Graduate Student Spotlight

Racheal received her BS from North Carolina State University. Joining the Chemistry department at Emory in 2018, Racheal has focused her research on creating small molecule modulators for the downregulation of LRH-1 as well as creating new methods using photoredox catalysis. In 2021, she joined the Ortlund lab to continue the synthesis and optimization of these small molecules.

Alicia is a 4^th year PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program in the lab of Dr. Victor Faundez. She received her degree in biology from Georgia Tech and discovered a passion for biomedical research as a Petit Scholar in the lab of Dr. Edward Botchwey studying the role of inflammation in sickle cell disease. Shortly after graduating, she joined the Francisco Alvarez lab at Emory as a technician and reaffirmed her desire to study neuroscience as she investigated spinal interneurons involved in motor control. Alicia's thesis work aims to identify the molecular pathways by which mitochondria and metabolism coordinately respond to copper dyshomeostasis and ultimately influence neuronal cell function and survival in neurodegenerative conditions like Menkes disease.

Alicia received the Early Scientific Achievement Award from her graduate program in recognition of her scholarship at Emory, including several first-author (Lane et al., 2022; Lane et al., 2021) and co-authored publications and numerous presentations. She has received a number of grants, fellowships, and awards including the Robert W. Woodruff Fellowship, a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from NINDS, the ARCS Foundation Scholar Award, and the Nanostring Young Investigator Brain Tank.

In addition to working as a teaching assistant and instructor for several courses, Alicia interned at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, served as workshop chair and currently serve as co-chair for the Atlanta Brain Bee, and recently reached the end of a two-year term as co-chair of the Neuroscience Graduate Program’s DEI Committee.

Anne received her B.S. degree in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she was introduced into the laboratory setting by first observing the sociocultural influence on decision-making using EEG then spent three years studying dietary restriction and memory in C. elegans, where she received her first co-author publication (Gourgou et al. 2021, iScience). In her junior year, she was awarded the NIH Minority Health Research Training Fellowship (T37) to work with a collaborator in Kumasi, Ghana assessing the continuity of post-natal care and neonatal neurodevelopment. 

Anne is a current graduate student in the lab of Dr. Matthew Rowan, where she began studying patch-clamp electrophysiology, specifically the early circuit dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) models. Anne's work with Dr. Rowan showed a mechanistic underpinning of PV interneuron dysfunction related to the hyperexcitability seen in early AD, which resulted in her first co-first authorship publication (Olah*, Goettemoeller*, et al. 2022, eLife). She also developed and was involved in a multitude of new techniques for isolation of PV interneurons and for cell-type-specific proteomics (Rayaprolu et al. 2022, Nature Communications).

In addition to several publications, Anne has received a number of awards, including: the NIH F31 NRSA Individual Fellowship, the Laney Graduate School Fellowship, the Emory Primate Center Michael Kuhar Award, the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference Fellowship, the Society for Neuroscience Trainee Professional Development Award, and the Southeastern Neurodegenerative Disease Conference Travel Fellowship. Outside of the lab, Anne served as the Graduates in Neuroscience (GIN) co-president for two years.