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Tatenda Chakoma ’18 is exploring a possible future in neuroscience as he interns at UCLA Medical School, Department of Neurology this summer. This internship is a summer program run by Hamilton alumnus Dr. Bruce Dobkin ’69. Each year he selects one Hamilton neuroscience student to do biomedical training and research at UCLA Neurology. Chakoma’s internship is supported by the Sandra Solomon Internship Fund, managed by the Career Center.

Some students enroll at Hamilton undecided as to their academic path; others know exactly what track they want to pursue. Olivia Surgent ’17 is in the latter group.  She’s been interested in neuroscience, specifically Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), since middle school when she began teaching swim lessons to children on the spectrum. This summer Surgent is advancing on that path as an intern at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior in Madison, Wisc.  The center specializes in understanding neurological functions of children with developmental disorders such as ASD.  

He’s a neuroscience concentrator, but Pat LeGates ’18  is spending the summer exploring a very different interest.  He’s composing experimental electronic music and video and studying the relationship between the two through an Emerson Foundation grant.

Six Hamilton faculty members were recognized for their research and creative successes with the Dean’s Scholarly Achievement Awards, presented by Dean of Faculty Patrick Reynolds on Class & Charter Day on May 9.

Seven Hamilton students have been selected to attend the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) that will take place in April 1-3 at the University of California, Berkeley. Aleksandra Bogoevska ’17, Andy Chen ’16, Leonard Kilekwang ’16, Alexandru Hirsu ’17, Emily Moschowits ’16, Sharif Shrestha ’17 and Tsion Tesfaye ’16 will attend. Shrestha and Tesfaye were among four Hamilton students who participated in last year’s CGI U in Miami.

Khat is a plant that is widely used but also widely debated because of its psychostimulant effects. This summer Leonard Kilekwang ’16 researched the effects of khat (also known as miraa) on mice at the department of Medical Physiology at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. His research will provide important results for people and government organizations trying to determine whether khat is safe.

Hayley Goodrich ’17 is replicating 2015 graduate Carly Poremba’s senior neuroscience thesis this summer in the hopes of contributing to the academic literature and research agenda surrounding binocular rivalry. Goodrich’s project, titled the Binocular Rivalry Study, seeks to test the efficacy of Poremba’s thesis conclusions regarding the postdictive effects of a later stimulus on a previously subconsciously processed stimulus.

Alex Mitko ’16 this summer  is taking the principles he’s learned as a neuroscience major at Hamilton into an internship with the Boston Attention and Learning Lab, a cognitive neuroscience lab located in the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Jamaica Plains, Boston. The BAL Lab conducts research that focuses on “the cognitive and neural mechanisms of attention, as well as the potential for enhancing attention abilities through cognitive training.”

This summer, Alex Jones ’16 is conducting an important research project to better understand how vitamin C affects growth and development. He is working with Professor of Biology Herm Lehman to study what role vitamin C plays in the metabolism of Manduca sexta, a kind of hornworm that is frequently used in scientific experiments. Jones and Lehman’s research this summer is one part of an ongoing project to determine how exactly vitamin C is necessary for growth and development.

When most of us think about oral health, we might not think far beyond brushing our teeth and our next trip to the dentist’s office. James Robbins ’16, however, knows that there’s much more to it than that. This summer as a Levitt Summer Research Fellow he is researching water fluoridation for improved public health. Working closely with Professor of Biology Herm Lehman, Robbins has been researching the public health debate about water fluoridation.