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Megi Diasamidze ’23, Nathaniel Kregar ’22, and Ryan Osselborn ’23  presented their undergraduate research, which they conducted either at the College or at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.

Biology and neuroscience senior Nathaniel Kregar ’22 received third prize among undergraduates for his senior thesis poster presentation. Kregar’s thesis is based on his research in Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Jean-Marie Maddux’s lab, where h first started working as a Richter Scholar the summer after his freshman year. That lab research has turned into a career focus for Kregar, who is applying for PhD programs. 

Kregar joins more than past 20 students from the College who have received undergraduate research prizes at the CSfN meeting’s poster session since 2003, when undergraduates were first invited to present their work at the meeting.

Jessica Day ’22, a biochemistry and molecular biology and neuroscience senior, and Amanda Grassel ’23, a neuroscience junior, were also recognized for their outstanding leadership as the current co-presidents of the College’s chapter for Nu Rho Psi, the national neuroscience honor society, which just capped five years of community service by organizing the Chicago Brain Bee on behalf of CSfN for this part of the Midwest.

In 2019, at the annual National Society for Neuroscience meeting, the College’s Nu Rho Psi chapter and CSfN were featured as a national model of collaboration for other undergraduate colleges and universities to sponsor new brain bees for their regions, especially those underrepresented in bees. The Brain Bee is an international high school competition to test knowledge in neuroscience and motivate high school students to pursue sciences at the college level and beyond.

The CSfN meeting is the premier brain research meeting in the Midwest and CSfN is a local affiliate of the National Chapters of the Society for Neuroscience. The CSfN is composed of academic and industry-based scientists in the greater Chicago region who are interested in the field of neuroscience. This includes researchers, teachers, students, and interested public. Its membership includes individuals on faculty at all of the major academic centers and many of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the Chicago area.

Since 2003, more than 500 Lake Forest College students have attended this annual meeting as an annual daylong excursion to extend their classroom setting and develop the professional networking edge in the life and behavioral sciences’ professional community that Chicago is internationally known for.