EVANSVILLE, Ind. – University of Evansville women’s soccer player Kathryn Tyler has earned a prestigious opportunity that she has been participating in throughout the Summer of 2024.
Set to begin her junior campaign with the Purple Aces, Tyler was accepted into the Summer Undergraduate Research Training (SMART) program at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. The SMART Program is recognized throughout the nation as an excellent research program with unique educational components.
“One of my neuroscience teachers suggested that I apply for a summer research program and I wanted to find something closer to home in Texas,” Tyler said. “With this program, you are basically put in a lab that aligns with your interests. This experience allows you to work in lab while going through different seminars.”
Many educational and career development opportunities include: research seminar series specifically for SMART students encompassing a range of topics, graduate school application workshop series, one-on-one advising, tours of biomedical facilities, career professional development workshops, seminars, and panels, meet and greet with the MD/Ph.D. program director, social events sponsored by the graduate council and much more.
Her experience will be at Jiang Lab at the Baylor College of Medicine. This lab specializes in multiple facets of brain circuits and he goals of the project center around the type of research they perform.
“My main goal is to study brains with different types of diseases (cerebellar ataxia’s) to see how a specific genetic mutation changes how cells behave. Specifically I am looking at cells within the cerebellum to understand why this mutation causes some cells types to die and stop functioning correctly.”
Tyler has been working an average of 45 hours per week on research and program activities. The program provides frontier-level, biomedical summer research projects for undergraduates in a supportive environment with supplemental educational activities. The length of the program is set for nine weeks and has gained nationwide recognition from students, their advisers, and granting agencies as one of the most successful ever created due to the incomparable resources in the Texas Medical Center and people who truly believe in opening doors of opportunity to college students.
“I never thought the opportunity would come up to do this in undergrad,” she stated. “I only read about this type of research in textbooks.”
Baylor College of Medicine has multiple specializations and one that Tyler is especially interested in is their Space Medicine Program. With the school being located near NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, the school has the unique chance to work within that industry. Growing up in Texas, Tyler had a lifelong interest in astronomy and looks to get a glimpse of what the school does within that program. She has an interest in studying how astronauts live in isolation and confined space and how to help them survive in those conditions. As a whole, the experience has been beneficial in giving her a new focus for life after college.
“This program has helped me develop a focus on my career path,” she added. “It made me realize how many opportunities there are in this field.”
