UBRP’s 2022-23 Andrea Jeffers Wellington Fellows
The contributions of private donors, including those from alumni, mentors, parents, and other supporters, help support UBRP students’ paid research positions during the academic year, and we greatly acknowledge and appreciate their generosity! In honor of donors Doug and Andrea Wellington (alumna), we recognize Sophia Marcinowski and Elissa Schiff as our Andrea Jeffers Wellington Fellows in UBRP for 2022-23.
Sophia Marcinowski
Sophia Marcinowski conducts research in Dr. Ross Buchan's lab, studying the TDP-43 protein and its potential impact on ALS.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating genetic disease that is a neurodegenerative disorder in which the person has a progressive loss of motor neurons that results in paralysis and respiratory failure. The majority of cases are not inherited, and as of now, there are no treatments available to slow or stop the progression of the disease.
As a member of Dr. Ross Buchan’s Laboratory, Andrea Jeffers Wellington Fellow Sophia Marcinowski is working to understand the degradation process of a toxic protein called TDP-43, which is found mislocalized in over 95% of ALS patients. TDP-43 is an RNA binding protein normally found in the nucleus, but in ALS patients, TDP-43 is found in the cytoplasm where it forms harmful aggregates. Sophia is interested in how the cell naturally breaks down and disposes of these toxic protein clusters. Understanding this process could lead to better treatments for ALS patients and give them a brighter future.
Sophia is a junior majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology with a minor in Fine Arts. Before joining UBRP in summer 2022, she had no previous laboratory experience, but UBRP allowed her to be fully immersed in laboratory life. The knowledge and skills she’s gained has helped her confirm her desire to work in a lab for her future career. Sophia plans to continue her work throughout her undergraduate years and pursue higher level education. “I am so thankful for the opportunities UBRP has provided me and I am excited to continue my research with the program!”
Elissa Schiff
Late-talking toddlers are toddlers who do not produce as many words as they should for their age, but there is not a cognitive or structural reason behind their lack of verbal language. Families of late-talking toddlers are often told to “wait and see” before pursuing specialized treatment, because at the ages of two to four years it is difficult to determine whether the child has a developmental language disorder or if they are just a “late bloomer.” Recent research, however, has shown that even if late talkers’ verbal communication skills eventually catch up to their peers, they often find themselves at the bottom of their class in school.
In Dr. Mary Alt's L4 lab, Elissa Schiff works on helping late-talking toddlers to effectively expand their vocabulary.
Speech therapy has been shown to help late talkers learn to produce more words, and through UBRP, Elissa Schiff works in the Dr. Mary Alt’s L4 Lab to help determine what parameters of speech therapy are optimal for late talkers. These parameters include things like the length of clinician’s spoken sentences, the number and frequency of target words focused on per session, and the number of different physical representations of each target word are shown. Elissa also uses the lab’s backlog of toddler vocabulary data for her current research, in which she determines how the words that toddlers understand before treatment influence the words that they then learn to say in and outside of therapy.
UBRP played a large role in Elissa’s discovery of her passion for speech-language pathology and love for research. “Being able to work with experts in the SLHS field in such a welcoming environment allowed me to hear about the field through many different perspectives and to even gain clinical experience through working as a clinician for the speech therapy treatment we administer for the study. Furthermore, the UBRP seminars and workshops I attended over the summer allowed me to learn the ins and outs of research and gain professional skills that will be useful throughout my undergraduate work and future career. Also, I get to work with some adorable toddlers! I cannot recommend UBRP enough to students looking to gain research experience and feel that their assistance in important research is adequately valued. Additionally, you may discover a passion for the topic that you study and learn about it in a hands-on, non-classroom setting!”
Elissa is a sophomore majoring in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and minoring in Economics and Spanish. She aspires to become a Speech-Language Pathologist and continue researching language development in children.