Researchers of Emory

  Omer Ashmaig  is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2017 Conference Grant which he used to attend the 2017 Society for Neuroscience Conference. Attending the Society for Neuroscience (SFN) 2017 conference, located in Washington, D.C., was an important step in advancing my career as a researcher and scientist. My research project, “Bayesian Optimization of Asynchronous Distributed Microelectrode Theta Stimulation and Spatial Memory”, may sound like a mouth full, but it simply deals with trying to optimize Deep Brain Stimulation parameters, a novel therapeutic method for treating epilepsy, by looking at memory as a measured outcome. 

Shoeb Lallani is a recent graduate who majored in Neureoscience and Behavioral Biology and Chemistry. He was awarded a Spring 2017 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on Huntington's Disease under Dr. Anthony Chan.   Hello! My name is Shoeb Lallani, an undergraduate senior at Emory, and I work in the Chan lab at the Yerkes Neuroscience Primate Research Center. I began researching under Dr. Chan as a sophomore in college and have continued to do so ever since! When I first began research, I watch others perform their experiments and learn from them. I also spent a lot of time reading research articles related to Dr. Chan’s field of study. As more time passed, I became more comfortable in the laboratory setting and started to do some work of my own.

Jacqueline Steele is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2017 Conference Grant which she used to attend the 2017 Society for Neuroscience Conference. The  Society for Neuroscience Conference  was exciting; I had heard all of my professors talk about the meeting for years, so I was curious about what it would be like. I listened to a wide variety of lectures and poster presentations, and I learned about the different types of research being done in neuroscience around the world. It was especially interesting to go to symposiums lead by my mentors and teachers from Emory, it really showed me that Emory University is a leader in the field of neuroscience. My favorite symposium was led by my P.I. Dr. Mar Sanchez, and was about how scientists can communicate animal research to the public. It was stressed that if we don’t tell our stories, someone else will (and we might not like the way they tell them.) Right now, animal research h...

Jenna Sung is a recent graduate who majored in Psychology and Education. She was awarded a Spring 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on mathematical competence in children under Dr. Stella Lourenco.   I am a senior currently participating in the honors program in the Spatial Cognition Laboratory . My advisor is Dr. Stella Lourenco and I am currently investigating the research question: Does Mental Rotation Training Enhance Mathematical Competence in Children? Spatial ability is strongly correlated with mathematic competence and plays a crucial role in children’s education (Uttal, Miller, & Newcombe, 2013) , specifically STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). However, the causal links between space and math is largely unstudied limiting the practical implications of the relationship. The study tested whether there is a causal relation between spatial and mathematical abilities by implementing a novel online-at-home mental rotation train...

Jit Hui Tan is a recent graduate who majored in Psychology. She was awarded a Spring 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on the cultural dynamics of elder care under Dr. Nancy Bliwise. Embarking on an independent research project evokes many occasions of self doubt and self criticism. Two recurring, and unhelpful, rhetorical questions float around my head frequently: “Why did I put myself through this?” and “I will never make it.” The journey to completion seems long, almost impossible, and yet time seems to fly by and the deadline looms ever closer. Despite this depressing opening monologue, there were very genuine reasons for setting myself on this path. It began with the ambition of having an experience that would be novel, challenging, and set me apart from others. As the term ‘independent’ prefaces, an independent research project gave me the opportunity to exercise control over a research question of interest. Personally, I have a strong interest in the...

Nathaniel Sawyer is a recent graduate who majored in Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Society and Human Health. He was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on navigating mental health resources at Emory under Dr. Kim Loudermilk.   For the Fall 2016 semester, my research has so far centered on collecting and analyzing student oral histories of their experiences navigating mental health concerns at Emory University so as to better understand the health outcomes, positive or negative, that are being seen by individuals who are struggling with poor mental health who come into contact with Emory’s mental health resources—the centerpiece being Emory’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). A large reason for my interest in both this method and this particular line of inquiry is the existence of a data gap in the evaluation of the efficacy of university mental health systems, both at Emory and at other higher education institutions acr...

