{"444761":{"#nid":"444761","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Petit Scholar Inspired by Neuroscience","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EEllen Pikus, a 2015 Petit Undergraduate Research Scholar, inherited an interest in medicine from her parents, who immigrated to the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when hostility and violence toward Russian Jews living in Latvia increased. They\u2019ve enjoyed rewarding health care careers in the Atlanta area \u2013 her mom is a nurse, her dad a nurse anesthetist.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut her interest in neuroscience was inspired by the late Oliver Sacks, neurologist and best-selling author. \u201cI read his collection of case studies in \u003Cem\u003EThe Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat\u003C\/em\u003E, and was astonished by the story of a woman who completely lost her sense of proprioception.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EProprioception is the automatic, unconscious sense of our body\u2019s position, or positions. The story, \u201cThe Disembodied Lady,\u201d caused Pikus to start reading up on different neuromuscular disorders. And when she enrolled at Georgia State University, her interest manifested in a five-year program that will result in a master\u2019s degree in neuroscience.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cNeuroscience as a whole is fascinating to me because it is such a relatively new field and there is so much that is still unknown,\u201d says Pikus, a third-year student whose degree will come from Georgia State, but who spends at least 10 hours a week at the Georgia Institute of Technology doing research in the lab of Petit Institute faculty member Minoru Shinohara, associate professor in the School of Applied Physiology.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThere is so much potential to discover new things,\u201d says Pikus, who is doing her part in that regard. \u0026nbsp;She was engaged in research at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when she received an email that went out to all honor students, about the Petit Scholar program. \u201cMy project at the CDC was ending, and I wanted another research project, so I decided to apply.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn Shinohara\u2019s lab, she\u2019s been given autonomy to write her own experiments as part of a project entitled \u201cSensorimotor Control During Physiological Sympathetic Activation.\u201d Ultimately, her goal is to pursue a dual MD-Ph.D. degree, which would combine her interest in providing care with a love of research.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe spent about 14 hours a week on the Georgia Tech campus spring semester, about 10 hours a week now, most of the time working with healthy human subjects, testing muscle movement, gathering and analyzing data.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Petit Scholar experience, she says, \u201chas given me more research competence. Now I\u2019m doing my own projects, given raw materials and making something out of it. I feel capable now of going out and doing my own research, creating my own projects.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis semester is tougher than ever as Pikus puts both sides of her brain through intellectual calisthenics, with classes in organic chemistry, medical neuro-anatomy, chemistry lab and a class in Spanish culture. She says her fluency in Russian and English is helping her grasp Spanish, which is her minor. But her future is in neuromuscular research, and it\u2019ll be here quickly \u2013 her current work will be presented at a conference of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) this December in Japan.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cDr. Shinohara will be presenting the research but I am listed as a co-author, which is very exciting,\u201d says Pikus, who expects to have her data collection finished by the end of spring 2016, with hopes for publication next year. It will be after her stint as a Petit Scholar, \u201cbut I am planning to continue in the lab until I\u2019ve finished what I\u2019ve started.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECONTACT:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Georgia State student Ellen Pikus pursuing research interests at Georgia Tech"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia State student Ellen Pikus pursuing research interests at Georgia Tech\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia State student Ellen Pikus pursuing research interests at Georgia Tech"}],"uid":"28153","created_gmt":"2015-09-04 09:33:20","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:29","author":"Jerry Grillo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-09-04T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-09-04T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"444731":{"id":"444731","type":"image","title":"Ellen Pikus","body":null,"created":"1449256205","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:10:05","changed":"1475895184","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:04","alt":"Ellen Pikus","file":{"fid":"203152","name":"ellen2.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ellen2_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ellen2_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":756137,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/ellen2_0.jpg?itok=Ewq28j-A"}}},"media_ids":["444731"],"groups":[{"id":"1292","name":"Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)"}],"categories":[{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"14182","name":"Petit undergraduate research scholars"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}