This past summer, the SBME Synergy Undergraduate Summer Research Program provided research opportunities for students interested in a career in biomedical engineering. We caught up with six students who worked in DMCBH members’ labs to learn more about their experience in the program.
Leo Chung
Leo Chung is a third-year neuroscience student who worked with Dr. Annie Ciernia over the past summer. His research project looked at the role of inflammatory bowel disease in the neurological immune response to the development of Alzheimer’s pathology.
“My interest in neuroscience was sparked from a young age, when those close to me began to suffer from neuropsychiatric disorders,” Leo reflects. “This led me to grow curious regarding the mechanisms behind said disorders, which are still largely unknown to this day.”
During his time in the lab, Leo learned more about immunohistochemistry, gaining the ability to stain for microglia and amyloid-beta plaques for visualization and imaging. One memorable moment for him was giving his first oral presentation in front of his peers and various faculty members, for which he won the Synergy Oral Presentation award.
Leticia Cid
Leticia Cid is a third year biomedical engineering student with a passion for all things neuroscience. She spent her summer in Dr. Manu Madhav’s NC4 Lab, investigating how rats update their mental maps of their environment and make decisions under varying levels of known information.
During the program, Leticia learned how the NC4 Lab’s custom Omniroute Maze works and how to program it to run behavioural experiments. She also gained skills in machine learning, data analysis and performing brain surgery on rats. In addition, she contributed to programming an AI to analyze data for Annie Kim’s Master’s project on using VR for Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
“I enjoyed presenting my research at Synergy Day,” she says. “It was enjoyable to hear others’ perspectives on my project and learn about the other cool projects in the program.”
Riya Gandhi
Riya Gandhi, entering her fifth year in Honours Integrated Sciences (Neuroscience and Pharmacology) at UBC, spent the summer in Dr. Mark Cembrowski’s lab investigating the hippocampal-amygdaloid transition area (HATA), an understudied brain region that may play a role in major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorder. To explore the cell types present in this region, she worked with post-mortem human brain tissue from neurotypical individuals and those with MDD, using the 10X Genomics Xenium platform to map cell types across the HATA at single-cell resolution. She is now analyzing the resulting data to identify cellular and molecular pathways linked to MDD.
Through this project, Riya honed her wet-lab and computational skills, including high-performance scientific computing in R for handling large-scale transcriptomics data. She also participated in Synergy workshops on presentation skills, career exploration and Indigenous cultural training, which broadened her perspective on the context of scientific research. A key takeaway for Riya was learning the importance of resilience and flexibility in science -especially when experiments didn’t work out.
“At first, setbacks were difficult to process, but over time, it became easier to see them as opportunities for my own growth as a scientist,” she reflects. “I was fortunate to be taught by several people in the lab who were generous with their time and knowledge and immensely encouraging when things didn’t go as planned.”
Watch Riya’s day-in-the-life video here.
Simren Ahuja
Simren is a third year Neuroscience student at UBC who worked with Dr. Cheryl Wellington over the past summer. Her research project focused on biomarkers of concussion, such as Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein (GFAP) and Neurofilament Light (NfL). She worked to assess whether the increase in GFAP and NfL concentrations after a sports-related concussion in adolescent athletes is clinically significant enough to diagnose concussions and determine their symptom severity.
Through the SBME Synergy Summer Research Program, Simren gained hands-on experience leading the statistical analysis aspect of this project. In addition, she presented her progress multiple times, learning more each time about how to convey scientific knowledge in clear and understandable ways.
“Working in a clinical research lab has shown me the impact that biomarker-based research can have on patient care and has motivated me to pursue the MD/PhD program at UBC,” Simren reflects.
Watch Simren’s day-in-the-life video here.
Yundi Wang
Yundi is a second-year medical student at UBC. This past summer she was supervised by Dr. Thalia Field, lead investigator of an ongoing prospective cohort study called SEARCH (StrokE and vAscular Risk factors contributing to neuroCognitive decline in adult congenital Heart disease).
In the SBME Synergy program, Yundi investigated neurocognitive outcomes, MRI brain volumes and quality of life in adults with moderate to severe congenital heart disease.
“The biggest highlight of the summer was getting to present my work at the VAST Conference and working with a multidisciplinary team across multiple different specialties from neonatal and adult neurology to cardiology,” says Yundi.
In the future, Yundi hopes to become a clinician-scientist where she will conduct translational vascular research from bench-top to bedside.
Darius Khoshons
Darius, a third-year Neuroscience student at UBC, spent the summer working under the supervision of Dr. Kiran Soma, studying how maternal diet influences offspring metabolism and steroid hormone regulation. He specifically examined how a high-sucrose maternal diet affects glucocorticoid (GC) regulation in the liver, a key site for metabolism and GC activation, providing insight into how early-life nutrition shapes long-term health outcomes.
During this project, Darius developed technical and analytical skills, including cutting and weighing liver tissue, designing and running liquid–liquid extractions and analyzing hormone data with software like MultiQuant. He also gained experience in literature review, designing and presenting research posters, and collaborating with lab members.
“I quickly learned that experiments almost never work perfectly the first time and that troubleshooting isn’t a failure but an important part of the learning process,” he shared. “This experience showed me that science is both careful and creative, and it gave me a new appreciation for the persistence and teamwork behind every step of discovery.”
A memorable moment for Darius was presenting his first research poster, which gave him a sense of accomplishment and confidence in sharing his work.
