ELYSSIA WANG

Responsible, dedicated, and resourceful learner committed to learning, developing skills in real-world contexts, and team contribution. Communicative and collaborative leader that excels with group work and creative problem-solving.

UCLA Lord Lab, Undergraduate Research Assistant, Los Angeles, CA, 07/2023 - Present

• Assist researchers in a UCLA Autism Spectrum Disorder lab, supervised by Catherine Lord.
• Extend researchers in a UCLA Autism Spectrum Disorder lab by packaging BOSCC toy assessment kits used in autism-specific development, shipped globally.
• Record and upload 3 weekly Brief Observation of Social Communication Change (BOSCC) videos of children from the KidsConnect program.
• Extracted data from multiple autism research studies and performed data cleaning for analysis through RedCap and Excel.

Brain Exercise Initiative, Session Leader, Los Angeles, CA, 07/2023 - Present

• Orchestrate weekly 1 hour virtual group meetings to decrease risk of developing Alzheimer's in elderly populations.
• Facilitate 10-12 activities, including mental math puzzles, trivia, anagrams, and reading-aloud exercises to promote mental cognition.
• Coordinate with other volunteers to develop new and innovative ways to challenge and stimulate brain, fostering cognitive stimulation and social interaction among participants.

CityLab @ UCLA, Teaching Assistant, Los Angeles, CA, 04/2023 - Present

• Direct, mentor, and lead high school students attending low API-scoring schools through a specialized scientific curriculum centered around new trends and current topics to engage high school students.
• Design biweekly course projects on scientific concepts with a unique presentation theme and where knowledge application, such as performing ELISA and chromatography, occurs directly in UCLA laboratories with attending high school students.

APA Health CARE, Mandarin Client Navigator, Los Angeles, CA, 09/2022 - Present

• Lead and conduct monthly free health screenings for local underserved Asian and Pacific Islander clients.
• Develop linguistically and culturally tailored health education packets to help raise awareness of various ailments commonly affecting API populations, such as hypertension and diabetes.

CIS - Molecular Biology of Memory and Memory Diseases, Student Researcher, Remote, 07/2022 - 09/2022

• Intensive neurobiology summer program providing essential training in scientific thinking, including how to design experiments and acquire knowledge from experiments/discoveries in modern biology.
• Designed journal club articles and presentations on various topics such as Alzheimer's disease research on APP (amyloid precursor protein), histone deacetylase and cancer research, adult hippocampal neurogenesis, and anesthesia and consciousness in conjunction with daily lecture material to apply techniques in neural signal processing, optogenetics, electrophysiology, and fluorescence microscopy.
• Proposed research methodologies in a small collaborative setting under Dr. Samuel Kunes to investigate the role of mGluR5 glutamate receptors in the synaptic integration and strength of new neurons against existing neurons within an adult mouse hippocampus.