Sofia is a rising junior majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Computer Science at Duke University. At Duke, she works in Dr. Gustavo Silva’s lab to study the mechanisms by which cells regulate their mitochondria in the face of oxidative stress, a harmful process which damages cellular biomolecules, fostering cell death, and contributes to neurodegeneration.

As a UCLA Amgen Scholar, Sofia is working in Dr. Lindsay De Biase’s lab, which focuses on understanding why and how microglial regional specialization affects basal ganglia neuronal function as well as the viability of these neurons in the face of aging and pathology. Microglia are involved in almost every important brain process, spanning from early development to aging and neurodegeneration, and are most well-known for their phagocytic role as the brain’s immune cells, clearing the brain of dying neurons, synapses, debris, protein aggregates, and pathogens. In the De Biase Lab, Sofia is working on an assay to accurately visualize and quantify the phagocytic abilities of microglia in acute brain sections of mice. Development of this assay will enable more robust analysis of microglial phagocytosis in a variety of contexts such as developmental circuit maturation and circuit breakdown during neurodegeneration.