STORY COLLIDER PRESENTS: STORIES of brain and beyond
The Story Collider teams up with the The Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine to bring you five true, personal stories from folks at all career stages about their journey through the brain… and beyond!
Hosted by Latasha Wright and Paula Croxson, with Aya Osman.
Doors at 6:30pm, show at 7:00pm.
Stories by:
Luis Melo has been providing professional Data Science consulting services in various industries since 2003. For the past 4 years Luis has been working for the Mount Sinai Hospital System in the Psychiatry Department as a Health and Safety Quality Analyst. Luis’ experience ranges from working in research for mental health care and criminal justice to Data Analytics in nutrition, sports, entertainment and fashion. Luis earned a Master’s Degree from John Jay University of Criminal Justice in Criminal Justice and a B.A in Psychology from Mount Saint Mary College. Luis is a married father of 2 with a wonderful wife and kids that have helped yo become the person yo is today. Luis was born in Dominican Republic but grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Luis enjoys calisthenics outdoor workouts and basketball as well as quality time with his family. Luis recently started yos own data science consulting and multiservice business where yo helps clients achieve their goals by applying yos skills in research, fitness, and nutrition. The focus is always on building an efficient and results-driven relationship. Luis works with yos clients to create a customized plan of action for themselves or business in order to streamline and optimize their growth.
Ismail Nabeel is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Ismail has expertise in Internal Medicine, Occupational/Environmental Medicine, and Clinical Informatics, with a focus on bringing cutting-edge innovative perspectives and solutions to enhance the health and wellbeing of at-risk working populations and employees at an academic medical center.
Dr. Abha Karki Rajbhandari is an Assistant Professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Rajbhandari obtained her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied the role of the amygdala sub-regions in regulation of stress-related sensorimotor gating. Dr. Rajbhandari did her postdoctoral work at the University of California-Los Angeles, where she studied fear and stress regulation via a specific neuropeptide system. At the Icahn School of Medicine. Dr. Rajbhandari’s team focuses on the brain, vagus nerve and body mechanisms of fear, stress, and anxiety to understand how the brain and body interact with each other in regulating fear, cardiorespiratory and metabolic functions. Dr. Rajbhandari was born in Nepal and moved to the United States to pursue her higher studies after high school. Outside of lab, she teaches Yoga practice for stress regulation.
Saren H. Seeley is a postdoctoral researcher in the Psychiatry Department at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, supported by a T32 training fellowship from the National Institute on Mental Health. Saren is curious about how the brain readjusts after a severe stressor, and how looking at the brain can help us understand why people differ so much in their adaptability to life-changing events like trauma exposure or the death of a loved one. Other things she gets excited about include mentoring, data science, and helping human neuroimaging researchers make their science more reliable and reproducible. She completed her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Arizona, and her internship year at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. Her favorite thing about being back in New York is spotting the occasional urban raccoon trundling around the city (current raccoon count: four in 1.5 years). We're all just trying to survive and make the most of life out here.
Sanutha Shetty is a prospective Neuroscience Ph.D. candidate at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research is focused on studying stress and fear responses and how they affect both the brain and the body in the rodent models of PTSD. Weirdly, she is both a horror and rom-com movie buff; from The Shining to Notting Hill, she’s watched them all. Working on both ends of the spectrum again, she was captain of both the basketball team and the debate team in school. At the end of the day, she guesses that chose to be a "nerd' over a jock as science was her first love.