About

The Ivy Neurological Sciences Internship Program places two high school juniors or seniors annually inside TGen's active brain tumor research laboratories for a paid, full-time 10-week summer internship. TGen — the Translational Genomics Research Institute — is a Phoenix-based nonprofit genomics institute allied with City of Hope and recognized as a national leader in translational cancer and neurological disease research. The program is funded entirely by the Ben & Catherine Ivy Foundation, established after Ben Ivy died of glioblastoma multiforme and now the largest privately funded foundation in the United States dedicated specifically to brain tumor research. The program's research focus is correspondingly narrow and purposeful: glioblastoma, DIPG, neurogenomics, and related neurological diseases.

High school interns work directly alongside TGen scientific faculty and their research teams on authentic, ongoing projects — studying molecular mechanisms of glioblastoma, developing therapeutic strategies, analyzing genomic data — at the same depth as the institute's undergraduate and graduate-level interns. Alongside laboratory work, participants attend lab presentations, receive one-on-one scientific mentorship, and complete professional development training covering scientific writing, presentation skills, the laboratory-to-clinic pipeline, and professional etiquette. The summer concludes with a research poster presentation at TGen's annual intern symposium. Past high school interns have presented work at national conferences, including the annual AAAS meeting in Boston, and have co-authored or contributed to research with publication potential.

With only two high school positions available annually, the Ivy program is extraordinarily selective, although it lacks the national name recogntion (and thus applicant volume) of some of its larger peer programs. But for students with deep, specific interest in oncology, neuroscience, or translational medicine — and who are within commuting distance of Phoenix — it is an exceptional research opportunity.