Teaching Fellow - New York Academy of Science
Designed and taught basic science workshops as a Science Teaching Fellow for the New York Academy of Sciences ASMP program (serving high-poverty public schools in New York City).
Featured in the Academy Newsletter.
Best Presentation - CUNY SciComm Team
Worked with fellow graduate students to translate new research into digestible presentations. My presentation to a panel of judges at the CUNY Graduate Center Symposium was awarded best general audience presentation and a feature piece in the journal Matter (Cell Press)
Student Researcher - Advanced Science Research Center
Leading a research project under the supervision of Dr. Pinar Ayata on how microglia respond to foreign aggregates (paper in preparation). Collaborating with ASRC nanoscientists in designing and fabricating microparticles with varying physical properties as a novel model system for studying cellular mechanosensation.
Fellow - Weizmann Summer Research Institute
Awarded a full scholarship to research plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) at the Weizmann Institute (under the supervision of Dr. Lital Sever). My collaborators and I presented at the university symposium and published our research about the role of SLAMF9 in health and disease.
IRB Member - International Socioeconomic Laboratory
As a member of the Institutional Review Board, evaluated proposals of student teams to ensure research is conducted according to ethical principles. Our mission was to meet the increasing demand for non-partisan empirical information on international issues.
Other Projects
Caltech Summer Research Fellowship (canceled due to Covid-19) - Marianne Bronner Lab
I wrote a research proposal on the role of the gene Nacc2 in the development of neural crest cells. I had planned to explore Nacc2 by identifying the time and spatial location at which ​it is expressed during the development of cardiac neural crest cells. Then, to establish its function, I planned to analyze transcriptome data from Nacc2-knockout neural crest cells isolated from chick embryos.
NYU Skirball Institute - Moses Chao Lab
I performed protein analyses of post-injury brain tissue to determine whether there was a link between BACE1, an enzyme upregulated following injury, and p75, a neurotrophin receptor. My protein analysis showed that BACE1 was not upregulated in p75 null mice that underwent cortical injury, suggesting that p75 was required for the upregulation of BACE1 (published in Mol Cell Neurosci).
CUNY Queens College - Carolyn Pytte Lab
It is thought that learning affects the survival of new neurons in adults, and the more difficult a learning task, the higher the rate of new neuron survival. To study this hypothesis, I used Zebra Finches as a model system due to key anatomical and behavioral similarities with humans including the NCM (Caudomedial Nidopallium), the songbird equivalent of the human auditory association cortex. I investigated whether the difficulty of an operant song discrimination task affects neurogenesis in the Zebra Finch NCM.