Simmons Personal Statement

My interest in neuroscience was sparked during my junior year in high school when I attended a series of talks on Multiple Sclerosis (MS) with my father who has suffered from MS my entire life. These talks furthered my understanding of my father's personal struggle with MS and provided my first in depth insight into neuroscience. Combining my firsthand understanding of the financial and emotional burden of debilitating neurological diseases with my newfound love for research lead me to the realization that there is nothing I would rather do than have the chance to help answer/solve scientific questions that could improve the quality of life for families who are impacted by neurological disorders and diseases. I have been working to achieve
It is here at Simmons that I have been further empowered to pursue higher education and focus on research. Unlike most colleges, Simmons is small and caters to each student on a personal level. My favorite aspect of Simmons is the research integrated labs and coursework. In organic chemistry I and II, we were encouraged to ask research questions and even run our own experiments at the end of the semester using the antimicrobial polymer we created in lab. Research integration became even more prevalent in the Advanced Analytical Chemistry course I took this past fall, in which we analyzed and quantified various components of tea using a variety of research instruments such as GC-MS. What I particularly enjoyed about this course was the hands on open ended approach we used in lab. We took the concepts and rules we learned in class, and formed our own procedures and protocols in lab to characterize the components of tea. This approach allowed us to practice troubleshooting and critical thinking that you do not necessarily get to use when you’re following a premade lab handout or procedure. I believe that this course was incredibly influential in the development of my research skills as well as the development of my love for
Additionally, this past summer through the Summer Honors Undergraduate Research Program (SHURP) at Harvard Medical School, I began looking at contributions of the peripheral nervous system to anxiety-like behavior and social interaction deficits observed in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). I worked closely under my mentor and postdoc, Lauren Orefice, and my PI, David Ginty, on my specific project was to determine if restoration of peripheral somatosensory inhibitory signaling in a mouse model of ASD at an early age would improve the anxiety-like behavior and social interaction deficits that we observe in the adult mutant mice. I found this research to be particularly interesting and engaging because I took part in every step of the research, from weaning litters and maintaining the colony to perfusing the mice and performing the immunohistochemistry on brain and spinal cord slices. I found this work to be particularly rewarding because our results showed improved tactile deficits as well as lowered anxiety-like behavior and social interaction deficits, exemplifying that this could be a possible target for treatment that may improve ASD outcomes when treated at an early age. I felt empowered by the real life implications for the work I took part in, and I feel a great sense of pride and