Researchers of Emory

  Holly Cordray   is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2020 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research at Children's Healthcare Atlanta. My name is Holly Cordray, and I am a senior in the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Honors Program.  Collaborating with Dr. Kara Prickett, a pediatric ENT surgeon at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, I am currently running a 150-patient clinical trial of an interactive resource I developed for pediatric patient education: an educational pop-up book for children facing surgery.  I began this project in 2019 with the support of the SURE program and my mentor in the Art History department, Dr. Tasha Dobbin-Bennett.  I wanted to build a resource that would engage children in active learning through hands-on features like flaps, wheels, and pull-tabs, equipping patients with understanding and positive coping strategies as they prepare for surgery.  I am hoping this rea...

Mariam Goreish  is a senior majoring in Biology and Global Development Studies. She was awarded a Fall 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the American Society and Tropical Medicine and  Hygiene .

Icho Lu  is a senior majoring in Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2019 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on liver lipid homeostasis under Dr. David Pallas.

Ji Won Lee  is a junior majoring in Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2019 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on autoimmunity under Dr. David Pallas. 

                                 Michael Mu  is a Senior majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2019 Independent Grant which she used to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.

Annie Schiffer is a senior double  majoring  in biology and environmental science. She received a Summer 2019 Independent Grant which she used to to study community ecology under Dr.  Berry Brosi. 

Kasey Cervantes  is a Junior majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Summer 2019 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on Malaria under Dr. Helen Baker.  Figure 1 This summer I undertook research into mosquitoes associated with malarial transmission at the  Natural History Museum  (NHM)   in   London in collaboration  with the  Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , and the  Emory School of Nursing   (Figure 1) . Mosquitoes (Culicidae) are dipterans – True flies, which is one of the orders of insects, the scientific study of which is called  entomology . 

Megan Withers is a Senior majoring in Environmental Science and Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Hello! My name is Meg and I had the pleasure of presenting at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), held at  Kennesaw State University . At the conference, I presented a poster about my honors research, which focuses on the transmission of a bacterial disease called Strep syndrome in Northern sea otters ( Enhydra lutris kenyoniI ). I used U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) data to assess population density as a possible indicator of the disease’s transmission mechanism. I didn’t find a significant relationship between population density and prevalence of the disease, but I did gain knowledge about other factors, such as gender, that could potentially affect the disease and its impact on sea otter health. Future directions in this research are aimed at furt...

Yu Zhang is a Senior double majoring in Biology and Chemistry. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. In NCUR conference, I presented my research on the development of a new HIV treatment. I was very happy to talk with many scholars who were also dedicated in natural science research. According to the previous report, over 170 million people infected worldwide, the hepatitis C virus (HCV) represents a significant public health burden. The primary mode of transmission for HCV is via exposure to infected blood, including transfusions from infected donors, and through intravenous use of illicit drugs. Although a minority of all HCV infections will spontaneously resolve without any clinical outcome, an estimated 80% of cases will progress into chronic hepatitis. The need for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV), has provided considerable impetus for the development of new classes of antiviral drug...

                                                                     Michael Mu  is a junior majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Every 65 seconds, someone in the US develops  Alzheimer’s disease (AD) . That includes a whopping 1 in 10 people aged 65 and older and results in the sixth-leading cause of death in the US. In a time when the baby boomer generation is in dire need of geriatric care, it is imperative that we do anything we can to improve the health outcomes of our senior population. At the  National Conference on Undergraduate Research ( https://www.cur.org/ ) last week, I outlined the progress, future directions, and potential implications for AD of my research on the role of L...

Varsha Chiruvella is a senior double majoring in Bilogy and German Studies. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the Moravian College Undergraduate Conference in German Studies . I have been learning German for the past 10 years. As a pre-medical student and lover of learning, however, it becomes easy to become bogged down by rigorous science courses and challenging medical-related exams. To me, German, and the humanities in general, has been my escape from burnout.  “But why German?” is a question that I get ever so often. After years of receiving the same inquiry, I believe I have formulated a final answer.  “Because I love it…and, you know, why not?” has become my standard response. And it’s true- I do certainly love learning and teaching German to my peers. I had finally found something in academia that I not only enjoyed, but truly was gifted with. And it was this “why not” mentality that persuaded me to continue my pursuit of the ...

Julia Gensheimer  is a senior double majoring in Biology and Chemistry. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the Keystone Symposia: Cancer Immunotherapy: Mechanistic Insights to Improve Clinical Benefits. As a freshman at Emory, I was eager to join a lab studying cancer immunotherapy. I read research descriptions on faculty websites and contacted principal investigators to express my enthusiasm for joining their lab.  Rafi Ahmed , a world-renowned immunologist, replied within minutes. After learning of his legacy, I arrived at the meeting prepared for an intense interview. Instead, I was met with a smile as he simply asked me when I wanted to start!

