in remote field environments. Current mosquito surveillance results have been used to provide the initial data input for this software with supplemental tick data not being utilized in REDI-NET. This $247k project is expected to continue into CY23 and beyond and provide critical data in the development of insecticide resistance assays in collaboration with Biomeme.

High Quality Sequencing of Tick Genomes: Climate change is expanding the habitats of arthropod vectors, leading to more insecticide use, which in turn selects for mutations conferring insecticide resistance (IR). The Navy Entomology Center of Excellence’s (NECE’s) approach is to use next-generation sequencing (NGS) to detect mutations in sodium channel genes that confer some level of resistance in ticks and mosquitoes. Sodium channels are targets of synthetic compounds including pyrethroids, the most common class of insecticide used globally for control of arthropod-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue. Using NGS data outputs for these mutations, fieldable, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assays will be developed. Additionally, NGS data could be used to design fieldable, multiplexed, amplicon sequencing assays for IR genes. Both assay modalities will allow level of IR to be determined in field-collected arthropods to guide selection of the most appropriate insecticide for use in that setting, ultimately mitigating the spread of vector-borne disease.