November 2016: Student Spotlight featuring Greg Branigan
On Biomedicine
I am currently studying biochemistry and molecular biology at Villanova. Following graduation in May, I hope to enter a MD/PHD program in the fall. I am interested in translational biomedical research, specifically neurogenesis disease and neurodevelopmental diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson, MS, and hydrocephalus. There is a new program that is funded by the NIH and it’s a great opportunity for people who are into both the research and medicine. For me, it’s an amazing continuation of this Villanova education where we are taught Unitas, Veritas, and Caritas (truth, unity, and love). In medicine there is a great understanding of the community you need both within the medical practitioners and the families they work with. With research and academia we are looking for truth and that is both shared, as an undergrad biochemistry major as well as what will be the medical curriculum. And finally, Caritas love. You want people that really care about you, that will go the extra mile, and who are genuine to be these medical practitioners. For me, what I learned at Villanova is an amazing preparation for medical school that will really help me to excel in the field that I go into.
Thanks to support from the Department of Biology, the Villanova Undergraduate Research Fellowship Travel grant, and the Dennis M Cook Gregor Mendel Endowed Chair in Genetics Fellowships, I was able to attend the Society for Developmental Biology and International Society for Differentiation joint meeting in Boston, MA in August of 2016. At the conference I presented my work in developmental biology and neuroscience that I had completed throughout the summer. I study neurological development using zebrafish as a model organism for human development to ask questions at the biochemical and molecular level. At the conference I attended a variety of presentations focusing on developmental biology, novel model systems of development, epigenetics, differentiation, and current topics in stem cell research to name a few. Each night, I attended poster presentations and networked with other scientists from across the globe. A majority of other attending scientists were from leading institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge University. On the penultimate night of the conference, I presented my work entitled “Brd2 paralogs may act antagonistically in the development of the central nervous, circulatory, and digestive systems.” As first author on the poster and upcoming paper, I along with the other members of the lab represented Villanova at the international level. The conference was a tremendous success and we returned with a variety of new tools and techniques which will be incorporated into our research this semester. Throughout the fall and spring semesters this year I will be continuing my research in the DiBenedetto lab and will be completing an undergraduate thesis in biology as part of my Biochemistry major.