Wendy Lee is a junior majoring in Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2017 Conference Grant which she used to attend the 2017 Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students. As my first research conference, ABRCMS 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona, has provided me with an eye-opening and career-launching experience. In contrast to the only research presentation experience I’ve had, which was a small-scale poster symposium at the end of the SURE program at Emory last summer, the ABRCMS biomedical research conference gathers undergraduates, graduates, post-docs, and medical professionals for a 4-day intensive workshop with hundreds of poster presentations occurring concurrently. The wide variety of scientific disciplines, including engineering, chemistry, psychology, etc., provided me an opportunity to be exposed to the current advancements and recent research in the fields that I am unfamiliar with. Through the conference, I was also able to meet scientists who are also studying...

Grace Swaim is a senior majoring in Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on the effect of lithium on kidney cells under Dr. Mitsi Blount. This semester has had a drastic change in research for me. For the past year and a half I have been studying the effect of lithium on kidney cells-specifically, how long term lithium treatment causes irreversible kidney fibrosis. Through my research, I investigated MMP-9, a protein that is responsible for remodeling the extracellular matrix and is implicated in fibrosis in a number of systems.

Kevin Ding is a recent graduate who majored in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and minored in Spanish. Kevin was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Research Grant which he used to conduct research on measuring seizure intensity under Dr. Claire-Anne Gutekunst. Over the past semester, I’ve been carrying out research in the Neurosurgery department, studying the expression of a certain protein in the rat brain after a seizure. When I proposed my project, I tried to keep it simple. Look at the how this protein is expressed after a certain amount of time following the seizure, and see if it is a good measure for seizure intensity. The first month of research proved to me what all my previous mentors have told me in the past—even the simplest experiment can prove to be extremely difficult to carry out. The first month of my project consisted of finding antibodies that would work and allow me to visualize the proteins of interest. One failed antibody after another, I felt like time was s...

Jinyi Zhang is a recent graduate who majored in Psychology. She was awarded a Spring 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on altruism across cultures under Dr. Philippe Rochat. When you see the word “research”, what pops up in your mind first? Is it dressing up in a white lab coat and goggles and painstakingly transferring tiny cells under a microscope? Or is it burying yourself in a pool of books and online sources, trying to figure out the unsolved mysteries of Maya?  For me, doing research means going to amazing countries and studying their cultures through quantitative behavioral research.

Sarah Ye is a junior majoring in Neuroscience. She was awarded a Spring 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on spermatogenesis and genome instability under Dr. Anthony Chan. I have been working at the  Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Dr. Chan’s lab for almost 2 years now. I started as a work study student my freshman year and I enjoyed going to Yerkes so much that I decided to take a research class for my second-year fall semester. Since starting at Yerkes, I have learned so much interesting information and learned many valuable skills. Right now, I am developing a transgenic mouse model for studying genome instability in spermatogenesis.

Aidan Williams is a senior majoring in Human Health. He was awarded a Spring 2017 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on treatments for postpartum infection under Dr. James Lyles. Part 1: Why Plants? People often ask me about the type of work that I do in my lab. Working for Dr. Cassandra Quave has been the most educational and engaging experience I’ve had at Emory, but I’d be hesitant to tell people right up front that our work derives use from plants. There seems to be a huge gap in understanding as to where our medicine came from in the first place and where it comes from now. To be frank, the vast majority of our antibiotics that we have are derived from soil . Think about it; dust and particles in the Earth, thousands of years old, have come in contact with some of the most deadly microbes that we can imagine, but have continued to exist all this time. Plants are no different, and are responsible for a large portion of medications that have been ...

Sierra Weiss is a senior majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on Disability Studies and Bioethics. She was awarded a Spring 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research under Dr. Rosemarie Garland-Thompson on the T4 program during the Holocaust. Following my approval to conduct SIRE research this semester, I excitedly shared the news with my family and friends. The questions and interest quickly pursued regarding my research; I very casually mentioned the T4 Program during the Holocaust and implications on modern forms of eugenics. I assumed that most of the people I was talking to, many of whom are Jewish, would know exactly what I was talking about, however, to my great surprise, they never heard of the T4 program. Before embarking on my research at the beginning of the semester, it became clear to me how important this research is and, as I delved further into my topic, how little it is discussed.

