The lab’s star honor’s undergrad, Alexandra Burstell, wins the 2026 Dr. David Yager Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Neuroscience Research!!!
This prestigious distinction is awarded annually to a rising senior Neuroscience major at the University of Maryland, College Park who has shown excellence and great promise in neuroscience research.
Alex B. joined our lab, commuting daily to the School of Medicine, to pursue her research at the fringes of neuronal cell biology. In these unexplored wilds of the neuron, live peculiar molecular complexes that must work without instructions or support from the cell’s nucleus, which lies thousands of cell diameters away.
Alex’s project pioneers the first molecular analyses that will help us understand how these unusual complexes behave to maintain healthy brain connectivity, how they misbehave to cause neurological disease, and how we can intervene to provide neuroprotection and neuroregeneration in the injured and aging brain.