Researchers of Emory

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.