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