Internship Connections: Healthy Futures

When Rackham student Jadie Moon was a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, she had a personal motivation to change career trajectories from dermatology to the pharmaceutical industry.

“I grew up with chronic eczema and, while dealing with a huge outbreak during my sophomore year, I was prescribed a really helpful treatment that targets specific proteins that are responsible for eczema,” she says. “The experience made me passionate about developing biologics or drugs that can improve people’s quality of life.” 

Now a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate Program in Immunology, Moon studies skin immunology and recently completed a Rackham Doctoral Intern Fellowship with Merck & Co., Inc. Even prior to her expected 2026 defense and graduation, she is already hard at work towards advancing research that will have a big impact.

In Dr. Katherine Gallagher’s lab at the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS), Moon studies ways to help people living with type 2 diabetes. While non-healing wounds are a common symptom of the disease, the lack of effective treatments can lead to infection, amputation, and even death. Moon hopes to change this by developing a better understanding of skin cells, or keratinocytes, that play important functions in wound healing. 

Moon’s work to advance healing also found an outlet during her intern fellowship at Merck, where she worked with the company’s Quantitative Biosciences team to research antibody drug conjugates. Also known as ADCs, this drug delivery method uses a hyper targeted approach via proteins to dispatch drugs exactly where they need to go in the body, reducing negative side-effects. Supervised by a principal scientist and a scientific mentor, Moon’s day-to-day activities on the job at Merck involved developing tests to assess ADCs and their ability to damage or destroy living cancer cell lines. 

“ADCs deliver drugs directly where they’re needed. They’ve been called ‘biological missiles’ because of this,” Moon says.

Aside from fueling her goals to contribute to health research that helps people, Moon’s time at Merck deepened her experience with industry best practices.

“The labs at Merck had a lot of robots, so being able to do high-throughput testing in a very consistent manner was the most different for me,” she says. 

Moon also appreciates hands-on experience with the rigor of industry testing, and the ways it’s encouraged her to think critically about the importance of conducting research that can be translated to clinical testing. 

“Industry standards are strict, especially because the end goal for industry is to develop drugs that are going to be put into patients,” she says.

While Moon worked at biotech start-up Xcell Biosciences, prior to graduate school, she cites her intern fellowship with Merck as an experience that solidified her desire to pursue a career in the pharmaceutical industry.

“I really enjoyed the work environment and work-life balance that I experienced as an intern. For professional and personal reasons, I know that industry is the best fit for me,” she says.

Part of Moon’s approach when it came to making the most of her intern fellowship experience was to tend to her professional development needs and also to honor her vision for her life post graduation. Hailing from California, it was also important to Moon to look for internship opportunities in her home state, where she plans to live after graduation. 

“I lived and worked in San Francisco for a couple years after undergrad—and because I had such a great experience there, and I know it’s a huge biotech hub, I want to be able to work there after my Ph.D.,” she says.

Moon also sought an intern fellowship close to her expected graduation to ensure she was networking close to a time when she’s open to new work opportunities. In addition to strategic timing and location setting, Moon advises graduate students interested in the intern fellowship program to participate in resume writing and interviewing workshops through Rackham, and to apply early to eye-catching opportunities.

“A lot of these internships, they accept students on a rolling basis, so they’ll open their application, and as soon as they receive a certain amount of applications, they will close it down,” she says.

Once a dream intern fellowship is in-hand, Moon encourages students to make the most of their time with a company by networking and engaging in every company offering. During her three months at Merck, she accomplished her goal of meeting with 50 individuals from the company for coffees and lunches. She also attended the company’s weekly lectures from professionals throughout the company, making sure to ask questions and engage thoroughly, and took third place in the company’s elevator pitch competition. 

“For the elevator pitch competition, I chose to talk about my personal motivation, linking back to my struggles with eczema, and why I’m interested in pursuing industry, and why the things that I’m learning at Merck mattered,” she says.

Moon’s biggest piece of advice for prospective graduate intern fellows: “Be an advocate for yourself, try your best to be confident and active, and network as much as possible.”