Current Scholars

Alexandra Wong is a freshman at Johns Hopkins University where she studies neuroscience and social policy. She currently researches in the Knierim Lab (Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute) under the direction of Dr. James Knierim. Her research this past summer focused on understanding how the experience-dependent plasticity phenomena of hippocampal place cells in the CA3 region differ between old and young rats.   

Ayotimofe Idowu is a sophomore biology major at Howard University and a cohort 3 member in the Karsh Stem Scholars Program. She is an aspiring physician-scientist who is greatly interested in studying diseases as well as finding pharmaceutical methods to cure them. She is currently an undergraduate researcher at the Dawson Lab in the Institute of Cell Engineering. This past summer, her research has focused more on cell death pathways and the interactions of Parkin Interacting Substrate (PARIS) in relations to Parkinson’s Disease. 

Berenice Almaguer is a junior at California State University San Marcos where she studies biology with a concentration in molecular and cellular biology. She currently researches in the Lloyd Lab under the guidance of graduate student Kirstin Maulding. Her research this past summer focused examining and understanding the relationship between Wnt signaling and neurodegeneration in C9orf72 ALS. 

Elias Wojahn is a senior student studying biochemistry at the University of Minnesota. He is involved with research in the Cullen Lab at Johns Hopkins University. This past summer his work involved developing a standard methodology for recording and measuring circling behavior in mice. 

Grant Smith is a sophomore at Baldwin Wallace University where he studies neuroscience and biology. He currently works under the direction of Dr. Glenn Treisman.  His research this past summer focused on functional neurological illness, and how to provide a platform for a better understanding of the disease. 

Jennifer Hinton is a junior at Mississippi State University where she studies biomedical engineering and music. She learns about auditory neuroscience under the guidance of Dr. Dwight Bergles in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience. Her research this summer in the Bergles lab concentrated on applying bioinformatics to public databases to explore differential gene expression in cochlear cells. Last summer she experimented with transfection of cochlear cells through electroporation. 

Maria is a Biology major at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Campus. This summer she conducted research in the Neuroengineering and Biomedical Instrumentation Lab. Work under Dr. Nitish Thakor’s mentorship consisted on studying the effects of asphyxial cardiac arrest on cerebrovascular autoregulation in a rat model. Maria aspires to continue conducting research in the Neurosciences field, which she plans to combine with a career in medicine as a future physician-scientist.  

Caroline Yuk is a senior at the University of Alabama, where she is pursuing an interdisciplinary degree in Neuroscience. She is currently in the Agrawal Lab under the direction of Dr. Yuri Agrawal and Dominic Padova, and her project this past summer focused on the neuroanatomical links between age-related vestibular impairment and spatial cognition. 

Princess Newton is a junior at Johns Hopkins University studying systems neuroscience and psychology. She has been involved in research guided by Divya Rao in Dr. Jung Soo Suk’s lab in the Center for Nanomedicine (at the Wilmer Eye Institute). Her summer’s research examined the potential for increasing the cerebral expression and circulation of exendin-4, a developing Alzheimer’s dementia treatment, through the use of penetrative DNA nanoparticles. 

Sarah Noble is a junior at Macalester College, majoring in Biology and Spanish. She works in the Fuchs Lab and her primary mentors are Dr. Paul A. Fuchs and Dr. Hakim Hiel. Last summer, she helped with a project titled “Neuronal Expression of HA-tagged Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor 𝛼9 in Mice”. This summer, she has been exploring the published literature regarding inner ear gene therapy.  

Sarinah Wahl is a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park where she majors in Physiology and Neurobiology as a premed student along with minoring in Astronomy. This is her second summer working with Dr. Kwame Kutten and Dr. Tilak Ratnanather. She is continually working on how to track the Meyer’s Loop, one of the white matter fibers of Optic Radiation, via Dynamic Programming Tractography to explore more about the structure of it.