Join us in welcoming UWIN’s newest undergraduate and post-baccalaureate fellows!  Six undergraduate students and three post-baccalaureate researchers were awarded 2018 UWIN Fellowships.  You can read all about their exciting research below, and follow the links to see all of UWIN’s undergraduate and post-baccalaureate fellows.

2018 UWIN Undergraduate Fellows

Mahad Ahmed, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Mahad Ahmed (2018 fellow) is an undergraduate student working with Tanvi Deora and Tom Daniel in the Biology department. He is investigating the neural basis of learning in hawkmoths (Manduca Sexta). Mahad’s current project looks at mechanosensation’s role in this learning, seeing how different flower shapes influence the moth’s feeding behaviors.
Mackenzie Andrews, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Mackenzie Andrews (2018 fellow) is an undergraduate student in Bioengineering and Neurobiology with a minor in Neural Computation and Engineering. She is working with Charles Chavkin in the Departments of Pharmacology. Mackenzie’s research investigates how brain regions communicate to drive behaviors associated with drug abuse and addiction. She is designing a device to be simultaneously implanted in two brain regions in mice capable of optogenetic modulation and electrophysiological recording of neural activity. After graduating, Mackenzie will be continuing this project into her Bioengineering Master’s thesis where she will be doing the computational work required to analyze the data.
Alyssa Giedd, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Alyssa Giedd (2018 fellow) is an undergraduate student working with Momona Yamagami and Sam Burden in the Electrical Engineering department. Alyssa’s research focuses on the development and testing of a remote data collection tool for quantifying motor planning. This will allow for the collection of data remotely so a greater number of individuals can participate in research on Cerebral Palsy.
Joyce Huang, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Joyce Huang (2018 fellow) is an undergraduate student in the Bioengineering department, working with Rajiv Saigal in the Neurosurgery Department. Joyce’s research focuses on electronically controlled drug release for the treatment of spinal cord injuries. She intends to pursue an MD degree and continue research in neuroengineering after graduation.
Aiden Maloney-Bertelli, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Aiden Maloney-Bertelli (2018 fellow) is an undergraduate student in Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering who works with Ramkumar Sabesan in the Ophthalmology department. Aiden is working on image processing algorithms for optical coherence tomography (OCT) of the human retina to support research in the emerging field of optophysiology. She and her lab aim to use a variant of OCT to noninvasively measure neuronal responses to visual stimuli and, thereby, provide insight into how the retina functions in healthy and diseased states.
Clara Orndoff, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Clara Orndorff (2018 fellow) is an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering major working with Tom Libby and Sam Burden in the Electrical Engineering department. Clara’s research includes designing and building a system that will be able to analyze the different methods with which moths use multi-sensory information to increase their agility. Specifically, this system will quantify a flying moth’s response to mechanically applied perturbations. The goal of this work is to obtain results that can be used to build and improve nature-inspired flying robots.

2018 UWIN Post-baccalaureate Fellows

Kirsten Gilchrist, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Kirsten Gilchrist (2018 fellow) is a post-baccalaureate researcher working with Steve Perlmutter and Jane Sullivan in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. Kirsten’s research uses optogenetics to promote synapse regrowth and formation between cortical and spinal neurons. Her project will provide fundamental information on neural plasticity, with the goal of eventually improving treatment for spinal cord injuries. Kirsten attended the University of Washington where she received a bachelor’s degree in Neurobiology.
Pralaksha Gurung, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Pralaksha Gurung (2018 fellow) is a post-baccalaureate researcher working with John Tuthill in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. Pralaksha is studying the diversity and distribution of proprioceptors along the leg of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies). She will be characterizing the anatomy of function of tibial proprioceptors using optogenetic tools. Pralaksha graduated from Colby College with a bachelor’s degree in Cellular Molecular Biology/Biochemistry.
Aidan Johnson, recipient of a 2018 UWIN Fellowship Aidan Johnson (2018 fellow) is a post-baccalaureate researcher working with Wu-Jung Lee in the Applied Physics Laboratory. Aidan’s research focuses on deriving the computational principles of sensorimotor behavior in the context of coordinated flight and multi-agent active sensing. He is broadly interested in the signal processing that occurs within the brain and how the functions of individual neurons are combined for system-level action and perception. He recently graduated from the University of Washington where he received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.