Beyond Locust Research Club

Thank you so much to Hana Matsuda for presenting at our meeting last Wednesday!

Hana is a rising junior studying bioengineering with an intended concentration in immune engineering and therapeutics. This past summer, Hana worked as a full-time researcher in Dr. Hammer's lab in cellular engineering as part of the Rachleff Scholars Program summer research experience. Using protein condensates, her project aims to develop a new toolkit to switch on and off the motility of immune cells with a pulse of light!

**ALSO! This was our last meeting of the summer :') If you are interested in running Beyond Locust next summer please fill out this form! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeSvTm6cGNrs45fxX8QRTdth5tpibQhECzK3w8iVHEEnR_Ogw/viewform

Thank you so much to Dr. Anupama Shetty for presenting at our meeting last night!

Dr. Shetty is double board certified in Pediatrics and Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and has trained at Brown University and Yale. She practiced Neonatology for 15 years at the Level 3 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Kaiser in Santa Clara, California, during which time, she was the Assistant Inpatient Pediatric Chief for about 5 years. This was followed by two years of a senior fellowship in Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Medicine at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Now, she is working at the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. From January 2024, she will be working as the Medical Director of the Neonatal Cardiac Care program at Miller Children's Hospital, Los Angeles.

Dr. Shetty is deeply passionate about providing expert ICU care to children with heart disease and improving their outcomes using family-centered neurodevelopmental interventions.

Thanks so much to Rayan Jawa for sharing his research experience working at the Hua Lab at Abramson Cancer Center/Penn Medicine, where he studies the development of CDH17CAR T cell therapies against gastrointestinal tumors. This past summer, he also worked as an Investigative Toxicology Intern at Bristol Myers-Squibb, continuing work on CAR T's in the context of gastric organoid models.

Looking forward to our next meeting TODAY at 8 pm as we hear from physician Dr. Anupama Shetty at CHOP! Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/7517022868

JOIN OUR CLUB! Interest form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1E6Tv3OoW1Te9X_0_MSEX3gY5NdDJaU68h9Yj0eG_rcE/edit

Thanks so much to Omar Elsakhawy for sharing his research experience working as a research assistant for the PAIR Center!

The PAIR (Palliative and Advanced Illness Research) Center at Penn Medicine generates high-quality evidence to advance healthcare policies and practices with the goals of improving the lives of all people affected by serious illness and removing the barriers to health equity that seriously ill patients commonly face.

Omar explained that in the palliative care setting, having realistic expectations is key for goal-concordant care. He uses qualitative analysis to investigate how clinicians discuss future health expectations with patients and how these conversations can be used to elevate patient care.

Looking forward to our next meeting on July 19th at 8pm!

Beyond Locust Interest Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/1E6Tv3OoW1Te9X_0_MSEX3gY5NdDJaU68h9Yj0eG_rcE/edit?usp=drive_web

Hi everyone! Beyond Locust is back for Summer 2023!
The Beyond Locust Research Club is an exciting, low-stress way for Penn students to learn more about different fields of research. Our goal is to foster inclusivity, and we aim to show that research is for everyone–regardless of prior experience! We plan to meet every week to introduce various research topics in the field of healthcare and beyond. These presentations will be led by either undergraduates (as in you!) or professionals in their field. We also have opportunities for students to connect and mentor one another through our Peer Mentorship and coffee chat programs. This is an excellent opportunity for pre-med students, or anyone interested in research.
Join us and learn more about research and how to get started!
Sign-up form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1E6Tv3OoW1Te9X_0_MSEX3gY5NdDJaU68h9Yj0eG_rcE/viewform?fbclid=IwAR2hjrm022ZStBBBnpJ5k31f3kovkQqwcWBdUMlbKwzqJ-iGt-TJer4stNE&edit_requested=true

Interested in research, medicine, or oncology? Want to learn about what different careers in this vital field could look like for you? Join CURF on Wed, Feb 15 from 7-8:30 pm (in NCHW/Gutmann MPR 101 OR on Zoom) to learn about careers in cancer research and hear from some of the world’s best oncologists and researchers at CHOP who study/treat neuroblastoma, a devastating pediatric cancer. We hope to see you there!!

