The Women’s Mental Health Research Program is seeking volunteer Undergraduate Research Assistants (URAs) to work with Dr. Maki and her team on ongoing research studies. A key focus of our team is mental health in pregnant and postpartum women, with special emphasis in the relationships between hormonal, immune and neurological systems and the gut microbiome. These complex interactions have been coined as the “brain-gut axis”. The brain-gut axis is a new promising avenue to treat mental health disorders using probiotics.
URAs will assist with:
- Data entry and database management of
- Patient recruitment, screening and consenting research participants in clinical settings
If you are in a biology-related major (e.g., molecular biology, nutrition, nursing, medicine), you will also assist with:
- Processing blood samples for immune, metabolomics and proteomics assays
- Performing immunoassays
- Processing stool samples for next generation sequencing, i.e., 16S rRNA and shotgun metagenomics analysis, and metabolomics analysis.
- Performing DNA extraction, PCR amplification and construction of libraries for 16S rRNA and hotgun sequencing
- Computational microbiome sample analysis.
Eligibility
- First-year students, sophomores or juniors enrolled at UIC (exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis for seniors).
- The student should be in good academic standing with a strong GPA (3.0 or above) and have an interest in women’s mental health, psychology, psychiatry, medicine, nursing, microbiome, biology, nutrition, immunology, computational biology or related field.
- Preference may be given to students in the Honors College and/or students who have completed courses in research methods or statistics.
- Students should be self-motivated and display a high attention to detail.
- Volunteers are asked to commit to two years in the lab with a minimum of 10 hours per week. With this commitment, URAs may be eligible to complete a Capstone or independent research project and/or receive course credit.
If you are interested, please complete the attached application form and send, along with your resume, to Beatriz Penalver Bernabe at bbernabe@psych.uic.edu. Visit our website to learn more.
