By Maranda Ngue, Remote Summer Program 2020
This summer I interned with El Programa Argentino para Niños, Adolescentes y Adultos con Condiciones del Espectro Autista, otherwise known as PANAACEA. PANAACEA is an organization in the greater Buenos Aires area that strives to work toward equal opportunities for people with autism spectrum conditions, promote the early detection of autism, and provide information on current treatments. During these eight weeks of my internship, I immersed myself in autism research, learned more about the Latin American culture, and significantly improved my Spanish language skills.
I was excited to work with PANAACEA because on campus, I volunteer with Harvard Undergraduates Raising Autism Awareness, which motivated me to learn more about autism. My main responsibility of the summer was contributing to research that will eventually benefit the low-income and rural areas of Latin America. The research project is titled “Validation of the Spanish version of the AMSE scale to support the diagnosis of autism spectrum conditions," and all of my tasks aimed to move this project forward. AMSE stands for the Autism Mental Status Exam, which is a free scale for the diagnosis of autism, and it is essential that this test becomes validated and available so that places in Latin America without sufficient diagnostic tools will be able to diagnose autism accurately.
Current diagnostic tools are very expensive and time-consuming, benefitting the wealthier populations, whereas the AMSE scale is fast, easy to learn, and costs almost nothing. The AMSE scale takes specific factors into account such as eye contact, pragmatics of language, encompassing preoccupations, and unusual sensitivities, all of which can be easily observed during a regular check-up. My mentor, Dr. Sebastian Cukier, was a wonderful advisor throughout the eight weeks, always willing to explain new concepts and invite me to meetings. I have enjoyed this internship so much that I am going to continue working on this project during the academic year.
Through this internship, I grew both academically and culturally. In addition to analyzing data and performing literature reviews, I learned about what was going on in Argentina in terms of COVID-19 while conversing with Dr. Cukier. Moreover, every Friday, all student participants of DRCLAS met with the amazing DRCLAS team to learn about the current events, activism, public health, environment, and art of Latin America, with special guest speakers. I also attended Spanish language sessions in which I learned about popular music, watched movies in Spanish, and got to know other students in the program. Though it was initially disappointing that we couldn’t all be traveling together, I loved that we got to learn about all four countries of Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil rather than just the specific one we originally were going to.
My experience with DRCLAS this summer was much different than I thought it would be, but I still had support and demonstrated growth throughout the eight weeks. Thank you, DRCLAS, for this invaluable experience, and I hope students in the future will consider this wonderful summer opportunity.