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...

Jahnvi Jain is a senior majoring in  Anthropology and Human Biology.   She was awarded a Fall 2019 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on  post traumatic  stress disorder under Dr. Negar  Fani . 

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 intere...

Ryan  McCann  is a junior who majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He was awarded a Spring 2019 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on experimental mouse tissue under Dr. David Weinshenker. When reading through literature on PubMed, you rarely see a research paper that has no acknowledgments. Most projects need multiple people putting their time and energy into producing the best results possible. Thus, there are often many names included in the acknowledgements, because the main authors needed assistance. I recently ran into some difficulties with my own project and realized just how important it is to work with other members of the research community. For the past two years, I have been fortunate to be a research assistant in the  Weinshenker Laboratory ( http://genetics.emory.edu/research/weinshenker/ ). Working with Dr. Weinshenker has been an amazing experience. I have been assigned to multiple projects, and exposed to different...

Monica Vemulapalli is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the Experimental Biology Conference . When I found out that my first ever research conference was going to be in my hometown of Orlando, Florida, I was excited! I knew that having an unfamiliar event happen at a very familiar place would make me less anxious. However, the conference turned out to be less stressful and more interesting than I ever thought. I attended  Experimental Biology (EB)  and   presented  my very first research poster , a memory that I will definitely cherish forever.

Ngozi Nwabueze  is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the Georgia Clinical and Translational  Science  Conference.

Philip Chu  is a senior who majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on Renal Cell Cancer under Dr. John Petros.  Medicine heals people, but research is what advances medicine. The reason I’ve done  research throughout my undergraduate experience is because I want to constantly contribute to  the advancement of medicine. What motivates me in lab is the thought that every experiment is   potentially a step closer in benefiting innumerable lives. I view medicine as the present, and   research as the future.

Nithya Shanmugam is a Sophomore who is majoring in Neuroscience. She was awarded a Fall 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on the role of microglial cell  polarization in medulloblastoma therapy  under Dr. Anna Kenney.  Dear Future Researcher, If you can take away one thing from this post, understand this: Your research may not always be successful in your eyes, but it will always be interesting and driven by curiosity. Whether you’re studying C. elegans, mesenchymal stem cells, or immune system brain cells (like me!), know that there is always something to be found – a cell to target, a receptor to inhibit, or a pathway to stimulate. 

Latha Karne  is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on opioid addiction under Dr. David Weinshenker.  Before entering college, students are required to take a series of tests to educate us on the dangers of abusing drugs. I've always known that prescription drugs should not be used by anyone except the individual for whom it was prescribed to, but had never  seen  up close the devastating effect that misuse can have. The summer before I started college, I was shadowing a trauma surgeon. A patient came in who was addicted to morphine, and I saw the difficulty of being able to treat their pain. Because the patient was addicted to a pain analgesic, he had developed a tolerance to the drug, which caused him to escalate his use and led to dependence. This “double hit” of the medication losing efficacy to treat the pain, while at the same time causing the addiction, ...

Natalia Brody is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on the relationship between estrogen and fear generalization under Dr. Brian Dias.   The first (and most important) thing a young scientist is taught is “the hypothesis.” In middle school, we are taught that a hypothesis is a potential explanation for a scientific phenomenon. Once a little older, if you’re lucky, the abstract idea of a hypothesis comes to life as you write your own research proposals, posters, and even lectures on these “potential explanations.” But, in perhaps the most important lesson of all, you’ll eventually learn that these hypotheses change— their potential nature comes crashing down just as easily as they were created to begin with. This is an in valuable lesson my participation in the research grant program allowed me.

Tristan Yates is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on child development and memory under Dr. Patricia Bauer. In my honors thesis work, I am investigating whether the structure of newly-learned information impacts preschoolers’ abilities to extend that information to produce novel understandings of related concepts.   A large part of this journey has been discovering what it is that preschoolers actually know and care about , and as an aside, it is not always listening to a college-aged researcher, regardless of how many stickers she offers during a session. Prior to entering the Bauer Memory Development Lab, I had little experience within the world of child development. Thus, while developing and validating new stimuli for the lab’s memory integration paradigm, I overestimated the types of information four-year-olds could hold in their little brains. This summer, my gradu...

