Miriam is a rising senior at the California Institute of Technology majoring in Biology. At Caltech, she works in the Stathopoulos lab studying the dynamics of cell migration using the Drosophila model system. As part of the UCLA Amgen Scholars program, Miriam is working in Dr. Jau-Nian Chen’s lab in the department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. The Chen lab uses the zebrafish model to study the genetic, molecular, and cellular bases of the cardiovascular system during normal development and in diseases. Miriam’s project focuses on determining the role of mitochondrial regulation in proper cardiac development. She will be taking super-resolution images of mitochondrial colocalization with the cardiomyocyte network, as well as analyzing the phenotypes of various mitochondrial transport protein mutants. Previous research in the lab revealed the functional defects of cardiac myopathy and arrhythmia in certain mutant lines, and Miriam will be now doing structural immunohistochemical analysis of the adult zebrafish hearts as well as RNA-Seq transcriptomic analysis of day 5 embryo hearts, when the first signs of cardiac dysfunction appear. Following up on all of these angles will hopefully help fill in the gaps of knowledge about the conserved mitochondrial effect on heart development, possibly leading to applications for the prevention and treatment of congenital heart diseases in humans. Miriam would like to thank the Amgen Foundation for making the Amgen Scholars program at UCLA possible. In addition, she thanks Dr. Chen and Adam Langenbacher for supporting her growth as a researcher.