NEUROCITY
Pathway program proves access can cultivate scientists Chen Li working the Haptics Lab.*
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n the summer of 2021, the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience Diversity Commission and the City College of New York launched the partnership program NEUROCITY. By collaborating with the Summer Scholars Program at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, organizers were able to launch the program that has, to date, put nearly 30 undergraduate students from historically marginalized backgrounds in research labs across the University of Rochester and University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) campuses. “This has been a really rewarding experience,” said Manuel Gomez-Ramirez, PhD, assistant professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester and chair of the Neuroscience Diversity Commission. “It has been great to see these students, many of whom have minimal research experience, come in and do such a phenomenal job in just 10 weeks. The grit, resolve, and commitment they have displayed has been greatly inspirational.” NEUROCITY has created a pathway to neuroscience research and, for some students, has transformed their future plans. “[NEUROCITY] was a very big reason for helping me figure out what I wanted to pursue after graduation,” said Jose Reynoso, an alumnus of the program who now works in a research lab at URMC. “It is the main reason why I want to go down a research path and pursue graduate school.” Reynoso grew up in the Bronx. Curious about human behavior since childhood, he credits a high school psychology course for giving him his first glimpse into neuroscience. “That is when I started to learn about the mechanisms in the brain that cause some people to behave
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differently. That is when I knew I wanted to go into science. I majored in psychology at CCNY, and when I learned about the NEUROCITY program, I saw it as a great opportunity to find out if I wanted to pursue research.” During his time in NEUROCITY, he was in the lab of Duje Tadin, PhD, professor and chair of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at the University of Rochester. Reynoso was part of a team that developed a new task to measure perceptual decision-making. The experiment aims to improve our understanding of how we make small decisions. Like how our brain determines that a sign is a stop sign when driving through the fog, as opposed to a sunny day. Jose Reynoso working with research subject in the Keane Vision & Psychosis Lab.*
“There was a clear point where I realized Jose was well suited for research and would excel at it. At our first research meeting, I asked him if he had any questions. At this point, most students ask 1-2 questions. In contrast, Jose pulled out his notebook and went through a long list of questions
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER | ERNEST J. DEL MONTE INSTITUTE FOR NEUROSCIENCE
