I am fascinated by auditory neuroscience. My identity as a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA) and my experiences as a musician contribute to my “why” in auditory neuroscience. Growing up surrounded by the Deaf community, I saw a resilient community bonded through their fight against society’s barriers. In that resilience, people and their brains adapted. On the other hand, training as a musician adapted my own mind, improving my ability to focus, understand different topics, and express emotions. Entering the auditory neuroscience field, I am fueled by how an area can adapt to understand such complex sounds, such as music, and also adapt to understand no sound. At Harvard College, I am studying Neuroscience on our Mind Brain Behavior (MBB) pathway with a secondary (minor) in music or American Sign Language (ASL). At Harvard, I’m expected to earn a portion of my income through part-time work. Unfortunately, this past year, I’ve had to rely on my savings to meet these expectations. While I receive a stipend from my part-time job conducting neuroscience research, such a stipend falls short of the amount I need to earn from a part-time job. This coming year, I'm working as the Director of Initiatives for Harvard's Deaf Advocacy Coalition (DAC), expanding Harvard's connections with Boston's Deaf community through educational events. This includes poster ceremonies with Deaf students, tutoring, and advocacy around the systemic issues Deaf communities face. To do this, I'll need to expand my connections within Harvard and across Boston. Since I'm also working with Harvard's American Sign Language department this year, I'll have resources to help organize DAC events. Beyond welcoming the Deaf community into Harvard, I'm interested in educating Harvard students on current issues for the Deaf community. Recently, I've become interested in the Deaf opinion of gene therapy for congenital deafness. Since Harvard College is overflowing with pre-med students, gene therapy is a recurrent topic in science classes. In the DAC, I'm interested in inviting Gallaudet's "Gene Editing Think Tank" for a panel discussing the concerns of gene editing, which will involve reaching out to Gallaudet professors on the panel and organizing a space, promoting the event, and so forth. This scholarship would allow me to redirect my time towards auditory research and Deaf advocacy, rather than diverting my attention to money. Between my research project and unpaid work with Harvard’s Deaf Advocacy Coalition, I simply don’t have enough resources to fulfill Harvard’s expectations. With the support of this scholarship, I can break down Deaf systemic barriers and expand my research on neural plasticity, particularly in the context of adaptation to deafness. My ultimate goal is to use this scholarship to fund my life, make a positive impact on the lives of others, and contribute meaningfully to the field of neuroscience and Deaf advocacy. After Harvard, I'm hoping to explore deeper into the intersection of neuroscience and deafness via a PhD program. Deaf individuals provide unique insight into how brain circuits develop. A 2020 study found that in early-deaf adults, the circuitry that flags what's behaviorally important, the salience network, shows altered attention and working-memory systems, and is recruited more strongly during visual tasks than it is in hearing individuals. In other words, not only is the auditory system repurposed, but also the system that decides what deserves attention in the first place. While many parts of the auditory field treat deafness as a deficiency, deafness does not cause a decreased quality of life with language education and support. Learning the ins-and-outs of the Deaf brain and how to better support Deaf individuals is my future.

