August 2, 2017
By: Annika
As we wrap up the program and I mentally prepare myself for the 30-hour journey back home to India, I’ve been thinking a lot about how this summer has gone. BUSRF definitely didn’t go as expected—I had to change labs...
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July 29, 2017
By: Annika
7:50am… 8:00… 8:10… 8:20… 8:30… 8:35… These are all the alarms my roommate had to suffer through on a daily basis as I tried to convince myself to wake up for our morning faculty seminars. Although dragging myself out of...
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July 21, 2017
By: Annika
*This abstract is the first draft of what will ultimately be used for the poster presentation at the end of this program* The gut microbiome & depression: what is the best method for DNA extraction? Our gut microbiomes play an...
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July 15, 2017
By: Annika
Since choosing a chalk talk to write about was so hard (everyone’s projects are so cool), I decided to go with the topic I found most intellectually intriguing. Martin Acosta’s presentation on ‘Rapid Tryptophan Depletion: Sex-mediated Differences in Rats’ stuck...
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July 8, 2017
By: Annika
Although my lab is in the division of translational neurosciences, most of our day-to-day work involves cellular, molecular and microbiology. We’re currently comparing two methods for bacterial DNA extraction from mouse feces to study shifts in their microbiomes during depression,...
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July 2, 2017
By: Annika
Our gut microbiomes have long been known to be critical for immunity, nutrient processing, etc. More recently, research has suggested that gut bacteria play an important bidirectional role in brain development & function, and the modulation of stress response. Major...
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June 25, 2017
By: Annika
Dr. Williamson hails from a small, working-class family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and was the first of his family to go to college. During our discussion, he recalled having no idea what he wanted to do when he was 19 except...
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June 17, 2017
By: Annika
I started in my lab only midway through the week, and by then, the imposter syndrome had set in. Hearing about all the things that my fellow BSURFers were doing and learning, I felt incredibly incompetent. However, when I finally...
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