I first became involved with undergraduate research at UConn the summer following my freshman year. During this time, I joined Dr. Pramod Srivastava’s laboratory in the Department of Immunology/Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center at UConn Health in Farmington, CT. Dr. Srivastava’s lab focuses in on four key areas, including antigen presentation by MHC I and MHC II molecules, immune responses to cancer, viral immunity, and autoimmunity. Throughout the first year of being a member of this lab, I spent a lot of time shadowing the graduate students and post-docs who were also in the lab. I assisted them on their projects so that I could gain the skills I would need in order to complete my own. This past summer, I was able to develop and being my own research project, which was supported by the Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) Award. This funding allowed me to spend a lot of time on the project throughout the summer, and it gave me a good foundation on which to continue my research throughout the academic year.

Although I love the Srivastava lab and the work I am involved with there, I wanted to explore research from other perspectives. During the fall of my junior year, I joined Dr. Holly Fitch’s lab in the Psychological Sciences department at UConn. Here, I learned about the effects of hypoxia-ischemia on mental development and its relationship to autism. Though I left the lab in order to dedicate more of my time to the Srivastava lab, the experience taught me about aspects of research I would have not been exposed to otherwise.

Overall, getting involved with research has not only taught me a myriad of scientific techniques, but it has also provided me with improved communication and presentation skills. Research is an important part of my experience at UConn, and I highly recommend that anyone interested in it reach out to prospective mentors as early as possible. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about getting started or about research in general!