Home Region
Germany
What I'm Studying
Biology
Favorite Campus Food
Ernie's hot roast turkey sandwich in the Marketplace
Favorite Abu Dhabi Activities
Swim, bike, run, play the piano, trumpet, violin, list books that I absolutely want to read (and then rarely manage to do so)
Me in a Nutshell
Permanent globetrotter
I struggled with the idea of having to focus on only one thing at university in Europe, which was where I originally thought I would end up. I was only 17 in my final year of high school and I felt that it was too early to limit myself to the study of one subject.
The core curriculum and other liberal arts aspects of NYU Abu Dhabi appealed to me. What really convinced me was Candidate Weekend and the students I met there. I felt quite intuitively that these were people that I would want to spend time with.
I love biology because it attempts to explain how complexities like behavior come about, and how aspects of living things are linked.
There are a lot of unanswered questions, and we have incredible tools to address these and advance our understanding of biological processes. I love neurobiology in particular because it speaks to the fundamentals of brain and nervous system, which ultimately shape our thinking, decision-making and other complex processes that dictate our every minute.
We tend to think that we are more than our biology, but in the brain, it ultimately comes down to an intricately connected, highly dynamic network of chemical and electrical signals. Using some very sophisticated tools to manipulate aspects of that network, we are trying to understand it a little better. And, in contrast to the popular idea that "we don't how the brain works", we actually do have a wealth of (sometimes contradictory) evidence on which we can base further research and hypotheses.
In my project I studied mood, which is represented in specific areas of the brain, and how it affects sleep patterns both at the level of the brain's electrical activity and at the level of gene expression.
All of us have experienced times during which we don't get enough sleep and may become quite solemn and cranky. In depressed patients, sleep deprivation actually removes symptoms of low mood.
Amongst other things, this tells us that the two concepts of mood and sleep are linked. However, the way in which they affect each other in the brain remains unclear.
A year-long research endeavour required in your senior year at NYUAD.
In our lab, we use a mouse model of depression, where depressive-like behavior is induced in mice after they are subjected to a form of social stress. We can study molecular pathways in the brain that are aberrant as a result of this exposure to stress, and also see how the amount and intensity of sleep is affected. In this way, we hope to gain a better understanding of why and how sleep-related symptoms come about in depression.
In the future, this will be important for the development of new therapies, especially as depressive disorders are on the rise and there is an increased awareness for the destructiveness of this disease both for the individual patients and society at large.
I'm extremely happy that I will be able to continue this work over the summer through the university’s postgraduate training program.
He has an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge about all things genetics, genomics, immunology and epidemiology. In class, we usually started talking about quite general concepts and then ended up somewhere else, discussing why those concepts were there in the first place from the perspective of evolution. Professpr Idagdhour taught me that there will always be more questions for us to answer, and his optimism about research is very inspiring.
As he is my academic mentor, he also happened to be involved in my graduate school applications. After a rough week of interviews and decisions, I wrote him a rather frantic e-mail one evening asking him what I should do. He replied immediately, telling me that I could call him anytime to talk through my options. I could hear his family talking in the background as he listened to me and helped me come up with a plan for what my next steps would be.
Those are real NYUAD moments: when your professors are willing to go above and beyond to help and support you, like a family member.
We would drive there once a week, and prepare activities for the women who live there. We organized career advising and creative writing workshops, cappella singing, dancing, and arts and crafts sessions. My favorite events were the Halloween and Christmas parties. We would bring snacks and music, and the wonderful women who live at the safehouse would bring all their energy.
I always felt humbled and in awe of these powerful ladies who were working through a lot of hardships in their lives but radiated so much positivity and optimism, and never failed to smile and laugh.
I cherish the opportunity to live and breathe in places I don't know because it's the best way to learn about it.
Political Science and Economics
I love how research combines a little bit of everything I enjoy: designing, coding, interacting with people, learning something new each day.
Psychology
I decided to accept NYU Abu Dhabi over other schools because it offered me flexibility in my studies.
Chemistry
