Niitiggya

Hello everyone!

My name is Niitiggya and I am a junior in the honors college majoring in human biology. I am part of the Upstate Accelerated Scholars program and I will be matriculating to SUNY Upstate for medical school after graduating from UAlbany. In my free time, I enjoy working out and going on scenic drives.

I joined the Scimemi lab in spring 2022 to learn more about Alzheimer’s. To my surprise, I learned more than I thought imaginable in such a short period of time. Over the last four months, I performed stereotaxic surgeries, PCR, and perfusions. To be able to see a project through all the way from the characterization of a young mouse’s genotypes to an analysis of its cortical tissue has been a rewarding experience. The first project I worked on was understanding the role of amyloid-beta plaques in synaptic transmission in the CA1 region of the hippocampus. I injected a viral vector bilaterally into the hippocampus and performed a perfusion of the brain to analyze hippocampal slices after 3 weeks. While I read about this procedure multiple times in textbooks, to see perform it in person expanded my knowledge of the subject tenfold. Aside from lab skills, I learned a great deal about data collection and analysis. I learned how to not only interpret data, but to also convey my findings to an audience. I am so grateful for my time in the Scimemi lab thus far and I cannot wait for all that I will learn over the upcoming semesters!

Niitiggya Taneja

And then came graduation time!

Hello everyone,

My name is Saad Ahmad, and I am a graduating senior at SUNY Albany. I have been an undergraduate researcher in the Scimemi Lab since freshman year in 2018. I have recently completed my honors thesis on the Circadian Modulation of Astrocyte Morphology and Synaptic Transmission. I would like to extend my gratitude to everyone in the Scimemi Lab for supporting me through my undergraduate research career, as without their help I would never have been able to complete an honors thesis. Furthermore, the Scimemi Lab has been instrumental in helping me develop skills that I would not have been proficient in with just classwork. From learning PCR in my freshman year to performing image analysis with Imaris, they have been consistently patient and encouraging despite my many mistakes. One of the most valuable lessons I have learned through my undergraduate career is to own up to my mistakes and understand why they happened. By doing this, I gained a better understanding of procedures and troubleshooting steps. The lab also frequently hosted speakers and attended seminars together so I knew if I didn’t understand something there would be others to lean on for help.

My future career goals are to attend medical school and eventually become a physician. While I prepare my application, I will be working with Dr. Jaqueline Burre and Dr. Manu Sharma at the Appel Alzheimer’s Disease Research Institute. I hope to continue to expand my interest in neuroscience and research during my gap year and hopefully carry the skills I learn over into my career as a physician.

Saad

Corey

Hi!

I am Corey Nilon and I am about to finish my third year here at SUNY Albany. I am pursuing a Bachelor’s in biology and have minors in sociology and neuroscience. I originally joined the Scimemi lab in Fall 2020 and have happily been here for two years now! In my free time, I like to be outdoors, play sports, and travel.

In Fall 2020, I started learning polymerase chain reaction and the process of genotyping. Now, for over the last year, I have been focusing on the behavioral aspect of the EAAC1 project. With the help of others in the lab, I was able to truly organize and design my own experiment. I was  knee-deep in each part of the project- it’s planning, data collection, analysis, and conclusions. While there have certainly been many bumps in the road, I am thankful for them, as they’ve directly contributed to my learning. Overall, I would say this experience so far has been incredible. My knowledge of scientific theory, experimental design, general motor behaviors, and neuroscience have all expanded significantly. I presented my research on behavior twice this semester, first at the 19th Annual Student Conference and then at the Biology Undergraduate Symposium. This were my first experiences creating a scientific poster and presenting my research- it was awesome. Of all I’ve learnt in college, these have definitely been among the most rewarding experiences I’ve had.

Going forward, I am excited to build upon my studies by trying something new- computational neuroscience. This summer, I will be interning at the lab and I’ll be taking my first dive into astrocyte imaging/modeling and analysis through programs like Imaris. I look forward to trying something new!

Sarah

  

   Hello everyone!

    I am Sarah Anderson, I am just about to finish my junior year here at SUNY Albany. I am currently working towards a Bachelor’s in Science with a double major in biology and psychology! I joined the team as an undergraduate research assistant in September of 2021 and it has been an incredible experience thus far! I will continue to gain experience in the Scimemi lab throughout the rest of 2022 and into 2023. This research has expanded my knowledge of neuroscience tenfold and continues to be a learning experience.

    Being a member of the Scimemi lab has been such a great experience. From the moment I joined this lab, everyone has been incredibly welcoming and always willing to help one another out. This was very reassuring, as I had done all of my previous biology labs virtually, I was nervous that the hands-on work would present a tough learning curve. However, with the support of everyone within the Scimemi lab, the transition from virtual to in-person was made relatively easy.

    Throughout the fall 2021 semester, I was learning PCR and the proper way to maintain the mouse colony by backcrossing the mice to prevent genetic drift. Towards the end of the fall semester, I began to focus on other projects that were being done by Gabrielle Todd. During the spring 2022 semester, I had transitioned to helping Gabrielle perform a dot blot that compares the glutamate transporter concentrations in wild type and Aß mice at different age cohorts. By learning each step of the complex process from Gabrielle, I was eventually able to perform protein purifications, Bradford assays and dot blots almost entirely independently. I was fortunate enough to get to present my research in the 39th Annual Biological Sciences Research Symposium. This event broadened my horizons to the range of research that is being conducted here at SUNY Albany, and it was overall a really fun event!

    The opportunity that Dr. Scimemi gave me by letting me become one of the undergraduate researchers in her lab is priceless, I have learned so much and will continue to actively learn until I graduate! I can’t wait to be a part of the Scimemi lab for another year!

