STORY COLLIDER PRESENTS: STORIES of brain and beyond

The Story Collider is teaming up again 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 Paula Croxson and Aya Osman.

Produced by Latasha Wright and Paula Croxson.

Doors at 6:30pm, show at 7:00pm.

STORIES BY:

Abby Fogarty has worked for Mount Sinai for almost four years, first as a care manager for the Children's Health Home, and currently as a clinical research coordinator for a psychosis risk lab. Originally from North Carolina, Abby spends her free time romanticizing living in New York City by going for runs in Central Park, enjoying concerts and Broadway shows, and methodically hunting down the best croissant in the city.

Sabina Guliyeva is a dynamic leader with a diverse career spanning finance, international development, and research. After earning her B.B.A. in Finance from Khazar University, she spent five years in banking before making a bold career shift. She led a multimillion-dollar project at the British Council (part of the British Embassy in Azerbaijan), funded by the EU and implemented across seven countries, before earning the prestigious Civil Society Leadership Award, bringing her to Columbia University for her MS degree in 2016.

Now in New York, Sabina is a Program Manager at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, overseeing nationwide research studies. Passionate about education, she has co-taught courses on impact investing at Columbia University and to first-year medical students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Beyond work, Sabina thrives on adventure and creativity. Trained in ballet, she is also an avid long-distance jogger and aspiring mountaineer, preparing to conquer Mount Kilimanjaro this summer. She enjoys visual and performing arts and considers cooking a fine art - often hosting friends and family with gourmet meals. Multilingual and always seeking growth, Sabina embraces every challenge with curiosity and determination.

Pablo Knobel is an environmental epidemiologist by trade and a geek by choice. Born and raised in Barcelona, he is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Mount Sinai, where he studies how the neighborhood we live in shapes our health. When he's not analyzing data or ruminating on what to do with his life, he's likely at the movies, playing board games, or complaining—sometimes even in a combination.

Akhil Kumar is a computational biologist in the lab of Dr Alex Tsankov. He is a lifelong learner and recently turned endurance athlete, who thrives on pushing limits—both in science and sports. Born and raised in Jammu, India, he earned a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi, where an internship at the University of Oxford first sparked his interest in genomics. Before joining Mount Sinai, he trained in evolutionary bioinformatics as a Research Fellow at IIT Delhi. Now, he works with single-cell technologies, and is excited to apply them to biomedical discovery. In his free time, he enjoys playing sports, experimenting in the kitchen, getting lost in books, and listening to music. His friends refer to him as a competitive eater—a title he neither confirms nor denies.

Darielle Lewis-Sanders is a current second year PhD student in neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is in Dr. Jinye Dai’s lab studying synaptic molecules related to social behavior. Outside of the lab Darielle enjoys anything that involves creativity. She loves to go to museums, see Broadway shows, and dance. Storytelling has been a fun way to collide the world of science and creativity together