Name: Sammy Weiser Novak Hometown: Victoria, Canada Lab: Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center Lab website: https://www.salk.edu/science/core-facilities/advanced-biophotonics/ Hobbies: Surfing, making and eating food, listening to and playing music, reading What do you study? I use light and electron microscopes to study the relationships between structure and function in living things at different spatial scales. When a researcher at Salk […]

Name: Madeline Kavanagh Hometown: Sydney, Australia Lab: Cravatt Lab, The Scripps Research Institute, CA Lab website: https://www.scripps.edu/cravatt/index.html Hobbies: Hiking, skiing, running, bird watching, ballet and martial arts What do you study? I investigate how the interactions between proteins control how immune cells function, and whether we can develop new approaches of treating disease by targeting these interactions with […]

Name: Yan Wu Hometown: Montgomery, NJ Lab: Dr. Kun Zhang Lab website: http://genome-tech.ucsd.edu/ZhangLab/ Hobbies: Rock climbing and finding new recipes! What do you study? One question scientists have had for a long time is how human brains got so much bigger and more connected than the brains of other animals. To answer this question, I study if there is […]

Name: Graziana Gatto Hometown: Ceraso, Italy Lab: Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory of Martyn Goulding Lab website: http://goulding.salk.edu/ Hobbies: Photography, Travel, Cooking, Soccer What do you study? We study how the neurons in the spinal cord function to make us walk, run, scratch, and how they make us feel hot, cold, touched and itchy. We remove or activate different types of neurons […]

Name: Amanda Mar Hometown: Vancouver, Washington Lab: Laboratory of Genetics under the direction of  Rusty Gage Lab website: https://gage.salk.edu/ Hobbies: Arts & Crafts, Cooking, Hiking, Photography What do you study? I study autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its relation to macrocephaly to look at how the brain develops among individuals with autism. To look at this, we grow […]

Name: Ahana Chakraborty Hometown: San Diego, California Lab: Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory of Shrek Chalasani Lab website: https://chalasani.salk.edu Hobbies: Drawing and painting, baking What do you study? I study autism spectrum disorders using the microscope nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, as a model organism. C. elegans is a tiny hermaphroditic worm (meaning that it can reproduce without a mate if […]

Name: Thomas Kuret Hometown: Dublin, Ohio Lab: Laboratory of Genetics under the direction of  Rusty Gage Lab website: https://gage.salk.edu/ Hobbies: Hiking, Cooking, and Teaching! What do you study? I study Autism Spectrum Disorder and how and how the brain grows. We know brains grow differently in ASD patients, but we don’t know how. We can grow mini brains […]

  Name: Molly Matty Hometown: Port Saint Joe, Florida Lab: Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory of Shrek Chalasani Lab website: https://chalasani.salk.edu Hobbies: Running, yoga, eating ice cream, traveling What do you study? My current research focuses on how the microbes in the gut can influence behavior. I do this using a small worm called C. elegans. I am interested in how signals […]

  Name: Brianne Palmer Hometown: Littleton, Colorado Lab: Lipson Lab, San Diego State University Lab website: http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/lipsonlab/author/dlipson/ Hobbies: Hiking, camping, ukulele, baking What do you study? I study how soil microbes that live on the upper layers of the soil survive fire, particularly cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria are super cool microbes that act like both plants and microbes […]

Name: Hetika Vora Hometown: Orange County, CA Lab: Neal Devaraj Lab, UC San Diego Lab website:  https://www.devarajgroup.com/ Hobbies: Dancing, concerts, traveling What do you study? I am studying protein post-translational modifications (PTMs) in cancer. About one-third of human cancers have mutations in the Ras family of proteins, but there are currently no treatments that directly target these […]