Panel 11: Research: Different Paths to Health Advancement
From animal studies to data analysis to cell culture, each of us worked on various forms of research over the summer, all of which focused on finding eventual improvements in healthcare. Tessa worked with chimpanzees in a sanctuary. Kunga’s research focused on analyzing HIV in Female sex workers and exploring the emergence of One Health. Lucie studied how to characterize the different cell types of endometriosis lesions. Annabeth worked with rats to better understand the etiology and sex-specific differences that characterize depression. While our summer internships were vastly different, we shared common goals that bridged our experiences, each of us working to improve the standards of our particular research focus and the impact it will have on lives in the future.
Moderator: Marta Sabariego, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Behavior
HIV Among Female Sex Workers and The Emerging Role of One Health
Kunga Dolma ’25, Statistics major
Uncertainty: how early life stress leads to biased perceptions
Annabeth Loftman ’25, Neuroscience & behavior major/Chemistry minor
The many faces of Endometriosis
Lucie Berclaz ’25, Biochemistry major
Canada’s Chimpanzees
Tessa Martin ’26, Anthropology major& Biology minor
Speaker name: Kunga Dolma
Title: HIV Among Female Sex Workers and The Emerging Role of One Health
This summer, I had the chance to explore various roles in healthcare, such as lab technician, bioinformatics, and public health. My main research focus was on HIV among Female Sex Workers in Nepal. I applied medical statistics to analyze the dataset, allowing me to uncover important insights about the prevalence and risk factors of HIV in this population. Through this work, I deepened my understanding of both the healthcare landscape and the intersection of public health and data analysis. This experience emphasized the crucial role that statistical analysis plays in addressing and mitigating public health crises like HIV.
Speaker name: Annabeth Loftman
Title: Uncertainty: how early life stress leads to biased perceptions
Negative cognitive bias is a prevalent and dynamic symptom of depressive disorders, but one that is not yet entirely understood. This presentation focuses on the Hodges Lab’s research into negative cognitive bias and our efforts to narrow the sex inequalities in medical research. We worked with rat models of depression to observe how social instability stress in adolescence can impact the presentation of depressive-like behaviors and cognitive bias across the lifespan, creating far-reaching effects even well into adulthood. Our data largely pointed towards the females having more negative cognitive bias, which corresponds with the depressive disorder diagnoses seen in the US, and highlights the need for sex-inclusive studies into this critical health issue. This internship experience provided context on the realities of lab research and helped illuminate the various issues that research can address.
Speaker name: Lucie Berclaz
Title: The many faces of Endometriosis
I spent this past summer studying endometriosis in the Rodriguez lab at the University of Zurich, with the goal of developing better methods of diagnosing and treating the condition. During my time there, my research focused on trying to identify what makes the cell types of different endometriosis lesions unique from one another. I learned a number of techniques related to cell characterization, performed in depth data analysis on microscopy images, and developed novel experiments that approached our research from different angles. Working in a new environment with procedures I had never had the chance to perform before pushed me to develop as a student, as a researcher, and as a critical thinker, and gave me insight into what my future in research could look like.
Speaker name: Tessa
Title: Canada’s Chimpanzees
This summer, I worked with the Fauna Foundation, Canada’s only chimpanzee sanctuary! Fauna works to protect and give sanctuary to chimps used in biomedical research, and I had the honor of getting to know those chimps this summer. Caring for and getting to know these chimps was an amazing experience, and I learned so much. In addition to daily caring tasks, I also learned to create enrichment for these amazing animals. I got to be a research assistant in a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) study, where we showed the chimpanzees an image of a coded message, “A Sign in Space.” We took notes of how the chimpanzees interacted with the image (and drew on the image!). Despite the strangeness of the study, I learned so much about live data collection techniques, transcript, analysis, and management.