Hi everyone! 

My name is Mrudul Nagapurkar, and I am a rising senior majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Chemistry and certificates in Conceptual Foundations of Medicine and Global Health. I am very excited to be part of the Brackenridge Fellowship this summer and look forward to learning more about everyone’s projects and research as a whole! My research focuses on circadian rhythms and sleep medicine, specifically in adolescents. 

My project is exploring how habitual sleep timing and adolescent changes to circadian rhythms affect psychomotor vigilance (or sustained attention). Under the mentorship of Dr. Peter Franzen from the Department of Psychiatry’s Sleep and Behavioral Neuroscience Program, I aim to better understand how later habitual sleep timing in adolescents influences attention performance by using an ultradian protocol, fMRI, EEG, and more. This research is crucial to getting a better understanding of circadian rhythms and how changes to these rhythms over one’s lifetime can influence other cognitive functions. Adolescents are a particularly vulnerable population to circadian fluctuations, and excessive sleep deprivation can have drastic lasting effects. Adolescent insomnia is a rising public health crisis, and has been linked to other psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, and even early-onset substance use. Exploring how sleep deprivation and circadian rhythms can influence vigilance, performance, and other aspects of cognition will help us better understand adolescent behavioral and mental health, and contribute to the overall field of sleep medicine. 

My ultimate goal is to become a physician-scientist by joining into an MD/PhD program, and I plan on focusing on pediatric psychiatry. I believe that this opportunity allows me to hone in on particular areas of psychiatric medicine and research that I am interested in pursuing. Through this experience, I hope to gain insight on navigating the research community and working with my peers and mentors to learn about sleep medicine, and any implications for mental and behavioral health. I aim to better understand how to use various resources to construct a research paper or manuscript, along with how some techniques commonly used in medicine work, such as fMRI scans and electroencephalography. This experience will also allow me to prepare for the rigorous nature of medical school, and further understand the clinical aspect of translational research and its connection to patient care. 

Outside of my academic life, I love hiking, photography, and writing! I am heavily involved in The Pitt Pulse, and am currently working on an article for our summer cycle. 

I look forward to the rest of this summer and all that it will bring!