Victoria Franklin and Lexus Brinkley-Tapp, students at Meharry School of Applied Computational Sciences, have been accepted into research internships for the summer of 2026. Both internships are sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Franklin will spend 10 weeks with the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) on a project involving cybersecurity in the nuclear sector. During her graduate internship, she will help prepare and refine a training course for nuclear facilities.
“I am excited to expand my research in cybersecurity to the nuclear nonproliferation work at INL,” Franklin said.
The position offers Franklin an opportunity to analyze international guidance documents, work with eLearning platforms, and use digital operational technology to develop learning exercises.
Brinkley-Tapp will join a project on quantum networks at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. Her work focuses on using artificial intelligence to manage “quantum routing,” which acts as a smart traffic system for data.
“Quantum is an exciting, complex area of study,” Brinkley-Tapp said. “With world-class computing resources and faculty, ORNL is a great place to gain this exposure to quantum networks.”
Under the mentorship of the lab’s scientists and engineers, Brinkley-Tapp will help design a self-optimizing network architecture capable of adapting to real-time changes and technical glitches. The project’s goal is to scale these systems from local setups to wide-area networks that could eventually connect entire cities.
