Over the first three weeks of the HSRF, I have enjoyed learning about research from my cohorts within their respective fields. Since this fellowship only includes undergraduate researchers in the Health Sciences, most of my peers have some background knowledge about basic research techniques across STEM disciplines. However, all of our research projects are very specific to our field of research. My peers and I must provide each other with supplemental information about our research to understand it. It has been fascinating learning about other STEM-related projects. My research involves neuroscience, and it has been exciting to compare how different the other neuroscience and psychiatry projects are from mine.

I hope my peers and I can collaborate this summer to help us approach our research from new angles. Just from learning about research methods that my peers use, I have already thought of new techniques to apply to my project. I hope to learn more about conducting Health Science research from my peers and become more knowledgeable about research outside my area of study.

Several of my peers have been conducting research that is particularly interesting to me. Khushi studies psychosis in Alzheimer’s disease. Since I study schizophrenia, Khushi and I both conduct psychiatry research, allowing us to understand the basics about each other’s projects. Although Khushi and I have overlapping interests in research, we have different projects that use unique methods within psychiatry. Some of our techniques are very similar, such as cell culture and gel electrophoresis. Because of this, we can share our research methods and discuss any issues in our experiments. Khushi and I recently troubleshot a problem we both had with cell culture. I am lucky to see Khushi every week and check base with each other to see how our research is going. I am also fascinated by Elizabeth’s research. She is investigating a signaling pathway in corneal cells to study fibrosis. I am also exploring a signaling pathway, but our methods differ significantly. Observing the multiple approaches researchers use to analyze their research aims is interesting.

I am incredibly excited to work with my peers across different Health Sciences disciplines. All of our research and research methods vary considerably. The HSRF undergraduates will benefit from discussing our research with people outside our field. People with fresh perspectives on our research can offer us advice and suggestions we might not have considered. However, we must simplify our research enough to make it understandable to someone without background information. I am ready to continue exploring research with my HSRF peers this summer!