I had the opportunity to work alongside other ambassadors and tutors to raise participation and promote the values of the Bearcat Buddies tutoring program and encourage students to become tutors and mentors to guide children within the Cincinnati Public School system.

As an ambassador, I've worked to enrich the student experience in the Honors Program by promoting the values and benefits to current and prospective students and families. I've participated in promotional and outreach events to advocate for and extend student involvement in the program, and have co-facilitated and led presentational events that are hosted annually, while sharing information on my own experiences and answering question.

The SURF MedEx Program is a 10 week intensive research experience, specifically designed to encourage medical exploration. After a competitive application process, I was chosen to participate in the program, therefore taking part in research with weekly lab meetings focused on skill-building/networking, attending specialized SURF sessions with guest speakers covering a wide range of fields in medicine, and presenting my summer work at the end-of-program Capstone Poster Presentation. Under the supervision of Principle Investigator, Dr. Roger Cornwall, and mentorship of Dr. Qingnian Goh, I took part in a project with the aim of establishing a skeletal muscle elongation transcriptome to identify primary genes involved in muscle elongation by focusing on the cellular level of changes in cell morphology, therefore assessing cell length, width, and circularity. I gained an understanding of mammalian cell culture and staining/imaging analysis of myofiber morphology and experience with quantification and performing statistical data analyses. I was also able to present my research work at the Capstone Symposium in the form of a poster presentation to my fellow professors and judges in which I was chosen as the Grand Prize winner.

The RaMP program is a selective research program focuses on biomedical research offered by the University Honors Program centered in the Cincinnati Children's Hospital. I had the opportunity to work in the Cornwall/Goh orthopedic research lab, under the mentorship of Dr. Qingnian Goh and Dr. Roger Cornwall. Our research focuses on understanding the underlying biological mechanisms of muscle contractures or stiffness seen in infants with Neonatal Brachial Plexus Injury (NBPI), the associated mechanisms and causes, and developing potential therapeutic options to promote normal muscle growth and restore range of motion.