Victoria Eaton ’18

A majority of the Burman Collaborative is undergraduate students. This gave me the opportunity to take a role in projects as if I was working at graduate levels. The lab provided me a unique opportunity to engage in hands-on research with the help of Dr. Burman (PI), post-docs, and other professional staff, all while learning about my area of study. This opportunity provided invaluable scientific, professional, and life experience before graduating with an undergraduate degree.

The research I worked on in the Burman Collaborative was focused on understanding the role early life trauma has on later life anxiety profiles with a specific focus on investigating the role of corticosterone releasing factor (CRF) signaling within the amygdala. My major focus towards the end of my time in the lab was to investigate potential changes or differences in CRF expression within the amygdala of neonatal subjects experiencing normal or aversive conditions within the first week of life. We were interested in detecting possible differences in CRF expression across treatment groups early in life as potential expression differences may have a connection to anxiety behaviors later in life.

The Burman Collaborative is like a family and maintains a fun but serious and focused scientific workplace. Everyone is a colleague, regardless of education level and the respect for every facet of the lab is apparent. The lab is very interconnected and truly makes science understandable, interesting, and fun, even with all of the frustrations that are involved in research.