"This summer, I joined Dr. Akiva Cohen's lab at CIRP as part of the Minds Matter Concussion Program, working on pre-clinical research into how mild traumatic brain injury affects cognition and brain circuitry. Behavioral neuroscience was a completely new world for me. I spent my first week learning paradigms like Spatial Object Recognition and contextual fear learning from scratch, and I won't lie, I was nervous I wouldn't catch on fast enough. That worry didn't last long. Anthony Farrugia, who mentored me for most of the summer, walked me through every experiment step by step and never once made me feel bad for asking questions. He even sat with me through round after round of slide practice until I actually felt ready to present. Brian Johnson and Ian Diaz Nieves were right there too, always willing to explain something a different way or help me figure out why an experiment wasn't working. By the end of the summer, I was running techniques on my own that I'd only ever heard of in passing ten weeks earlier. The learning didn't stop at the bench. People across CHOP, whether they had a PhD, an MD, or both, made time for me whenever I reached out, whether that meant grabbing coffee to talk about their career path or letting me shadow them clinically. Those conversations gave me a much clearer sense of where I want to take my own career. Living with the cohort for ten weeks and working alongside my mentors gave me friendships and connections I know are going to last well beyond this program, and that's what I'll remember most about this summer."

Injury Science Research Experiences for Undergraduates Student (Summer 2026)