The Karen M. Gil Internship Program at UNC: An Overview
The Karen M. Gil Internship Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) offers undergraduate psychology and neuroscience majors a unique opportunity to deepen their understanding of the field and develop professional skills. Funded by a generous gift from anonymous donors, the program honors Karen Gil, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Lee G. Pedersen Distinguished Professor of Psychology and professor of psychiatry.
Program Origins and Purpose
The program was established thanks to a $500,000 gift, which provides experience for 10 to 15 student interns per semester, starting in fall 2014, as well as funds for program administration. The alumna behind the new fund got the idea from her own experience at UNC. Beth Kurtz-Costes, director of undergraduate studies and professor of developmental psychology, stated that "Because of this generous gift, students will obtain work experience that will help them integrate their classroom studies with practical professional experience". Dean Gil embraced with zeal the idea and challenge of implementing a pilot psychology internship program.
Internship Opportunities
The Karen M. Gil Internship Program offers diverse experiences. Students could work as an intern in a clinical setting such as a mental health center, hospice, or program for the autistic or learning-disabled. It could be a job assisting school guidance counselors, or doing school testing and evaluation. It could mean conducting lab research at a pharmaceutical company. These experiences allow students to apply classroom knowledge in real-world settings, enhancing their practical skills and understanding of the field.
Program Structure and Requirements
The Gil Internship Program places students at a worksite in the Triangle area, offers a monthly stipend, and a 3-hour course credit towards the psychology or neuroscience major. Students balance 9-10 hours a week at their internship worksite in addition to their classes. They also meet weekly with Buzinski for a class to review psychology proficiencies and for professional skill development. Students are enrolled in PSYC/NSCI 493 during their internship semester and the course is graded. Grades are determined jointly by the internship worksite mentor and by the Director of the Gil Internship Program. As part of the PSYC/NSCI 493 course, students will present their research findings and/or experience during their internship at a poster session.
Eligibility and Application Process
This prestigious, highly-competitive program accepts 10-13 applicants per semester based on qualifications and achievement. Competition for the 20 to 30 internships per year will be intense. If you took AP PSYC 101, you are eligible. The application can be found on the Gil homepage. Once the application deadline has passed, a committee will look over each application. During that time, the Gil Manager will correspond with your references (listed in your application) and ask for a letter of recommendation.
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Internship Matching Process
If you are selected - congratulations! You will be asked to complete a questionnaire to help the Gil Manager and Director in the internship matching process. After reviewing your questionnaire answers, the Gil Manager and Director will select the top 4 internship worksites that best fit your interests. You will then rank them. We make sure this is a joint effort and that you have a say in where you are matched. The Gil Manager will then reach out to your top choice. If they are interested in having you as a Gil intern, you will likely have an informal interview with your potential internship mentor to confirm it’s a good fit. If after the interview, it feels like a good fit, you will be matched with that worksite and start your internship the beginning of the semester. We are always looking for new and meaningful internship worksites.
Benefits of the Program
Gil interns have the opportunity to deepen their psychology, neuroscience and general professional knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as to make connections and develop relationships with community leaders. Gil interns find the program to be a rewarding experience that enriches their resume/CVs, allows them to earn course credit as a Psychology or Neuroscience elective, and pays monthly!
Spotlight on Recent Gil Interns
Spring 2026 Cohort
Please welcome our Spring 2026 Gil Cohort! This is an amazing group of hardworking undergraduates, and I am so excited to see what they all will do this semester.
Fareeda Akewusola
Fareeda Akewusola is a senior Neuroscience major from Houston, Texas, with double minors in Medical Anthropology and Entrepreneurship. Originally from Nigeria and raised between Lagos and Houston, her interest in mental health was shaped early by witnessing how cultural norms, stigma, and limited access to care shape lived experiences of illness and healing. At UNC, Fareeda has pursued interdisciplinary research bridging neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology, with particular interest in cross-cultural understandings of mental health. She has collaborated on research projects examining stem cell pool rescue in epilepsy, cognitive processing and attention control, and has engaged in qualitative work exploring how individuals navigate biomedical and faith-based healing practices. Beyond the lab, Fareeda is involved in mental health advocacy on campus and has supported international mental health initiatives through her work with Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore and the DUMKA Project in Prague. After graduation, Fareeda plans to delve more into the intersection of global and public health on her path to becoming a psychiatrist.
