Cohort 10

Jannatul Ahmed ‘21
Major: Psychology, Economics
Research Institution: Rockefeller University

Jannatul Ahmed is a third-year student at the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College CUNY. She is on the pre-medical track pursuing a double major in psychology and economics. Jannatul is a recipient of the Horace W. Goldsmith scholarship and the John P. McNulty scholarship. The McNulty scholarship allows her to work at Rockefeller University in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language under Dr. Erich Jarvis, where she uses mouse models to investigate behavioral aspects of learned vocalizations.

Jannatul's interest in vocalization abilities stems from her love of singing and learning new languages. She is currently working on behavioral experiments involving operantly training mice to vocalize when given a stimulus to do so. She is working with the Feeding Experimentation Device, Raspberry Pis, and Python to engineer a system that would allow for automated mouse vocalization recording and reward dispensal. She is also adapting a Python version of an Excel script that the lab currently uses to analyze mouse vocalization recordings.

Jannatul joined the Jarvis Lab in October of 2018 and plans to work there until the end of her undergraduate career in June 2021. She also volunteers in the Maternity Postpartum Unit at Weill Cornell and the Teen and Young Adult Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She serves as a Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) Ambassador at the American Museum of Natural History where she mentors current students in SRMP, the high school research program that Jannatul participated in. She also volunteers with the Council on American-Islamic Relations where she is involved with outreach and photographing events. On weekends, Jannatul tutors at Kweller Prep Manhattan where she teaches SHSAT and regents classes.

Jannatul intends to apply to medical school at the end of her senior year and she is interested in continuing to do research in her gap year and throughout her medical career.

Gianny Guzman '21
Major: Psychology
Research Institution: Hunter College

Gianny Guzman is a third-year student at CUNY Hunter College where she is pursuing a degree in biology with a concentration in behavioral neuroscience (BA). She is also pursuing a special honors degree as a part of the Thomas Hunter Honors Program.  She is the recipient of the John P. McNulty scholarship, which has allowed her to engage in cancer research as a part of The Chiosis Lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, working alongside her principal investigator Dr. Gabriela Chiosis.

In her studies, Gianny is focusing on the microbiology of the epichaperome and its role in cancer. Her interest in neuroscience stems from her desire to understand the connection between our biological nature and our behavior. Gianny has been working as a volunteer in the Hospital for Special Surgery for the past year and a half.

Upon completion of her undergraduate studies, she intends to apply to medical school to further her knowledge of neuroscience and progress toward a career as a neurosurgeon.

Elena Mitra ‘21
Major: Physics
Research Institution: American Museum of Natural History

Elena Litvinova Mitra is a senior undergraduate student at CUNY Hunter College where she is pursuing a degree in physics (BA) and a minor in mathematics. She is the recipient of the John P. McNulty scholarship and the AstroCom NYC fellowship.

In the summer of 2020 Elena completed a summer research project at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab as part of the SULI program with advisor Professor Nathaniel Fisch. This project played an important role in understanding plasma transport in applications such as fusion and mass separation devices. She is currently continuing research work in orbital dynamics at the American Museum of Natural History with Dr. Jacqueline Faherty, Dr. Kelle Cruz and Dr. Danielle C. Bardalez Gagliuffi. She presented the initial findings for this project in a poster at the winter 2020 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, for which she won the Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award.

Her research interests are in plasma physics and theoretical cosmology, both of which challenge our current understanding of the fundamental laws of physics as well as enable future technologies. She intends to pursue a PhD program in physics. This is a second career for Elena; she holds a BA in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and has experience in the digital advertising industry.

Rebecca Litvak ‘21
Major: Chemistry
Research Institution: Hunter College

Rebecca Litvak is a third-year student at CUNY Hunter College where she is pursuing a degree in chemistry. She is a Macaulay Honors Scholar and a recipient of the McNulty scholarship, allowing her to participate in environmental chemistry research at Hunter College.

Under the guidance of her principal investigator, Dr. Spiro Alexandratos, she is working on synthesizing a substance to absorb pollutants such as dyes out of water without contaminating it further.

After graduating, she will pursue a PhD in chemistry as well as pursue a career in chemistry research and teaching.