Rema Elmostafa is a recent graduate who majored in Biology and Spanish. She was awarded a Spring 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on natural remedies for yeast infections under Dr. Meleah Hickman.   I bet you’re wondering how I got here. It all started with a small white pillow and a magazine article. A year ago, almost exactly. It was 1:16pm on a warm Friday. After three tries, I was finally able to quickly slide the key into my room, toss my backpack on the floor and change out of my work-study clothes into something more… business casual? Presentable? Ahh, that outfit, the same pale teal shirt I wore to an interview at the Pre-Health Mentoring Office last month. Maybe it’s a good luck shirt? I’ll put it on, with grey bottoms and black flats. What should I bring, a notepad, resume, water? Definitely a smile. I close the door behind me, take a quick glance at the mirror. Sharp breath out, I’m good to go. It’s 1:32pm now.

Thomas Xia is a recent graduate who majored in Chemistry and Economics. He was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on the role a certain bacteria plays in the inflammation response after intestinal injury under Dr. Ashfaqul Alam.   When I first began looking for opportunities to be involved in scientific research during my freshman year, my main goal was to find an area of research that really sparked my interest. I eventually began working in Dr. Neish’s lab within the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Emory School of Medicine starting the second semester of freshman year. The field of biomedical research definitely felt very foreign when I first began, but under the mentorship of the lab, I gradually became more independent. I eventually began to formulate my own hypotheses and subsequently testing them through innovative experiments that my mentors and I designed together.   

Bethanie Tabachnik is a senior majoring in Quantitative Sciences and minoring in Linguistics. She was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on the brain's ability to identify handwriting and faces under Dr. Daniel Dilks.   Hi! My name is Bethanie Tabachnik and I’m a college junior from Cleveland, OH majoring in Quantitative Sciences on the NBB track and minoring in Linguistics. I’ve been doing research in the Dilks lab since Fall 2015, and my current project is an fMRI study examining how the brain processes identity – specifically handwriting and faces.

Lokita Rajan is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and Economics. She was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on auditory imagery under Dr. Simon Lacey. My research is in neurology.  I am looking at how people perceive sounds based on their levels of musical experience .  I am recruiting musicians who are affiliated with Emory in some way, so they are either music majors or are members of an Emory University music ensemble, such as the Symphony Orchestra , Concert Choir , or University Chorus .  I am also recruiting individuals with no musical experience to take part in my study.  While the research grant has made it a lot easier to attract participants since I can now offer them a financial incentive to participate in my study, I have still found it difficult to recruit people with the appropriate levels of musical experience.  Relatively few musicians have answered my flyers inviting research ...

Sami Yousif is a 2016 graduate who majored in Psychology. He was awarded a Spring 2016 Conference Grant which he used to attend the 2016 Cognitive Development Society meeting. Over fall break, I attended the meeting of the Cognitive Development Society (CDS) in Columbus, Ohio. This was my first time attending a development conference. I was particularly excited about the spatial-thinking preconference, facilitated by prominent researchers in the field of spatial cognition including David Uttal , Susan Levine , and Nora Newcombe . I was fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss my work with these professors.

Madeline Nagel is a recent graduate who majored in Psychology and Chinese Language and Literature. She was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on cognitive bias under Dr. Scott Lilienfeld. This semester was a lesson in Murphy’s Law as it applies to research: Everything that can go wrong, will. However, it has also been an incredible opportunity to learn how to overcome anything the world can throw at me.

Xinyue Tong  was awarded a Spring 2016 Conference Grant to present at the Eastern Michigan University Undergraduate Conference in Philosophy. Presenting my philosophy paper “Beyond Kindness and Malice” at Eastern Michigan University (EMU)’s 6 th Undergraduate Conference in Philosophy has been an unforgettable experience and a fond memory. I not only received instructive feedback from my commenter, but also learned from my fellow presenters. Moreover, attending other presentations and conducting further discussions enabled me to learn new perspectives of philosophy.

