Afton Scientific has received the 2026 INnovator Employer Award from InternshipsVA, a program of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP). The award recognizes Afton’s strong record of supporting interns’ career readiness in GO Virginia Region 9. Afton is part of the program’s first-ever class of Top Employer honorees.
Amanda Panarese, Regional Internship Manager with InternshipsVA, hand-delivered the award to Afton’s Charlottesville, Virginia, facility on October 15, 2026.
What is the InternshipsVA INnovator Employer Award?
The INnovator Employer Award recognizes Virginia employers that run high-quality internship programs. It is one of two tiers in the InternshipsVA Top Employer Awards, which launched in 2026. The second tier, the INspiring Employer Award, honors employers with long-running internship programs.
The first class of honorees includes 114 INnovator employers across Virginia’s nine GO Virginia regions and 18 INspiring employers. Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi presented the statewide awards on October 1, 2026, at the Virginia Chamber’s Education and Workforce Conference.
What is InternshipsVA?
InternshipsVA is a statewide VEDP program that helps Virginia employers create or expand paid internships for undergraduate students. Launched in February 2026, it offers employer training, technical assistance, and matching grants.
How does Afton Scientific support interns?
Afton Scientific is a sterile injectable fill-finish contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with more than 20 years of experience. Interns at Afton work alongside the team in an environment where quality standards protect patients. They build practical skills for careers in life sciences and pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Afton’s interns have worked in four departments: marketing, finance, quality control, and engineering. That range gives students exposure to both the technical and business sides of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
This summer, Elias Zell joined Afton as a statistics and process analysis technology intern. He used the mathematical modeling and data analytics skills from his coursework to spot trends in manufacturing data and inform company decisions. BioBuzz featured his internship as part of its coverage of the region’s life sciences talent.
In finance, intern Suhaani Singh took on a real operational project: improving Afton’s corporate credit card and expense management processes. The work had her collaborating across departments and communicating with vendors, showing her how finance systems depend on the people who use them. BioBuzz also featured her internship.
Some interns stay on. Talia Lange joined Afton as an intern and is now a part-time member of the team as she completes her Fourth year at the University of Virginia.
Building Central Virginia’s life sciences workforce
Afton is based in Charlottesville. Its internship program supports the regional talent pipeline for sterile injectable manufacturing. Afton thanks InternshipsVA, VEDP, and Amanda Panarese for the recognition, and congratulates its fellow honorees across the Commonwealth.
Interested in an internship or career at Afton? Visit our Careers page.
Source
- InternshipsVA newsletter, “Recognizing 2026 InternshipsVA Top Employers”
- VEDP press release on InternshipsVA, May 2026
- Award certificate in the photo
Afton Scientific received the 2026 INnovator Employer Award from InternshipsVA for its strong record of supporting interns’ career readiness in GO Virginia Region 9.
InternshipsVA is run by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP). It helps Virginia employers create and expand paid internships for undergraduate students.
The INnovator Employer Award recognizes employers with high-quality internship programs. The INspiring Employer Award recognizes employers with long-running programs and sustained support for interns.
The first class of honorees included 114 INnovator employers and 18 INspiring employers across Virginia.
Afton Scientific is a sterile injectable fill-finish CDMO located in Charlottesville, Virginia.