Karenna Barmada
Karenna Barmada is a senior from Chevy Chase, Maryland, majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in the Business of Health. As a research assistant in Dr. Fitting’s lab, she investigated the effects of HIV-1 Tat protein on neurobehavioral outcomes in female mice across different stages of the estrous cycle. This work contributed to publications in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research and Frontiers in Neuroscience, and sparked her interest in understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders. Building on this foundation, Karenna completed an internship at ViiV Healthcare, where she developed Medicaid resource guides and analyzed HIV care continuum data to support policy initiatives aimed at furthering the initiative to End the HIV Epidemic. Her commitment to healthcare access extends to her volunteer work as a NAMI helpline worker and as a CMS Certified Application Counselor at the Student Health Action Coalition, helping community members navigate the complexities of health insurance enrollment. These experiences have deepened her commitment to connecting neuroscience research with healthcare policy and advocacy, particularly in improving health outcomes for vulnerable populations.
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Kariss Cone
Kariss Cone is a senior from Nashville, Tennessee, double-majoring in Psychology and Sociology with a minor in Social and Economic Justice. Her academic interests center on using an intersectional lens to examine how social structures, bias, and systems of care shape lived experiences and produce inequality among historically marginalized populations. She is currently a research assistant on the NIH-funded Family Matters Study at the Carolina Population Center, where she qualitatively codes interview transcripts and contributes to literature reviews using electronic medical record data to explore how pregnant women’s self-defined family networks influence maternal health and wellness. She is also completing an honors thesis using Family Matters data, examining racial and ethnic differences in prenatal distress. Previously, she worked as a lab assistant at the Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma, and Lung Biology (CEMALB), where her interest in research deepened and led her to add sociology as a second major to approach psychological questions through an intersectional framework. On campus, Kariss serves as President of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology, where she enjoys building community and organizing professional development opportunities. She has also served as an Undergraduate Learning Assistant for Health Psychology and as a College Ambassador for Arise Health. After graduation, Kariss plans to pursue a PhD in clinical or social psychology with a strong emphasis on research and teaching, with long-term interests in applied, intervention-based work addressing racial disparities and promoting health equity.
Athena
Athena is a junior from Roxboro, North Carolina who is studying Psychology. During her time at UNC, she has been able to sharpen her passion by finding her footing through Industrial-Organizational Psychology. She worked as a research assistant for Rice University’s MET Laboratory in Houston, Texas where she conducted comprehensive literature reviews on team coaching and extreme teams. She also assisted in qualitative data coding for a Master’s thesis using MaxQDA software where her work was later published and included at the annual SIOP symposium research presentation. This position allowed her to deepen her experience in I-O Psychology under the Dr. Shawn D. Long Organizational Science at UNC Charlotte where she was engrossed in hands-on developmental experience of research conceptualization. At UNC, she works as a research assistant in the Bardone-Cone lab that looks at body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, working specifically to observe body dissatisfaction in the South Asian population. She is a leader for Summit College, where she mentors peers by providing guidance, accountability, and encouragement in their faith and personal development. She hopes to pursue her PhD in Psychology, where she aims to assist IDD individuals in vocational development.
Juliana
Juliana is a senior from Asheville, North Carolina, majoring in Psychology (BS) with a Biology minor. She is on the pre-medicine track, aspiring to become an OB/GYN. This summer, Juliana was a MAHECxplorer intern at MAHEC, where she shadowed in OB/GYN, family medicine, rural medicine, and psychiatry, and conducted research on CenteringPregnancy - a group prenatal care model shown to reduce preterm births and NICU stays. She also volunteered as a medical assistant at a free clinic, took a summer class. She was a research assistant in the NIRAL Lab under Dr. Martin Styner, studying how air pollution affects brain health using MRI data from urban populations in Mexico. Juliana also served as an Undergraduate Learning Assistant for NSCI 222. She is on the executive board for Alpha Epsilon Delta (AED) and for the Peer Pre-Medical Mentorship Program and is an active member of Hearts for the Homeless.
