“There is still so much that we don’t know about the brain and its function,” said Alvira Tyagi, a freshman studying neurobiology at Harvard. Because of Tyagi’s passion for understanding dementia and conditions like Alzheimer’s, she worked in the research lab of Dr. Kristen Zuloaga at the Albany Medical Center starting her sophomore year of high school.
Dementia refers to any form of impaired cognitive function and memory, and it can take many different forms. Tyagi’s research lab focused on understanding the factors influencing the unique pathology of dementia in different individuals. They conducted studies to determine the impact of gender, weight, diet, and more on dementia’s formation.
The research team conducted experiments on mice to observe differences in dementia’s pathology. “I [would] watch mouse surgeries occur, [using] mice as our specimen to imitate the functions that we are seeing in humans,” Tyagi shared. The lab would also conduct behavioral tests on the mice, including timing their attempts to navigate mazes and solve puzzles. The team reached conclusions about dementia treatment options based on their results.
At Harvard, Tyagi wants to transition from researching the factors influencing disease pathology to developing treatment options: “With all this information I have now, being able to jump in and start developing [...] new therapies, seeing what works and what doesn’t [is] where I see myself.”
Her background knowledge in neurobiology and research techniques and methodologies is valuable information that couldn’t have been learned in a high school classroom. Based on the neurobiology knowledge that Tyagi gained during her work, she won a regional Brain Bee at Albany Medical College, qualifying for the world competition.
Tyagi ultimately wants to become a physician, but she doesn’t want to stop conducting research either. “I always imagine my future [work] to be accompanied by scientific exploration [since] I love being in labs,” she said. Physician-scientists - physicians who regularly conduct research - are a growing career path which she strongly considers.
Finding a lab position in high school can be difficult, but for those looking to gain practical experience in research and methodologies, digitally-based projects are very accessible. A wide array of scholarly research involves reading academic literature and analyzing existing datasets. There are opportunities across the social sciences, humanities, and even STEM fields like computational biology.
Jinso helps students connect to the research community digitally by matching them to expert research advisors. Having an expert to share proper practices in research is essential for young students first starting their work. “I was [...] 15 years old stepping into a lab where the next oldest people were 22,” Tyagi shared. “Having those role models is really important,” she added.
GitHub is a popular platform used by computer scientists to manage their collaborative projects, but a similar program does not exist for academic work. There is no standard platform to create work, connect with others, and share work in one place. Most platforms only fall into one or two of these categories.The Jinso collaboration tool is a better way for groups to work on projects. By bringing the entire academic collaboration process onto one tool, it simplifies workflows and communication.The first steps for using the Jinso platform are:
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects. Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time.
Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects.
Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time. Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
When a new Project is created, an initial revision must be shared. This can either be plain text or a PDF.
The Project will be immediately visible to all Group members with the first revision shown. Group members can comment on the revision with questions or feedback, and others can reply to comments.When another revision of the paper has been completed, the Group admin can add a new revision to the same Project.
The revision will become visible above the prior revision, and it will have a new comment box associated with it. Projects make it simple to keep track of a paper’s entire revision history and discussions at each stage.
For each revision, Group admins can also create subtasks. Arrows allow Group members to view all of the different subtasks and comment on them individually. Subtasks allow a paper to be analyzed in unique components. For example, a research paper can have a unique subtask for each of its sections, and collaborators can discuss them all separately in the comment boxes. Jinso is a quicker way to collaborate on long-term projects. It makes it easier to connect, share, and manage the development of ideas and papers. You can create a Jinso account and start using the platform today for your research and academic needs at jinso.io.
“There is still so much that we don’t know about the brain and its function,” said Alvira Tyagi, a freshman studying neurobiology at Harvard. Because of Tyagi’s passion for understanding dementia and conditions like Alzheimer’s, she worked in the research lab of Dr. Kristen Zuloaga at the Albany Medical Center starting her sophomore year of high school.
Dementia refers to any form of impaired cognitive function and memory, and it can take many different forms. Tyagi’s research lab focused on understanding the factors influencing the unique pathology of dementia in different individuals. They conducted studies to determine the impact of gender, weight, diet, and more on dementia’s formation.
The research team conducted experiments on mice to observe differences in dementia’s pathology. “I [would] watch mouse surgeries occur, [using] mice as our specimen to imitate the functions that we are seeing in humans,” Tyagi shared. The lab would also conduct behavioral tests on the mice, including timing their attempts to navigate mazes and solve puzzles. The team reached conclusions about dementia treatment options based on their results.
At Harvard, Tyagi wants to transition from researching the factors influencing disease pathology to developing treatment options: “With all this information I have now, being able to jump in and start developing [...] new therapies, seeing what works and what doesn’t [is] where I see myself.”
Her background knowledge in neurobiology and research techniques and methodologies is valuable information that couldn’t have been learned in a high school classroom. Based on the neurobiology knowledge that Tyagi gained during her work, she won a regional Brain Bee at Albany Medical College, qualifying for the world competition.
Tyagi ultimately wants to become a physician, but she doesn’t want to stop conducting research either. “I always imagine my future [work] to be accompanied by scientific exploration [since] I love being in labs,” she said. Physician-scientists - physicians who regularly conduct research - are a growing career path which she strongly considers.
Finding a lab position in high school can be difficult, but for those looking to gain practical experience in research and methodologies, digitally-based projects are very accessible. A wide array of scholarly research involves reading academic literature and analyzing existing datasets. There are opportunities across the social sciences, humanities, and even STEM fields like computational biology.
Jinso helps students connect to the research community digitally by matching them to expert research advisors. Having an expert to share proper practices in research is essential for young students first starting their work. “I was [...] 15 years old stepping into a lab where the next oldest people were 22,” Tyagi shared. “Having those role models is really important,” she added.