Ethan Morris is a recent graduate who majored in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on human recognition under Dr. Daniel Dilks. My name is Ethan Morris, and I am a senior at Emory University, studying Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. I am a member of the Dilks Lab , researching how humans recognize faces and places. We can recognize a person or a place within a fraction of a second, even if we have never seen that particular person or place before. How do we accomplish such a remarkable feat? One promising strategy for attempting to understand how we recognize faces and places is to understand the neural systems that accomplish it. The human cortex contains regions that are specialized for processing faces and independent regions that are specialized for processing places.

Xiancong Zhang  is a rising senior majoring in Chemistry and Biology. He was awarded a Spring 2016 Conference Grant which he used to present at the Experimental Biology Conference in Chicago.   I went to Experimental Biology (EB) in Chicago from 4.22-4.25 as an undergraduate poster presenter. EB is an annual international meeting of six societies, focusing on the latest research progress and cross-communication between disciplines. According to its website, it is a “multidisciplinary, scientific meeting features plenary and award lectures, workshops, oral and poster presentations, on-site career services and exhibits spotlighting equipment, supplies and publications required for research labs and experimental study.”

Alex Liu  is a rising senior majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on scene processing in the brain under Dr. Daniel Dilks. Research is the process of looking for something that evidence and theory support, but its existence has yet to be seen. Not only is this is the foundation of why we do research but it is also the reason why research is so hard. In my current research, we believe that the brain has more specialized regions for scene processing than what current research has shown us.  Instead of there being one stream for scene processing, we propose that there are actually two: one for navigation and one for categorization.  The philosophy behind a two-stream system for scene processing comes from the fact that we can categorize without navigating; however, we cannot navigate through a scene without categorizing what is in it. An example would be trying to walk through a cluttered room. If we want to g...

Jake Kang is a rising senior majoring in Business Administration. He was awarded a Spring 2016 Conference Grant which he used to attend the National Investment banking Competition and Conference in Vancouver, Canada. From March 22 nd to March 25 th , I traveled to Vancouver, Canada to participate in the 2016 National Investment Banking Competition and Conference (NIBC). In order to earn this great opportunity, I formed a team with three other BBA students and competed in the first round of the competition from October to November. We were initially tasked to understand AT&T’s business model and deliver solid ideas along with creating financial modeling works as well as pitch a book for the presentation. There were total of 335 participating teams from undergraduate and graduate schools all over the world, including Canada, the U.S., Hong Kong, Singapore, and Europe. Out of all the entries, only 24 undergraduate and 24 graduate teams were invited to the final round. This year...

Nancy Holbrook is a recent graduate who majored in Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on fascinating fungi in milkweed under Dr. Nicole Gerardo. As an undergraduate researcher in the Gerardo lab, I am not only attracted to the monarch butterfly for its bold beauty. I, and the rest of the Gerardo lab, am also interested in exploring some very unique interactions that monarchs have with their environment. A particular parasite called Ophryocystis elektroschirra often infects monarch butterflies, but interestingly enough, the food source that a monarch chooses for its young can affect how resistant its offspring are to this parasite. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants. Several different species of milkweed can be found in the wild, and research has shown that different milkweed species contain different levels of chemicals called cardenolides. Butterflies that feed on milkweeds with higher cardenolide levels tend ...

Isabel Goddard is a Senior majoring in Cultural Anthropology and Quantitative Social Science. She was a recipient of a Spring 2017 Conference Grant and attended the Cornell Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium. I presented in the poster session of the Cornell Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium April 28 th 2017. [1] Attending this colloquium provided me with the opportunity to present my linguistic research findings  in an academic environment to students and faculty from across the world. The vast majority of the presentations reflected research students had conducted for their honors theses and these studies ranged from phonetic topics such as “Ergativity, Agreement, and the Sumerian Verbal Complex” to socio-linguistic research including “L’identité et la Frncophilie au Maroc: Examining the interplay of language perception and identity construction in the Moroccan student.” In this way, I was exposed to every form of linguistic research. The colloquium also included t...

