Published Oct. 31, 2025
Philadelphia, PA – A leader in organ and tissue donation for more than 50 years, Gift of Life Donor Program continues to help prepare the next generation of medical professionals to serve patients and families through its Juniata College Internship program.
For the fifth year, Gift of Life hosted students from Juniata for ten weeks to study the complex process of organ donation and transplantation. Gift of Life’s 2025 Juniata interns were Olivia Henry of Hustontown, PA and Logan Eggleston of Massena, NY, who both aspire to a career in medicine.
The students were immersed in the life-saving work of one of the busiest and most successful organ procurement organizations in the U.S., a unique opportunity not otherwise available in undergraduate education. Their internship featured hands-on learning and interaction with donation professionals across the organization including Gift of Life’s 24/7 Transplant Information Center, Clinical Staff Development, Analytics, Quality Assurance, Donor Family Support Services and Gift of Life Howie’s House, a hospitality house for transplant patients and caregivers. The internship also included external visits to an eye bank, a tissue processing center, local transplant centers and more.
Both students completed a capstone research project using data-driven metrics, surveys, and other tools as the culmination of their internship:
- Henry, a third-year biology major, analyzed the effect of the latest FDA guidelines on evaluating potential tissue donors to prevent disease transmission and ensure safety for transplant recipients.
- Eggleston, a second-year biochemistry and neuroscience major, studied how transplant and recipient outcomes are affected by different methods of preserving and improving the function of kidneys from deceased donors through machine perfusion.
The Juniata Internship is conducted by Gift of Life Institute, an affiliate of Gift of Life Donor Program. The Institute has served as an international training center for organ and tissue donation professionals for more than 20 years.
Juniata College Internship
The Juniata College Internship established by Juniata alumnus Howard Nathan (’75), Founder of the Gift of Life Institute, offers a unique opportunity for Juniata College students with a program of emphasis in Life Sciences to interact with physicians and experts in the field of organ and tissue donation and transplantation. The internship launched in 2021 and is open to full-time, undergraduate Juniata students. For more information, contact Laura Robinson at lrobinson@giftoflifeinstitute.org
Gift of Life Donor Program
Gift of Life Donor Program, founded in 1974 and headquartered in Philadelphia, is the federally designated organ procurement organization (OPO) for the eastern half of Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware serving 11.3 million people. It works with 124 acute care hospitals and 12 transplant centers in its region, as well as more than 100 transplant centers throughout the country, to provide the most comprehensive array of services available in the U.S. to the donation and transplantation community. Thanks to the generosity of its community, Gift of Life has coordinated 14,860 donors and 41,140 organs for transplant, the most of any OPO in the country since the inception of our national donation system in 1988. Overall, Gift of Life has coordinated more than 62,000 organs and more than two million tissue transplants since its founding. One organ donor can save the lives of up to eight people and a tissue donor can improve the lives of 100 others. Learn more and sign up at donors1.org.