Higher education grants the opportunity to improve accessibility in education for the community I cherish. In creating programs for the deaf community here at Harvard, my home university, I want to make a long-term impact on deaf educational opportunities. As a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA), I was raised alongside the deaf community. During my childhood, I often pleaded with my parents to attend a school for the deaf. Only a kid, I failed to realize the educational disparity between my public education and my deaf friends' educations. As my parents said, I'd be grade levels ahead of my age-equivalent peers. While capable of everything, Deaf individuals’ success is hindered by society’s inadequate support. In the U.S., lack of deaf-education professionals, educational opportunities, and well-designed resources for Deaf children leads to underrepresentation of the Deaf community in higher education. According to research conducted by the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, systemic barriers prevent Deaf individuals from pursuing higher education, with the Deaf population pursuing degrees at half the rate of the hearing population. The absence of Deaf-friendly resources and pathways to higher education has created thwarted belonging. By internalizing the exclusion faced by my parents, I developed a profound commitment to advocating for the Deaf community. Between high school and my freshman year at Harvard, it became my mission to empower Deaf youth and encourage science exploration. During an internship with a local Rochester nonprofit Neuro2All, I explored the effects of American Sign Language (ASL) communication on the brain, discovering an enhanced visual reaction time due to reshaping unused auditory neural pathways for visual use. At a pop-up event planned for Deaf students, I explained the phenomenon of visual pathway neuroplasticity through hands-on experiments. To make this event as accessible as possible, we had many interpreters, visuals to explain concepts, and Deaf scientist representatives. During the next few years at Harvard, I will have the space and time to develop a plan for lasting change. As a Laidlaw Scholar, I have the opportunity to conduct research in Cambridge this summer and apply my research internationally next summer. With auditory neuroscience as my research subject, I could create change with the Deaf community on an international scale. More importantly, the Laidlaw Foundation focuses on developing our character: through the Oxford Character Project and dedicated leadership development, the Laidlaw Foundation cultivates the next generation of leaders. This coming school year, I plan on consulting with the Harvard American Sign Language Department and Boston’s Deaf Schools for what initiatives would be most beneficial. In approaching these conversations, I will present feasible ideas to better connect Harvard to the Boston Deaf communities, incorporating feedback and ideas from the community itself. In light of the recent dissolution of professional pathways for Deaf researchers following significant budgetary contractions, I am certain that Harvard can bridge this gap for Deaf youth by creating immersive, laboratory-based environments that foster a true sense of scientific belonging. With accessible opportunities across America’s most prestigious universities, we will build belonging for Deaf students in higher education.

My favorite book of all time is Dr. Sara Manning Peskin's collection of fascinating neuroscience stories, coined, "One Molecule Away from Madness." As much as I am a neuroscience nerd, I believe anyone can love this book. I read this when I was a sophomore in high school; captivated by the storytelling aspects and mesmerized by the bits of hard science sprinkled throughout, this book has me wrapped around its finger. To further elaborate on its format, let me explain the most terrifying disease-causing agents ever: prions. In this book, Dr. Peskin introduces prions through the mysterious "kuru" disease of people from the remote highlands of New Guinea. This fatal disease causes loss of motor skills, leading to bouts of violent shakes, and emotional instability, leading to uncontrollable laughter, due to a protein causing mass cell death in the brain. Prions do not attack; they simply cause a domino effect that leads to cell deaths. In this case, the prions causing kuru were structurally similar to a normal protein produced by the brain. With the coexistence of these two similar proteins, the human-made protein follows the template structure of the prion, becoming abnormal and impossible to destroy by typical quality control measures. As neurons overflow with these prions, they burst and create more inflammation from the following immune response. Interestingly, kuru's transmission is from an endocannibalistic funerary ritual, in which women and children would often eat the neurological tissues infested with prions. The simple existence of prions is a biological horror movie. A foreign protein, absent of any genetic material, can cause fatal damage to the human body. With invaders, we often imagine that they are "out to get us," but prions invade and kill as if it's an accident. To end on a happier note, the upmost coolest thing I've encountered in my science field is genetically-edited GCaMP mice that express certain neural cells. GCaMPs are G-coupled protein receptors that contain a green fluorescent protein core (the glow) and a calcium-binding protein (to detect action potentials). As an action potential starts, calcium gates open, flooding the cell and allowing the signal to be passed to the next neuron. With such calcium, the neuron emits fluorescent light. Mice can have a cranial window implanted to visualize the signal transmission across the complex neural circuits. Simply amazing: science innovation and gene editing have expanded the possibilities of neuroscience research. This expands the questions we can ask, such as my current research into how experience (and therefore memory associations) impacts auditory processing of salient stimuli.