Three University of Iowa undergraduate students, Brianna Blaine, Mostafa Telfah, and Lydia Watkins, have been selected as the 2024 Iowa Neuroscience Institute (INI) Summer Scholars. The INI Summer Scholar Program supports University of Iowa undergraduate students who plan to pursue research during the summer in the lab of an INI faculty member. As INI Summer Scholars, each student receives a stipend of $5,000 and has the opportunity to attend a summer undergraduate seminar series and a variety of informal events. 

Watkins, a Neuroscience major and Biology minor, does research in the lab of Isabel Muzzio, a Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, to understand how the brain translates experience into memory. Telfah, who double majors in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology along with Mathematics, works in the lab of Rodica Curtu, a Professor in the Department of Mathematics, and is co-mentored by Kumar Narayanan, an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology. His research analyzes electroencephalography (EEG) human brain data collected from participants performing an interval timing task. He is comparing timing responses from participants with Parkinson's disease and healthy controls. Blaine, majoring in Human Physiology, works in the lab of Banu Gumusoglu, an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Psychiatry. Her research focuses on placental extracellular vesicles (ECVs), which readily cross the placenta into the fetal brain and are changed by diseases of pregnancy such as preeclampsia. 

For more information about these students and their research projects, click on the link at the top.