Eashan Halbe
Eashan was an undergraduate student in the Soma Lab pursuing his BSc in Biology. He has an interest in the intersection between immunology and endocrinology and studied local glucocorticoid production in lymphocyte populations.
Ruolan Wu
Ruolan received her B.Sc. in Anatomy and Cell Biology from McGill University (2019). She was a research assistant in the Soma Lab and worked on steroid profiling in human baby teeth as a potential new tool to measure early-life stress. Ruolan is currently an embryologist at Olive Fertility Centre.
Hitasha Bajaj
Hitasha completed her BSc in Behavioural Neuroscience with a Minor in Law and Society at UBC in 2022. As an undergraduate, she recieved the Science Undergraduate Research Experience Award and Quinn Research Assistantship. She also received the Trainee Professional Development Award from the Society for Neuroscience. Hitasha is co-supervised by Drs. Kiran Soma and Annie […]
Michael Li
Michael was a BSc student who is interested in neuroscience and immunology. He was working with Melody Salehzadeh and examining regulation of immunosteroid synthesis using qPCR and LC-MS/MS. Michael is in UBC Medical school.
Taylor Bootsma
Taylor was a BSc student in the Soma Lab, and assisted with developing an ultra-sensitive method for the detection of multiple estrogens via chemical derivatization and LC-MS/MS.
Athena Varghese
Athena was a BSc student in Behavioural Neuroscience in the Soma Lab. She studied steroid synthesis within the brain, particularly steroids conjugated to fatty acids.
Maria Shock
Maria completed her BSc in Behavioural Neuroscience in 2021. She investigated the roles of estrogens in social behaviour. Maria assisted Cecilia Jalabert with her PhD project investigating local sex steroid synthesis in the brain and how these neurosteroids regulate aggressive behaviour in a songbird model. Maria participated in developing an ultra-sensitive method for measuring multiple […]
Brandon Forys
Brandon completed his B.A. in Honours Psychology and studied how neurosteroids influence behaviour. He is especially interested in computational modeling of the synthesis of neurosteroids within and among various brain regions, and exploring how computational models of neuroendocrine systems can be used to understand the production of steroids in the brain. He also learned various bioinformatics techniques […]
Katherine Gray
Katherine’s research focused on the regulation of glucocorticoid levels within different brain regions. More specifically, she examined whether the metabolite of corticosterone, 11-dehydrocorticosterone (DHC), is locally regulated within the brain and the implications for how stress affects the brain. Katherine received a 2019 NSERC USRA to conduct research and a Quinn Travel Award to attend the 2019 Society for […]
Jasmine Cleary-Gosine
Jasmine received a BSc in Behavioural Neuroscience in 2019. She and Cheryl Chow examined the motivation to exercise in a rodent model. She studied how motivation and executive function are modulated by steroid action in neural circuits.