Indrani Datta, a student in the Health & Medicine Reporting Program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the Judy A. Fouche CUNY-National Institutes of Health Internship in Health Communications. The eight-week summer internship based at NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Md. will be funded for 2009 and 2010, and comes with a $5,000 stipend. The NIH is the primary federal agency for supporting and conducting medical research.

The new internship was created by CUNY and named for the late Judy A. Fouche, a longtime administrator within the NIH Office of the Director for Communications and Public Liaison. Ms. Fouche died in July 2008. “We appreciate very much CUNY’s decision to name this internship in Judy’s honor,” said John Burklow, associate director for communications and public liaison at the NIH. “Judy’s guidance helped many writers, editors, broadcasters, and health communicators enter and progress in their careers at the NIH.”

The internship will provide students with the opportunity to learn about NIH’s research activities; to work in a variety of media formats, including audio and video technologies as well as science writing, and to attend scientific conferences and seminars throughout the Washington D.C. area. The program allows interns the flexibility to create an experience according to their own interests, from basic science, to clinical study of specific diseases, to broad-based health challenges. While interns will be assigned to the Office of the Director for Communications and Public Liaison, they will also work in collaboration with the 27 institutes and centers that comprise the NIH.

Datta, who will graduate with a Master of Arts in Journalism from the CUNY J-School in December 2009, has a diverse background, having worked in such fields as biotechnology, software development, and technical writing. “I am honored to have been chosen for this ground-breaking opportunity and I am looking forward to a productive summer,” she said. She identifies as her main interests the relationships between scientific research and public policy, as well as how research is funded and communicated to the public.