Thanks so much to Madison Woods and Catherine McInerney (the Co-Founders of Beyond Locust!) for sharing their research experiences as clinical research coordinators at Penn Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia!

Catherine works at CHOP's Center for Lymphatic Disorders under Dr. Yoav Dori and Dr. Chris Smith, two interventional cardiologists. She discussed the lymphatic system (the "forgotten system"), the types of disorders seen, treatments and interventions performed at CHOP, and current research studies.

Madison's lab is studying how to improve Achilles tendon loading by identifying tendon profiles that explain long-term functional outcomes. While a tendon loading environment can be easily manipulated during surgery, there is little way to control how patients load their healing tendons once they leave the operating room. She works under Dr. Josh Baxter in the McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory at Penn Medicine, and has been working with clinicians to identify and recruit patients for these studies, as well as assisting with data collection and processing.

Thank you so much to everyone who attended our meetings throughout the summer! We hope to see you very soon 🙂

Thanks so much to Christy Choo for sharing her summer research experience in the Marine Biology department at Columbia University, where she studied harmful algal blooms in the Long Island Sound.

The Long Island Sound has an extensive history of these blooms, which are dangerous to both humans and the surrounding environment. The composition, spatial extent, and intensity of these blooms vary considerably from year to year, stressing the importance of investigating the temporal and spatial distribution of these blooms, as well as their potential drivers to better understand and predict the interannual variability of these blooms.

Christy's results stress that climate change is real and can inflict harm on ecosystems in different ways.

Looking forward to the next meeting on 8/24--LAST meeting for the summer :)

Beyond Locust Interest Form: https://docs.google.com/.../1deXoFlC9p7jz6kvM1u.../ed

Thanks so much to Zoey Kline for sharing her research on cancer immunotherapy, looking at how we can utilize the body's immune system to target cancer. Working in the Perelman School of Medicine at the Center for Cancer Immunotherapies, she has been working alongside Dr. Michael Milone and Dr. Fei Miao to complete a project on Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) design and CIITA knockout/knock-down trials.

Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR T-Cells) are T cells that have been genetically engineered to produce an artificial T cell receptor for use in immunotherapy. This kind of therapy has been proven to be extremely effective in liquid cancers, but not so much so in solid tumors.

Looking forward to next week's meeting!

Beyond Locust Interest Form: https://docs.google.com/.../1deXoFlC9p7jz6kvM1u.../ed

Thanks so much to Gretel Tassah for sharing her research on exploring responsive teaching practices for novice elementary schools teachers in underserved areas!

Responsive teaching is defined as the ability to “elicit, make sense of, and respond to students’ ideas in ways that help connect their developing understandings to key disciplinary ideas” (Remillard et. al). Gretal has been analyzing the structures of math lessons called Number Talks to understand and improve patterns of instruction among novice educators. She is also doing a solo project designing a comparative case study on two teachers' approaches to participation.

Gretal believs that teaching is an overlooked career, but its impact is incredibly important. She hopes that her presentation can serve as a look into the complexities that go into effective teaching, and foster more of an appreciation for the profession.

Beyond Locust Interest Form: https://docs.google.com/.../1deXoFlC9p7jz6kvM1u.../ed

We started a mentorship program! Sign-up here if you're interested in becoming either a mentor or mentee :)

Beyond Locust Mentee/Mentor Interest Form

Thank you to Hannah Jin for sharing her research on cognitive reserve among frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) patients at our last meeting! FTD refers to a family of neurodegenerative diseases that typically causes cognitive impairment in executive function, behavioral regulation, or language ability among adults in their 50s and 60s. She has been examining how occupation could serve as a proxy for cognitive reserve.

Looking forward to our next meeting Wednesday, 7/13 at 8:30pm EST! This one will be a humanities presentation :)

Beyond Locust Interest Form: https://docs.google.com/.../1deXoFlC9p7jz6kvM1u.../edit