Gurnoor Grewal
Gurnoor Grewal is a senior undergraduate student from High Point, North Carolina, majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Chemistry. Her interest in neuroscience began in high school when she tried to choose a topic for my AP Research project. That uncertainty, wondering what the “right” choice was, pushed her to think more deeply: How does the brain decide between right and wrong? Why do humans differ so widely in their intellectual abilities? How can researchers improve cognitive function in individuals with cognitive deficits? To explore these questions, she began conducting research at UNC. Under Dr. Garden, she deepened her understanding of neuroinflammatory mechanisms in Alzheimer’s disease, and under Dr. Tarantino, she studied cocaine-induced behavioral sensitization. This past summer, she applied my academic research skills in a large-scale clinical environment while working at Labcorp as a Research & Development Intern. This experience solidified her passion for healthcare but also sparked a strong interest in the optimization and workflow processes that allow research and clinical work to thrive. She is particularly passionate about improving systems for both patients and providers by using my analytical skills, experience with cognitive assessments, literature analysis, and project execution to help create tangible improvements that make neuroscience and psychology workflows smoother and more efficient. Outside of academics, she serves as an OUR Research Ambassador and the financial officer for the Carolina Neuroscience Club. As a fellowship recipient for the club, she launched Love For Our Elders at UNC, an initiative that uplifts elders in retirement communities through handwritten, heartfelt notes from student volunteers. Being very close to her grandmother and seeing the effects of social isolation among older adults, this project has been incredibly meaningful. Through the Gil Internship, she hopes to further develop technical skills that can improve processes within labs, scientific organizations, and business settings and build long-lasting relationships and impactful products. She is strongly interested in pursuing a graduate degree and hopes that her experience as a Karen M.
Maya McPartland
Maya McPartland is a senior from Wilmington, North Carolina, majoring in Computer Science and Psychology. Her interest in psychology grew from witnessing the real emotional impact of anxiety and other mental health challenges in her own life and the lives of people close to her. These experiences shaped a deep curiosity about how emotional patterns develop, why they persist, and how treatment can be made more accessible, effective, and genuinely supportive of the people who need it. Maya is currently a research assistant in the Rodebaugh Lab, where she contributes to projects focused on social anxiety and interpersonal behavior. With a background that spans both psychology and computer science, she is especially interested in the ways technology can enhance mental health research and treatment, whether through machine learning models, new software tools, or digital interventions that help reduce barriers to care and expand access to evidence-based practices.
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Urvi Patel
Urvi is a senior from Wilson, NC, pursuing a B.S. in Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been passionate about bridging health disparities in dermatology and expanding access to care for underserved communities, particularly patients of color and those facing financial and geographic barriers. Her dedication has led her to meaningful research experiences, including independent work on skin cancer awareness and AI-based diagnostic tools, which she has presented at the Minority Health Conference and the WHO Global Meeting on Skin NTDs. She also conducts glioblastoma research in the Vaziri Lab, where she studies the metabolic changes associated with chemotherapeutic agents. Outside the lab, Urvi has gained extensive clinical experience across multiple settings. She served as a Nursing Aide at UNC Health, providing hands-on care to patients and building strong bedside communication skills. She also shadows at a dermatology clinic, learning directly from patient evaluations and treatment planning, and interned at a tele-dermatology start-up where she helped improve informational resources and clinic workflows to support providers and patients remotely. Urvi is passionate about community health outreach and advocacy. She is the co-founder of the UNC Dermatology Society, where she has led several public health initiatives including sun safety education for hundreds of students, distributing dermatology products to underserved communities, fundraising for leading national organizations, and partnering with Duke pediatric dermatology to expand eczema awareness and support. Additionally, she serves as a Senior Medical Operations Specialist with Railcare Health, helping bring free health screenings to rural and under-resourced communities through partnerships with churches, shelters, and nonprofits. Urvi hopes to pursue a career in medicine, with a focus on dermatology and health equity.
Angelika Santero
Angelika Santero is a transfer student from Charlotte, North Carolina, studying psychology and data science. She is interested in organizational and social psychology and applying psychological principles within the workplace and towards meaningful issues. Alongside the Gil Internship, she is a career ambassador at the Career Center and is a Buckley Public Service Scholar and Parr Ethics Scholar.
Manchen Wang
Manchen Wang is a senior from Beijing, China, majoring in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy. Her academic interests center on the development of psychopathology and antisocial behavior from childhood through young adulthood, with a particular focus on how environmental factors and early life experiences shape emotional and behavioral outcomes. She is especially interested in the bidirectional relationship between individuals and their environments-how adverse conditions contribute to the onset of psychological disorders, and conversely, how supportive social contexts serve as protective factors fostering resilience. She is also drawn to research on cultural influences, including culturally responsive treatment approaches, cultural variations in symptom expression, and stigma. At UNC, she works as a research assistant in the DEPENd Lab on the NeuroMap Study, investigating how social and emotional cues influence goal-directed learning and decision-making among individuals with borderline personality disorder. Her responsibilities involve behavioral data processing and MRI scan quality checks. She also serves as a research assistant in the Social Neuroscience and Health Lab (SNHLab), where she helps with participant recruitment and screening, and acts as a confederate in a double-blind experimental study examining the reciprocal links between social stress and inflammation. After graduation, she hopes to continue exploring developmental and clinical psychology in graduate school and pursue a PhD degree.
