Rockhurst’s biochemistry and genetics classes helped prepare junior Reggie Nguyen for a highly competitive summer internship.

Rockhurst junior Reggie Nguyen was thrilled to land a highly competitive internship with KU Medical Center this summer. He will be working in the biochemistry department, where the focus of his research will explore how the manipulation of bacterial genomes affect protein functions.

As he prepares for his senior year at Rockhurst, Nguyen is doing everything he can to get into graduate school and trying to decide between a Ph.D. or an M.D., or both.

This will be Nguyen’s third summer at KU Med. As a freshman, he earned a pre-med internship, and last summer, he was selected to take part in an MCAT prep program. He even volunteers in the emergency room and pediatric unit on the weekends. Now with a research internship under his belt, Nguyen feels he has a better chance of being accepted to graduate school.

“For me, science is the ultimate field. It’s built on facts and research. And it just excites me to learn. I wonder things like how does DNA know what to do?”

But his interests include more than science. Nguyen is a founding member of Rockhurst’s new Asian Students In America organization, and he’s also pursuing a nonprofit leadership studies minor. This spring, he took part in a service trip to Belize, where he helped build a house for a family.

He’s even tossed around the idea of serving abroad with an organization such as Doctors Without Borders some day. But for now, Nguyen will focus his attention on the bacteria under his microscope.