Sally Zhang  is a junior who is majoring in Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2018 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on ubiquination and Alzheimer's disease  under Dr. Hyojung Choo.  I started doing my project at the Seyfried Lab of the Biochemistry department and Center for Neurodegenerative diseases of Emory School of Medicine in April 2018. My project aims to examine the mechanisms underlying the turnover of insoluble neurofibrillary tangles of Tau, a key type of pathological protein aggregate in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the presence of protein aggregates and a loss of protein homeostasis. Ubiquitin (Ub) is a 76 amino acid peptide that marks proteins for degradation mainly through the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy. Modification by Lys-48-linked poly-Ub chains has been reported as means of selecting proteins for degradation by the UPS. Whereas, Lys-63-linked poly-ubiquitination is associ...

Brandon Chen is a senior majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Fall 201 Conference Grant which he used to attend the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting. .

Kino  Maravillas is a senior who is majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on the Milpa soil microbiome under  Dr. Nicole Gerardo .  The philosophy of scientific research is something I’ve always embodied but could never fully express until I entered Emory. Curiosity, gaining an understanding of the complex, interdependent systems that drive our world, has always driven me to read that extra chapter, linger on that leaf blade in the distance for just a few more minutes, and ponder on that lofty thought that you know will eventually lead somewhere solid. This curiosity was always in the back of my mind; coming into Emory, I applied to the  Scholarly Inquiry and Research (SIRE) program knowing I would finally get to apply this with a lab coat donned. Through my freshman and junior years I’ve been exposed to the grit of day-to-day research, from painstakingly formatting data figures to public...

Rumi  Habib is a senior who is a Biology and Philosophy double major. He was awarded a Fall 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on the Zika Virus under Dr. Ioanna  Skountzou. Although it was first discovered in 1947, the Zika virus didn’t enter the headlines until 2015. During the 2015-2016 epidemic, a wave of infants born with  microcephaly , a neurodevelopmental condition that causes babies to have smaller than normal heads, resulted in the World Health Organization declaring the outbreak an international public health emergency. Viruses in the same family as the Zika virus include dengue, West Nile, and yellow fever. However, during the epidemic it emerged that Zika fever, even though milder than the diseases caused by its relatives, has some very unusual features. With microcephaly being the major one, it also emerged that Zika could be sexually transmitted, can infect the eye, can cause thrombocytopenia (low platelet levels), and in extrem...

Eungjae (NJ) Kim is a senior who majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Summer 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on human metabolic pathways under Dr. Brent Morgan .  Dear future researcher: My research investigates the  pharmacokinetic mechanism  of a drug metabolite in human metabolic pathways. I am examining the  cross-reactivity between lidocaine and cocaine metabolites  filtered through the excretory system. My interest in the research experience stemmed from the classes and labs I took at the college. In laboratory courses, I was given directions to follow. After sufficient practice and experience, I had more ambition to create my own study and protocol to see if I could execute the action items in a larger group setting.

Amber Feng  is a senior majoring in Biology. She was awarded a Summer 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on gene expression in cancer cells under Dr. Hyunsuk Shim. When I first joined Dr. Shim's lab, I had no research experience other than one and a half semesters of introductory biology lab. Although I felt comfortable with pipetting and counting C. elegans under a microscope, I had little understanding of the larger implications of research and what it truly meant to be a scientist. I have always learned about the “scientific method” which, to me, meant reading literature, performing experiments, and writing papers. I thought the process would be relatively linear, rather than branched and filled with unexpected turns.  

Somin Kim  is a rising senior majoring in Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on myopia under Dr. John Nickerson.  It was in seventh grade when I first wanted to become an ophthalmologist. My mother’s vision had been deteriorating to the point of legal blindness, and it was around this time that my mother’s optometrist confirmed that this deterioration would continue until she was completely blind. It was the classic, “Someone dear to me is suffering; I will become the solution so she and others like her don’t have to” that drives so many into the field of medicine. But it wasn’t until I joined my lab at the Emory Eye Center that I became truly enamored by the eye. My drive towards an MD/PhD was no longer a one-dimensional desire; it was now rooted by my complete fascination on the organ that lets us perceive reality.

Hayley Moyer  is a rising senior majoring in Biology. She was awarded a Summer 2018 Conference Grant which she used to attend the Experimental Biology Conference . If you’d have told me when I started college that I’d find a home in a renal physiology research lab by the end of my undergraduate career, I wouldn’t have believed you. I never in a million years considered research to be something I could actually conduct and present to others myself. While I’d always loved science, I was sometimes intimidated by its uncertain, always-developing nature. Three years into my undergraduate career, however, here I am with two solid years of research under my belt, planning to continue my investigations into my senior year and even possibly beyond.