Having finished a couple weeks of the HSRF, one of the best aspects of the fellowship has been being able to interact with a wide range of students across different health science disciplines. I’ve been working in my lab for about a year now, and have really enjoyed interacting and discussing research with my lab team, but haven’t had as much experience collaborating with other researchers across discriplines. It’s been amazing to see how much breadth there can be to health science research, covering issues from stroke to Alzheimer’s Disease, as well as the specificity that each project delves into. It has also been interesting interacting with peers through the fellowship because we are all relatively new to the research world, and are tackling similar obstacles and learning humps. I believe all of our research projects also represent our individual curiosities and it is always inspiring to see what issues/topics other students are passionate about. There are lots of things I look forward to learning from other students in the fellowship this summer. One thing I’m interested in is how other students and their labs approach using scientific literature in their respective disciplines into guiding their research questions and methodologies.
My project is focused on understanding the intracellular mechanisms governing both the augmentation and restriction of synapse formation between neurons. This is important because the aberrent regulation of synapse formation is thought to contribute to pathologies such as Alzheimer’s Disease and schizophrenia. Interestingly, a couple other students within the fellowship are also studying AD and schizophrenia but focus on different aspects. One individual, for example, is studying a mechanism and protein that may be involved with dendritic regression and grey matter loss, which is another hallmark of schizophrenia. There is also lots of variety in the health science disciplines that students are conducting research in. One student for example is studying ferroptosis in cancer cells and how a specific mediator named Cyclin E1 primes cancer cells towards ferroptosis. While both of our areas of focus differ (cancer vs. neuronal pathologies), we both focus on how a particular molecular substance is involved in creating a greater effect within its respective cell. Another common similarity between lots of the projects is that they are ultimately aimed at either directly discovering new treatments for various health conditions or discovering new biological information to help guide the development of new treatments.
I believe there are lots of benefits to working with people across disciplines. For example, one may find that a specific cellular process they are studying may have implications in other parts of the body after learning about another individual’s research. Other disciplines also tend to have different methodologies and approaches to their research that may be informative and present you with ideas you may not have been aware of beforehand. Some potential obstacles to working with people across disciplines is because reserch questions can be very niche and focused it may be hard to connect topics across disciplines to one another at times.