In the summer of 2010, I was awarded the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) at Washington University in St. Louis. The fellowship is offers 10+ weeks of funded research, backed by the university and notable donors.
I worked at the Dr. Igor Efimov Lab in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Efimov, who now chairs the Dept of Biomedical Engineering at George Washington University, leads a cardiovascular engineering lab which “is focused on advancing our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of arrhythmogenesis, and on developing novel diagnostic tools and lifesaving anti-arrhythmic therapies”. I had the pleasure of working under Dr. Di Lang, who was a Ph.D. graduate student at the time. Under their leadership, we tried to determine the relationship between an enzyme, proline-rich tyrosine kinase 2 (Pyk2) and cardiac arrhythmias.
Optical Mapping
Pacing a mouse heart for an optical mapping experiment 
Dual Calcium-Voltage Optical Mapping: Two cameras are positioned over a mouse heart. One will capture surface voltage changes, while the other captures calcium gradients 
Poster presented at the Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium on Saturday, October 23, 2010.
Funding: My fellowship was funded, in part, by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Imaging Sciences Pathways training grant. Additional funding came directly from the Dr. Igor Efimov laboratory, which is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Note that the date of publication on this post was backdated to reflect the original time of the article’s event.