Rachel G
- Research Program Mentor

PhD candidate at University of Florida (UF)

Expertise

Neuroscience, molecular biology, psychology, neuroinflammation, biomedical science

Bio

Hello! My name is Rachel, I am a fourth year PhD student at the University of Florida. I am currently working in a neuropharmacology lab that focuses on identifying and targeting pathways of neuroinflammation to help reduce injury after an ischemic stroke. I work with mice and most of what I do is dissect brains and look at all the different types of cells in the brain and see how they change after we give the mouse a stroke. After that, we can find drugs that help those cells recover from the injury and start the healing process. I love my research and I am lucky to be in a lab where I have time to do fun things outside of lab as well! The other students who started at the same time as I did are some of my best friends now and we like to go to dinner, find craft fairs, take trips to the beach, and just hang out with each other. I also like to volunteer at the animal shelter and foster sick kittens until they are ready to be adopted. Grad school is a fun time to explore research areas and get to know other people who are interested in the same things you are!

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Investigating the neurobiology of depression

My work is focused broadly on identifying neuronal pathways and investigating how they change in disease states. The pathways that contribute to depression are not fully characterized but there are some hypotheses in previous literature. As a potential project we may: 1. write a short review article on the current theories of depression 2. create a mock experiment to further explore one of those theories 3. write a journal article featuring proposed methods and expected results. These steps could be applicable to any disease such as anxiety, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, cancer, etc. The great thing about neuroscience is that it is so interdisciplinary, so if a student is interested in a disease we can most likely look at it from a neuroscience perspective!

Teaching experience

In undergrad I was a chemistry tutor and lab aide. During my time in graduate school I have mentored several undergraduates in lab work, writing, applications, and research ideas.