Alzheimer's Research | Shannon Summer Research Institute 2021

The following is an computer-generated summary of the video transcript.

Mhm. I am a recent graduate of Bowdoin College with a biology and data science degree and a minor in computer science. Um I am currently back at Houghton doing summer research. This opportunity was presented via the summer research institute and the Van Dyke scholarship as well to allow us to get some research in Alzheimer's disease. So coming to home in college doing research was definitely something that I knew I wanted to do. Um Going into pre med research is a big thing that you want. With the Van Dyke scholarship I was actually able to get in and now we have a team of four about chemists into data scientists and I think one of the big things of this being a multi disciplinary is the fact that there's so much that I can do on the biology side or on the countryside. The data science students bringing so much more, they help us with different docking programs that we're trying to use and they bring in a way to analyze data that we would never be able to. Our role as data scientists in this research project is a lot of exploratory data analysis. So that means that we look at anything from research papers to databases we pull out what's useful from it. Um We create manuals on how to use some software for our chemistry students for the research. We're doing our main goal this year is to discover some new inhibitors of amyloid beta aggregation. Amyloid beta is a peptide that can aggregate in the brain that can cause dysfunction and lead to further dementia and Alzheimer's effects. So our goal is to find small molecules with the help of the data science team. Alzheimer's disease has been an area that has been something that I'm very interested in for a long time since grad school and I got my PhD back in 91. Yes, so it's been a while, but these students are invigorating that give energy and we've been able to look at some very interesting aspects of Alzheimer's disease, progress, the knowledge of the disease and contribute to possible with treatment. That was really cool that I could have this opportunity come up pretty early as a sophomore going into my junior year. Ah it's just it's a cool experience, This has been a great opportunity because it's something I want to do in my graduate studies as well. Having the opportunity to do this style of research in my undergraduate puts me in a perfect position for graduate applications and graduate research in the future. I was really thankful to have been given this opportunity Dr Martino actually approached me himself talking about his research for the first time and it just gave me so much excitement to finally be able to have an opportunity to do research because research is something that I've always really wanted to do myself. One of the things that I'm aiming to do in the future is actually be a part of a research team, conveniently this experience has been really worthwhile for myself. Being able to pair data science with biology and chemistry was just an experience that I didn't think I would gain so quickly upon graduation, and I it really grateful for being able to come back and work alongside current students and professors. So students have really been excited, they've been working hard and enjoying what they're doing.