Developing a mentorship program to be implemented in 16 public high schools nationwide, engaging over 300 students, and aimed at increasing motivation for and retention in math and AI fields.

• Created the CDM Summer Internship Program, expanding CDM’s scope to provide more comprehensive mentorship and opportunities to underrepresented minority students in STEM. • Collaborating with diverse stakeholders at NYU to secure funding, administrative support, and internship opportunities. Leading a team to organize a career development workshop series for interns.• Collecting qualitative and quantitative feedback from interns and mentors to identify areas of improvement and develop strategies for improving the quality and impact of the program.• Have successfully provided paid research internships to 18 students across 4 NYU departments since 2021.

Advisor: Dr. Ken Cadwell• Isolated and characterized bacteria from individuals infected with intestinal parasites known as helminths, thereby increasing knowledge of microbiomes from understudied populations. • Discovered previously unknown interactions between specific bacterial species and the helminth life cycle and measured immunomodulatory capacity of these bacteria by quantifying induced regulatory T cells in vivo.• Managed collaborations across international institutions leading to the success of a multidisciplinary research project involving expertise in microbiology, immunology, parasitology, and bioinformatics.• Developed robust analytical skills to make sense of complex data, ask hypotheses-driven questions, and solve challenging problems.

Advisor: Dr. Gayane Manukyan• Examined the influence of short-term stress and hormone signaling on immune cell activation through flow cytometry and ELISA experiments.

Advisor: Dr. Bonnie Blomberg• Investigated the effects of aging on the B-cell response to the influenza vaccine by flow cytometry and ELISA analysis of blood and plasma collected from young and elderly patients.

Provided support to interns between the ages of 18 and 26 by organizing and coordinating activities that facilitated their integration into the daily grind of Yerevan and the Armenian language and customs.

Advisor: Dr. Johanna Daily• Studied the origin and role of microparticles in plasma from cerebral malaria patients using flow cytometry.

Advisors: Dr. Joshua Hare, Dr. Ivonne Schulman• Investigated cardiovascular differentiation in male vs. female human mesenchymal stem cells using cell-culture assays, western blot, qPCR and microscopy.