Charlotte Wilkerson
Charlotte Wilkerson is a junior from Asheville, North Carolina pursuing a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in German Studies. She has worked as a research assistant in the Eating Disorders and Body Image Lab and the Stress and Anxiety Lab since the spring of her freshman year. Within these labs, she has explored various topics, including body image in underrepresented populations, how middle-aged and older women experience dance, relationship OCD, and interoceptive exposure. She is currently co-authoring a manuscript about how parental pressures influence eating pathology and negative affect in South Asian adults, for which a poster was presented at the 2025 EDRS Conference. Her research interests center on eating and anxiety disorders, with an emphasis on evaluating and treating related comorbidities. During the Spring 2026 semester, she will serve as an Undergraduate Learning Assistant for PSYC 504 (Health Psychology) under Dr. Karen Gil. She studied abroad during Spring 2025 at the University of Zurich where she studied sociology, inspiring her to conduct an independent research project that explores how parents educate their children about campus sexual assault prevention. Additionally, Charlotte worked for The Daily Tar Heel for two years as a desk writer and copy editor. After completing her degree, she plans to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology, working as both a researcher and clinician.
Fall 2025 Cohort
Congratulations are in order for our Fall 2025 Gil Intern cohort! This past Wednesday was their internship showcase, where each intern presented on all the hard work they accomplished throughout the semester. Dr. Buzinski, Dr. Gil, and Richie are all extremely proud of every intern and wish them luck in their future endeavors. The Fall 2025 Gil Interns Showcase was located on the first floor of Howell Hall. Here you were able to ask interns about the work that they conducted throughout the semester at their worksites and learn more about the Karen M. Gil Internship Program.
Clara Xu's Experience
Clara Xu, an undergraduate student at UNC majoring in Psychology and Computer Science, shared her experience in the Karen M. Gil Internship Program. The Gil Internship helps UNC psychology and neuroscience students strengthen their knowledge and develop professional skills through placements at a variety of training sites. As part of the internship, she worked at CEED under the supervision of Dr. This internship was a great opportunity as I have been interested in psychology ever since I took introductory psychology classes in high school. The excellent psychology program drew me to UNC. During my college years, I discovered that I am passionate about computer science and statistics as well-I love the analytical problem-solving mindset that is valued in these fields. When I took a quantitative psychology class, I realized that these passions can be combined! Computational methods have extensive application in psychology, and psychology inspires many computational algorithms. Because I plan to study computational methods in psychology in the future, my goal for my CEED internship was to explore statistical approaches in eating disorder research. I was able to start my own independent research project and analyze an existing dataset. For this project, I recoded, scored, and built models to fit data. For each childhood trauma group (women who experienced childhood trauma compared to those who had not), I built models to test whether reward sensitivity and punishment sensitivity were related to binge eating and caloric restriction. Results showed that reward sensitivity and punishment sensitivity were only related to binge eating in women who experienced 2 or more childhood traumas. Restriction was only related to punishment sensitivity in women who experienced multiple childhood traumas. Completing this independent project has given me practical skills in statistical analysis. In class projects, professors usually give us ready-to-use data so the analysis is rather simple. During my internship, I also gained insights into psychological research as a whole. I improved my academic writing with valuable feedback from Dr. Baker, and I learned the importance of planning ahead and working meticulously with datasets. In addition, I was exposed to countless statistical subtleties that researchers encounter in their daily work. One of my most memorable experiences during the internship was being able to join the CEED lab meetings and learn about cutting edge eating disorder research being conducted at CEED. For example, during one meeting I was introduced to a potential astrocyte pathway leading to eating disorders, and during another the effect of salad bars in schools on student nutrition intakes. These are very different projects, but they both contribute to the understanding of eating disorders.
Application Deadlines
The deadline to apply for the Spring 2016 semester was October 26, 2015. Please note the Gil Internship application deadline.
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