Stephanie Melendez ‘21
Major: Biology
Research Institution: Memorial Sloan Kettering

Stephanie Melendez is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College CUNY and is on the pre-medical track majoring in biology. She is a recipient of the John P. McNulty scholarship, which has allowed her to continue working on her research project from when she was a participant in the 2018 Summer Clinical Oncology Research Experience (SCORE) program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

She presented her work at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in 2018 where she earned an oral presentation award. She continues to work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Dr. Richard White's lab, under the direct mentorship of Mohita Tagore. In her studies, Stephanie focuses on melanoma and cancer metastasis. Her project utilizes the Cre-loxP genetic tracing system and fluorescent microscopy to assess the amount of keratinocytes that pick up CRE-material from melanoma, and look at how that changes when various drugs are added. The aim of the project is to identify the mechanism behind the crosstalk between the keratinocytes and melanoma. Stephanie and her mentor are continuing to conduct drug screenings and are validating their results. They hope to apply their study to zebrafish models soon. In the summer of 2020, Stephanie participated in the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Coronavirus Academic Research Experience Summer (CARES) Program. She studied healthcare disparities and explored how those are affecting communities of color during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of the program she presented her findings during the MSK CARES online research symposium.

Stephanie also volunteers at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She enjoys being a third-year Macaulay at Hunter peer mentor and a second-year peer mentor for the Hunter College Pre-Health Mentoring Initiative. Additionally, she will be serving the Hunter community as a college association commissioner for the Hunter College Undergraduate Student Government. Upon completion of her undergraduate studies, Stephanie intends to pursue a career in healthcare to further her knowledge of biological sciences and apply that knowledge in a clinical setting; she also aspires to continue conducting cancer research.

Rhia Singh ’21
Major: Computer Science
Research Institution: Hunter College

Rhia Singh is a third-year undergraduate student at the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College CUNY, and is majoring in computer science with a concentration in bioinformatics. She is a recipient of the John P. McNulty scholarship, which has allowed her to continue working on her research project in Dr. Rajasethupathy's Laboratory of Neural Dynamics and Cognition at Rockefeller University. She began her work in this lab during her first undergraduate year and currently, she assists Josue Regalado, a graduate student, with his study of cognitive flexibility and decision-making.

She has developed custom behavioral environments in MATLAB, custom analysis scripts of behavioral traits and recently developed an automated method of quantifying the cells that she identified in her retrograde injection experiments. The aim of the project she works on is to understand how the anterior cingulate cortex integrates information from various brain regions to select an optimal action. She recently attended the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students and won a presenter award in the field of neuroscience for her poster on behavioral analysis. She has also worked as a Teaching Assistant for an Introductory Computer Science course, which allowed her to assist college-level students with computational material. In addition, she is a peer mentor in the Macaulay Honors program, which has allowed her to help underclassmen navigate their course and extra-curricular selection.

Upon completion of her undergraduate studies, Rhia intends to pursue studying Artificial Intelligence to further her knowledge of algorithm design based on the methods she identifies from her study of decision making in the biological brain. The algorithms she hopes to contribute to developing will hopefully aide in the efficiency and speed of healthcare access. She also aspires to mentor future students as a professor of Computer Science to help encourage students from diverse backgrounds gain the confidence and access to resources needed to pursue careers in computation, like those at Hunter, Macaulay and McNulty have done for her.

Alexa Michel ‘21
Major: Human Biology
Research Institution: Memorial Sloan Kettering

Alexa Michel is a third-year undergraduate student at City University of New York, Hunter College. She is a recipient of the John P. McNulty scholarship, majoring in human biology with a minor in music.

Alexa is currently working in Dr. Thomas Reiner’s laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, conducting translational research on the development and use of imaging tracers, like PARPi-FL, to better characterize tumors in brain and oral cancers through noninvasive imaging. She does cell culture, performs western blots, and helps to analyze experimental data. Alexa is also interested in the use of the CRISPR Cas9 gene-editing system to optimize chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy.

Upon completing her undergraduate studies, she hopes to further conduct and contribute to research by pursuing a career in medicine.

Andrea Mejia ‘21
Major: Physics
Research Institution: Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC)

Andrea Mejia is a senior at CUNY Hunter College where she is majoring in physics with an interest in astrophysics.

Her interest in astrophysics began as a freshman when she had the opportunity to apply to the NSF-funded AstroCom NYC Fellowship, a CUNY faculty-led cohort of the Astrophysics Department at the American Museum of Natural History. Using protoplanetary disk models, she began studying merging black holes in accretion disks where she learned to create two-dimensional simulations in a high-performance computer cluster to support her research.

Inspired by her experience, Andrea continues to conduct research on merging black holes in accretion disks in an attempt to constrain merger rates and masses of black holes detected so far by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), and is in the process of writing her first, first-authored paper on her findings. In the summer of 2020, Andrea was accepted into the Maria Mitchell Observatory (MMO) as an REU student where she studies the environment of the hosts galaxies of fast radio bursts (FRBs) as a means to studying missing baryonic matter in the cosmic web, and is excited to continue her research into the next academic year.

Andrea aspires to pursue a career in astrophysics and hopes to become involved in community outreach to promote higher learning and citizen science in marginalized communities. When she is not busy studying or doing research on black hole mergers, she enjoys nature walks, yoga, and riding her bike along the Hudson River.