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I am a ’17 majoring in neuroscience. I chose this major because when I was 12, my younger sister developed encephalitis, and my desire to make sense of what happened to her revealed to me the fascinating world of the brain. Since then, I’ve wanted to study neuroscience to not only expand our knowledge about the brain, but use that knowledge to help people like my sister.
I initially intended to achieve my goal by pursuing medicine and becoming a physician. But when I decided to take another path to neuroscience and joined the Green Lab at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in the spring of my sophomore year, I was exposed to an entirely new way of studying the brain aside from passively learning about it through textbooks, lectures and the internet. I soon realized that a more direct path to training neurological conditions was to work on the research side – potentially being able to develop new treatments instead of working with what we already know. With research, I became able to truly contribute new knowledge to the field that I came to love – whether it be from performing electrode implant surgery or repeatedly repairing cables my rats chewed through. In addition, the laboratory’s focus on the reward circuit and its role in addictive behavior allowed me to expand my research interests to not only include treating neurological disorders arising from biological factors such as genetics and viruses, but also those that arise from the interaction between nature and nurture, like addiction and mental illness.
Since then, I have devoted my time to laboratory research, particularly on the lab’s Deep Brain Stimulation project, with my research being supported through the E.E. Just STEM Research scholarship, and prior to this, the Junior Research Scholarship through UGAR. I have been able to make significant contributions to the study, including implanting electrodes in the animals, handling the animals, collecting and analyzing data for our study on modulating binge eating with nucleus accumbens stimulation, and even developing more efficient designs for cables and adaptors for the stimulation apparatus. Not only have I been able to find that Deep Brain Stimulation can indeed modulate binge behavior in some individuals, but I have even been able to take my research a step further and find out how this may occur and why individuals respond differently to stimulation through electrophysiological recordings.
I have even had the opportunity to conduct my own independent project on using deep brain stimulation in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex to modulate binge drinking behavior in an animal model, the results of which I plan to present at the New England Science Symposium in March. I have also been able to present my prior research at conferences held at Dartmouth College, such as the Karen E. Wetterhahn Science Symposium and the 30th Annual Neuroscience Day at Dartmouth College. In addition to all this, I am an active member in the E.E. Just Program, always eager to share my research with E.E. Just staff and other E.E. Just Scholars and guide them on their own path to research.
I plan on working as a research technician (ideally in New York City) and develop my research skills even further before applying to graduate school and continuing my neuroscience studies.