Undergraduate Departmental Representatives
The neuroscience undergraduate departmental representatives can help with communications between undergraduates and faculty members. They can also provide academic and career information to current and prospective neuroscience students.
Meet the 2024-25 Neuroscience UDRs
Samara Glazer is a senior Neuroscience major in the BS/MS program. She is excited to meet more neuroscience peers and help students navigate the major! Aside from being a UDR, she is a Research Assistant in the Howard Lab where she works to help characterize cross-modal attention in humans by implementing a multi-sensory attention task. Participate in her thesis here!
Samara is also president of the Brandeis Neuroscience Club, a Biolab TA, Massell CA, and dining hall worker (come say hi!). Her future goals include going into addiction medicine, so she's always happy to discuss the field or related topics!
Caspian Keys is a Senior majoring in Neuroscience and Biology. Their main interests lie in glia and neurodevelopment. They work on homeostatic plasticity in the Nelson Lab. The Nelson lab has found that core clock genes, including BMAL1 and the ParbZips, which are direct targets of BMAL1, play a role in constraining homeostatic overshoot following activity deprivation. Caspian’s project works on investigating whether BMAL1 and other core clock genes cycle in the cortex at the age in which they were found implicated in homeostatic plasticity.
Outside of lab, Caspian enjoys volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and going to Pottery Club on campus. Caspian’s future goals include pursuing a PhD in Neuroscience and going into research, preferably in academia.
Feel free to contact them if you need assistance with anything, whether it’s getting into labs, applying for summer research fellowships, choosing neuroscience or other science classes, writing personal statements, or any other support you might need!
Ani Poghosyan is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Biology. She is interested in studying homeostasis and the effects that changing environments can have on neural systems. The research that she conducts within the Marder Lab is focused on the neuromuscular junction in crustaceans, investigating the effects of temperature in conjunction with various neuromodulators on excitatory junction potentials from gastric muscles. Outside of the lab, she is a coordinator for Hunger and Homelessness, an orientation leader, and an assistant stage manager for the Department of Theater Arts! She has also been involved in the 24hr musical and occasionally writes book reviews in the student newspaper, The Hoot. Feel free to reach out to her any time with questions or just to chat about academics, extracurriculars, or Brandeis in general!