Ashrita Satchidanand is aSenior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.
I began my research at the Rollins School of Public Health in the fall of junior year, as an undergrad who was interested in pursuing a Master’s in Public Health. I wanted to explore several fields within Public Health, and I found out that there was a professor of epidemiology at Rollins who were searching for some undergraduates to work on a new study. The research topic was amblyopia which is when someone has a difference in visual acuity between their eyes – the difference is characterized by at least 2 lines on the Snell Chart used at the eye doctor’s office. When I began researching for the project, I was interested in social participation of children affected by amblyopia compared to those who are not. However, I eventually became more interested in the reading ability of these children which we measured through eye-tracking equipment– where one wears goggles to track the movement of the eyes. I was surprised that I wanted to change my particular focus on the study as we delved in because I thought my research would have to be more stringent. It was not too late, however, and I began focusing more on reading ability.
Through my experience researching, I learnt how to apply skills that I’ve learned in previous classes, like QTM, to actual research subjects as I analyzed data from the subjects. Analyzing data was unexpectedly a lot harder than I originally thought it would be – I spent hours cleaning and organizing data in order to find out the possible findings from the research. Although this was difficult to do in the beginning, I eventually became used to sorting through data and eventually began to see the results forming in front of my own eyes. Although the results were not significant, I did feel overwhelmed that I was able to help them form. My main surprise from my research experience came from presenting my research and interacting with others who did not know as much about the subject or had actually experienced amblyopia themselves.
Amblyopia is often known as lazy eye, and one of the common treatments for the condition is eye patching where a patch is placed on the dominant eye and the person is made to use their other eye. The overall idea is to balance the visual acuity and not allow learned disusewhich is when someone learns to compensate for an inability of one body part by using another body part. During my presentation at the conference, I spoke to several people who had been diagnosed with amblyopiawhen they were young and had had to go everywhere wearing their eye patch. One common thing I heard was that as soon as these people would enter their school, they would take the eye patch off because they did not want other children to look at them differently. It was through these discussions that I saw how meaningful my research was, as it can be used as a stepping stone for other research on the subject. Eventually, it may lead to other treatment methods that can help children with amblyopia avoid stigma and improve their overall quality of life.
Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Conference Grants.
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