Stephanie Wahab  is a recent graduate who majored in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on scene processing under Dr. Daniel Dilks. Humans recognize a “scene” or place in a fraction of a second and almost simultaneously navigate that scene flawlessly and effortlessly. This remarkable ability is thought to rely on three distinct brain regions that are selectively involved in recognizing scenes and objects. These regions include the occipital place area (OPA) (Dilks et al., 2013), the retrosplenial complex (RSC) (Maguire, 2001), and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) (Epstein and Kanwisher, 1998). While each of these regions show clear scene selectivity, responding more strongly to images of scenes than images of objects or faces, the precise role each region plays in scene processing is still unclear, and the subject of ongoing debate. The Dilks Lab looks into scientific inquiries related ...

Daniel Jacobs is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2017 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on attention under Dr. Daniel Dilks.   After spending hours sitting with my PI and graduate mentors, mulling over the concepts for our new project, I expected the execution of the experiment to go relatively smoothly. We hashed out all of our ideas and concerns regarding the methods. All that was left was to implement our plans and analyze the results, right? Unfortunately, things did not go as smoothly as we had hoped. No amount of time creating stimuli or losing sleep over an unenthusiastic participant could have prepared me for the unexpected hiccups of a research endeavor.

  Eli Patt is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2017 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on child development and memory under Dr. Daniel Dilks. Every Friday at 3PM the Dilks Lab gathers for its weekly meetings. As it nears time to meet, people begin leaving their desks and computers, grabbing tea and snacks on their way to the main conference room. From the coffee machine, one of the graduate students shouts a joke to another, and everyone laughs. The atmosphere is cheerful and everyone is excited to sit around the oval conference table in the main room of the lab.  The meeting begins, and we discuss any business matters first. Usually this is short. Then to the heart of the meeting, most often some form of presentation, talk, poster, etc. 

Margaret Martinez is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on synesthesia under Dr. Simon Lacey. I had just begun to enter the world of research when I first arrived to Emory University. In high school, I worked under an M.D./Ph.D. at a psychiatric institute processing MRI images, and quite frankly, I often felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Despite my constant feelings of confusion and being out of my depth, there was something about research that pulled me in, so as a freshman, I participated in the Research Partners Program. I began my work on synesthesia in Sathian lab having no idea what synesthesia even was. Now, after a year of practice of learning, I can automatically explain that synesthesia is a crossing of the senses. It’s when a person has an automatic sensory response to an unrelated stimulus with the most common type of synesthesia being grapheme-color. My res...

Lokita Rajan 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. I attended the  Society for Neuroscience (SfN)  annual meeting in Washington DC. My first time attending a neuroscience conference happened to be the largest in the world. About 30,000 attendees came from all around the globe, specializing in research across a spectrum from a cellular level all the way to cognitive systems. The sheer size of the conference was impressive. There were a thousand poster presentations happening at a given time. I felt like part of this huge community of scientists brought together by studying the brain. The poster I presented at SfN was partially funded by a URP independent research grant. I studied auditory imagery compared to other modalities of sensory imagery. Visual imagery is subdivided into  two   types . Object imagery involves pictor...

Trinity Kronk is a 2016 graduate who majored in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on kidney function and hypertension under Dr. Robert Hoover. Now you might ask “How in the world did she get herself into something like that?” Trust me; it’s a question I have asked myself many times, but for this instance the answer was clear.  I am passionate about my research. So passionate that I dressed up in a kidney outfit, put on fake nails and crazy makeup and lip sync to a kidney version of Adele’s song “Hello.” Never would I have expected myself to be a kidney nerd, but I am.

  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...