Lauren Bailey
Student Intellectual Property and Disclosures Assistant
UNM Rainforest Innovations, the technology-transfer and economic development organization for the University of New Mexico (UNM), has a student internship program that teaches UNM students about university technology transfer and the intersection of business, science, and law. Over the years, UNMRI has trained over a hundred students and currently the program is comprised of a student office assistant, student intellectual property & disclosures assistants, and several innovation interns.
The featured intern this month is Lauren Bailey, the Student Intellectual Property and Disclosures Assistant. She joined UNM Rainforest Innovations in July 2021 and assists in scheduling calls, updating records, helping with patent assignments, keeping inventors updated on their applications, and collecting references.
“As an intern at UNMRI I have learned many useful skills that I will utilize throughout the rest of my academic and professional careers. But since working here I have been able to improve my professional communication skills, which is something I know I will use throughout my career.”
Lauren was born in Metairie, Louisiana just outside of New Orleans where she lived until age 10 before her family moved to Missouri City, Texas until the age of 18. “I graduated high school in 2020 and came to UNM to study nuclear engineering with minors in environmental science and mathematics… In my family there are a total of five of us. I have two older sisters, so growing up there was always someone to boss me around, now one of them lives here in New Mexico and the other is out in Orlando, Florida.”
When Lauren isn’t busy with school and work, she enjoys hiking and finding new trails to explore. “I also spend a lot of time on my 3-D printer and enjoy designing and creating new things to print.”
She also plans to further her education by pursuing her master’s degree in nuclear engineering. “After I graduate, I would like to continue on to graduate school to get my master’s degree in nuclear engineering. As for my career I want to work in nuclear waste/spent fuel or nuclear material research. I would like to work at a national lab, but my ultimate goal would be to eventually go to Sweden and do research at their deep geological repository.”
“Something I really enjoy about this job are some of the people I meet and learn from. I was able to speak with a couple of the patent attorneys about their careers and it was great to learn about their academic path. Before this internship I didn’t realize being a patent attorney was a career option if you had a stem undergrad, but it has really opened my eyes to all the possible career options there are.”