My name is Nikki Dolphin and I am a senior here at the University of Albany finishing my Bachelor's degree in biology this spring! I first became interested in Dr. Scimemi’s neuroscience lab during my junior year after reading her previous research work and laboratory interests. I have always been interested in neuroscience and learning ways to apply certain laboratory skills in order to learn new things about the brain caught my eye. I came with little to no background about caring for or working with our laboratory animal models, mice. During my first week I was brought up to speed and certified to work them. I first initially shadowed another undergraduate student, Nurat, who was preforming surgeries. Later, I learned my role in the lab. I now have been working with different mice colonies for two years and have been put in charge of running our behavioral experiments (I even get to name them!). But of course, with fun also came a lot of work that I was unfamiliar with. I was also responsible for becoming very tech savvy with Igor and MATLAB, both software's I had never even heard of. I was really pushed out of my comfort zone and expected to perform was during this time I really grasped onto my love research and the obstacles that it came with. In addition, we also had weekly lab meetings which I believed were really helpful and knowledgeable. It was during these meetings I was also able to learn about what my peers in the lab were researching and how it pertained to my work. Not only that but we also took turns presenting on various academic journals which gave me a great opportunity to sharpen my reading and presenting skills while also learning something new.
I hope to attend graduate school in the future to further my research skills and become my own independent researcher!
Nikki