Shauna Bowes  is a recent graduate who majored in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research in psychopathy and depression under Dr. Scott Lilienfeld. Because depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States, affecting approximately 15.7 million Americans in 2014 alone (National Institute of Mental Health, 2014), it is important to identify personality variables that may protect against depressive features. Perhaps surprisingly, one such protective mechanism may be a subset of personality traits comprising psychopathic personality (psychopathy). Psychopathy is a multidimensional construct that comprises a constellation of interpersonal, affective, and behavioral features such as social charm, guiltlessness, impulsivity, callousness, antisociality, and erratic lifestyle.

  Daniel Prettel   was a Spring 2017 Conference Grant recipient. He is a rising Senior majoring in Biology. I still cannot believe I attended the Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Cancer Symposium 2017 to present a poster! Needless to say, I am an undergraduate student. So, you might be wondering, how in the world did I end up presenting a poster at a professional surgical oncology conference? Well, lets start by saying I was extremely fortunate to take part in some clinical research at the local hospital back home in South Carolina ( Greenville Memorial Hospital, Greenville, SC ).

Emily Winokur is a recent graduate who majored in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and minored in Sociology. She was awarded a Fall 2015 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on sensory perception under Dr. Gary Miller. The protein vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2) is critical for dopaminergic neuronal survival because of its role in packaging monoamines into synaptic vesicles. Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), are thought to be caused by disruption of the usual functioning of vesicular release and uptake of monoamines including dopamine in the nigrostriatal system. This leads to dopaminergic cell death, impaired movement and increased anxiety- and depressive-like symptoms (Pifl, 2014). Our laboratory developed transgenic mice which express 5% of normal levels of VMAT2 (VMAT2-Lo) and mice with a threefold increase VMAT2 protein level (VMAT2-Hi). VMAT2-Lo mice recapitulate many aspects of human PD including olfactory def...

Dalila Vasquez Herrera is a 2016 graduate who majored in Biology and Spanish. She was awarded a Spring 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on language and healthcare communication in Oaxaca and Huajuapan de Leon, Mexico. Read more about her project in the Emory Report . “ They’re Mexican, so they speak Spanish. ” These words appeared an article in The New York Times about a hospital official in New York who called a Mexican organization to help her understand some Mexican patients. The quote above is what the hospital official responded when the person at the Mexican organization asked her if she had asked what language the family spoke. The hospital official just assumed they spoke Spanish, but the family actually spoke Mixtec, one of the many indigenous languages spoken within the borders of the Mexican nation-state and across Central America . This situation is not surprising to me because I’ve experienced this linguistic and cultural d...

Aspen Ono  received a Fall 2016 Conference Grant to attend the 2016 Conference on Earth System Governance. She is a rising Senior majoring in Environmental Science and International Studies. Sustainability, climate change, and environmental justice are global issues that implicate every single country, community, and human being. Yet the international dialogue, particularly that occurring at scientific conferences, that focuses on global issues tends to be dominated by a few key countries and institutions. This existing disparity in academic interaction not only hinders inclusive collaboration and communication, but also marginalizes many key voices that could contribute unique ideas and solutions to the global conversation. The annual Earth Systems Governance Conference attempted to overcome this obstacle this year by choosing to be held at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. This conference represents an initial step towards global inclusivity in an interdisciplinary e...

Omer Ashmaig   is a sophomore majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology . He is an Undergraduate Research Associate in the   Gross Translational Biomedical Neuroengineering Lab  and a Peer Mentor in the Research Partners Program . I recently had the opportunity to attend a scientific conference, COSYNE, with my graduate student mentor, Mark Connolly, and another undergraduate from my lab, Syed Ali Zaidi. COSYNE is a computational and systems neuroscience conference. I had the pleasure of being awarded a travel grant to attend the conference through the conference organization itself . The travel grant covered the cost of the conference itself, flights, hotels, food, transportation, and any other expenses directly related to the conference. The program also matched me with a post-doc who served as my mentor during the conference. I spent four days in Salt Lake City, where I was able to listen to many amazing talks and ground-breaking research from aroun...