Sarah Anderson

Mustafa

Hello everyone!

My name is Mustafa Muhi, a Junior Biology major at SUNY Albany. I joined the Scimemi lab in January 2022 and have been working since then. I enjoy reading, traveling, playing video games, and playing soccer. Since I joined the Scimemi I have learned a wide variety of skills ranging from learning to do literature reviews, write papers, PCR, and the ability to scientifically approach challenges that I may face. At the start of my time in the lab, I learned how to handle the mice colonies and genotype the mice through PCR. Although at that time I was very inefficient at those tasks and often needed help, with the help of everyone in the lab I became very efficient and comfortable with my roles. As the lab received the new mouse strains mice, I began with optimization of their PCR protocol. This required me to combine everything I have learned throughout the semester. Although I am still working on some protocol optimization, I hope I could eventually create an efficient protocol for people to use in the future. I have learned so much in the time I have been in this lab, I plan to continue to be a part of the lab this semester and next year. I hope to be able to learn how to do stereotaxic brain surgeries and to be more involved in the lab. I cannot wait to learn more from all the kind people in the Scimemi lab!

Mustafa

Garrett

 

Hi everyone!

   My name is Garrett Wagner, and I am about to graduate here at SUNY Albany with a Bachelor’s in Science in Biology and a minor in Neuroscience. I joined the Scimemi lab in July of 2021 hoping to further my knowledge on how certain mechanisms work within the brain.

   From my interview with Dr. Scimemi, before I even began, I knew that her current work would be quite fascinating to learn.  I began my time in the lab learning PCR as well as how to take care of the mouse colony. In the fall of 2021, I began working with Nurat Affinih and Monica Rodriguez to analyze mouse brain images to determine the effects that the loss of the glutamate transporter, EAAC1, has on dopaminergic cell survival within the mouse midbrain.  My role involved using programs such as Fiji to count the dopaminergic cells and determine regions of interest such as the VTA and SNc.  I also began to familiarize myself with Igor which was used for analysis of our cell count totals and create figures to present our data in a more reasonable format.  Those figures were then included in my presentation at the 39th Annual Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Symposium.  I valued this opportunity greatly as I gained more experience in presenting to others. 

   From my time in the lab, I have learned so much in just a short period of time.  I’ve gained a much better understanding of how research is performed and the time and effort it takes from everyone in the lab.  As I continue my journey following undergrad, I plan to take a gap year and apply for medical school.  I look forward to continuing my time in the Scimemi Lab this summer as well as other opportunities that may come about. 

Garrett

Jaci

Hello! 

My name is Jaci Yong and I am a sophomore at the University at Albany majoring in Psychology and minoring in Neuroscience. I joined Dr. Scimemi’s neuroscience research lab as a volunteer from Fall 2021 to Spring 2022. After attending one of Dr. Scimemi’s virtual seminars in the Honor’s College during my freshman year about glutamate transporters and the mechanisms that control neurotransmitter release and information transfer among neurons, I became very interested in her research and wanted to get involved with it. Later that summer, the Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement sent out an email saying that Dr. Scimemi was looking to recruit 2 undergraduate students to join her lab in Fall 2021, so I filled out an application, was interviewed, and then accepted into the lab.

As a student who was spending my first year in college learning remotely from home, I felt a bit isolated from the campus community and from research opportunities, which is a big reason why I wanted to get involved in research as soon as I was able to go to campus in-person. I had never worked in a research lab previously, so my first day touring the lab felt a bit intimidating, but I met a lot of great people in the lab who were eager to share their work with me and explain things that I was unsure about. 

In Dr. Scimemi’s research lab, I shadowed PhD student Ben Bennink for my first semester and was trained in mouse colony management and behavior analysis. I worked with the other new undergraduate student, Stephanie Fischer in running behavioral experiments with different groups of mice. Having never worked with animals in a research setting, working with mice (especially newborn mice) took some getting used to, but eventually as I worked with them more frequently and they got older, I became a lot more comfortable. Another challenge I faced was learning how to run software such as MATLAB and Igor Pro for data collection and analysis. I had very little knowledge about technology and coding before this lab, but after becoming more familiar with these programs, I have definitely learned a lot more and I am still learning more new things every day! I have applied to continue conducting behavior research in the 2022-2023 academic year under the Honors Psychology Department and I am excited to explore more aspects of neuroscience research in this lab as well!

Hasan

Hello reader!

My name is Hasan Mehdi and I am an upcoming senior at the University at Albany, pursuing a BS in Biology. I joined the Scimemi lab in the summer of my junior year and have been here ever since!
In my free time, I love playing videogames, ping pong, and basketball. I also love hiking.
Doing research at the lab has taught me a wide range of skills that I never would have imagined. Over the summer, I was taught how to care for a mice colony by Gabrielle Todd as well as genotype them using the polymerase chain reaction. I watched and performed stereotaxic brain surgeries with Patrick Wehrle and learned how to read and present research papers to the rest of the lab. During the school year, I worked with Saad Ahmad and learned the software side of neuroscience, using programs like Imaris to reconstruct confocal images of astrocytes and dendrites, and Igor to conduct density analyses and compile our raw data into figures to present in papers and posters. I also learned how to use Fiji to perform a simple neurite tracer analysis to create figures of all the neurons we analyzed and observed and conducted mouse perfusions with Saad.
Being at the lab has kept me busy. Just in the last couple weeks I presented our poster Dendritic spine morphology changes following stereotaxic injections of A𝛽42-AAV for the 39th Annual Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Symposium and the CURCE 19th Annual Student Conference. In the future, I want to combine my love of Biology with the world of coding, in the Bioinformatics field. This summer I have been accepted to do a Bioinformatics fellowship at the RNA Institute to get some direct experience with the field.

Hasan