Nicole Sang Lav will receive her B.S. in Human Biology and B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine in 2024, working with Dr. Lisa Flanagan on neural stem cell development and glioblastoma resistance. Nicole joined the Paredes Lab as an SRTP student in 2024, doing characterization of the spatiotemporal distribution of proliferation of inhibitory interneurons. Her research interests include neurodevelopment, cancer, bioethics, and biomedical engineering.

Alex leads a partnered project between the Paredes Lab and the Vision and Perception Neuroscience Lab directed by Professor Kalanit Grill-Spector at Stanford University. Using immunohistochemistry, she is examining the development of cell types (neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes) and cellular structures (arborization, synapses, myelin) in human infant brain samples. Her focus is on the following regions of human visual cortex: the calcarine sulcus (where primary visual cortex resides), the fusiform gyrus (where face-selective regions reside), the collateral sulcus (where place-selective regions reside), and the occipitotemporal sulcus (where character- and body-selective regions reside). Ultimately, the goal of her efforts will be to relate developmental findings from immunohistochemistry to longitudinal human infant neuroimaging data acquired at Stanford.

A.J. Fraser is a senior at Cornell University studying Molecular Biology. A.J. joined the Paredes Lab as an undergraduate summer intern in June 2023, assisting Dr. Pastor Alonso with his hippocampal neural stem cell research. His research interests include the relationship between neural stem cells, adult neurogenesis, and neuroplasticity and the potential therapeutic avenues neural stem cells can have in neuropsychiatry.

Andrew Cheng is a prospective neuroscience major in Swarthmore College’s Class of 2024. He worked with Oier Pastor in the Paredes lab over the summer of 2021, helping to identify and track intermediate neural progenitor cell density, development, and proliferation in the human dentate gyrusduring the perinatal/postnatal period.