Experience

Caltech

• United States
• Research Services
• 700 & Above Employee

• Graduate Student for David Van Valen

  • Jan 2019 - Present



Smith College

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• STRIDE Research Scholar for Dr. Michael Barresi

  • Sep 2015 - Aug 2018

  Laboratory internship to study the role of roundabout receptors in the formation of the post optic commissure in the zebrafish forebrain (25-35 hours per week)-Developing software to quantitatively analyze commissure formation and interacting structures by transforming images to enable direct comparison between different embryos-Integrating the use of 5D light sheet data for studying commissure formation and developing tools foranalysis-Developing knockout lines of roundabout 1 and roundabout 4 receptors in zebrafish -Analyzing the phenotypic results of knockouts using immunohistochemistry and laser scanning confocal microscopy-Code available at https://github.com/msschwartz21/craniumPy Show less

• Lab Assistant for Bio 303: Developmental Biology

  • Sep 2016 - Dec 2016

  Assisted in preparation and execution of experiments during a weekly research driven lab

• Teaching Assistant for Genomes and Genetic Analysis

  • Jan 2016 - May 2016

  Held weekly open hours to help students with concepts introduced in lecture and lab



Howard Hughes Medical Institute

• United States
• Research Services
• 700 & Above Employee

• Janelia Undergraduate Scholar for Dr. Philipp Keller

  • Jun 2016 - Aug 2016

  Internship to study the development of the Drosophila brain using light sheet microscopy and manual cell tracking -Manually tracked cells in the brain from the blastoderm stage until the beginning of muscle contractions using MaMut and BigDataViewer through Fiji -Developed python based tools for identifying and characterizing metrics of cell behavior such velocity, direction of movement, delamination, and cell division - Code available at https://github.com/msschwartz21/Mamut_xml_processing Show less



Banner Health

• United States
• Hospitals and Health Care
• 700 & Above Employee

• Intern for Dr. Marwan Sabbagh

  • Jun 2015 - Sep 2015

  Summer internship shadowing doctors and assisting in clinical research -Reviewed the literature on the under-enrollment of minority subjects in Alzheimer’s Disease clinical trials and prepared an analysis -Analyzed the pathological and clinical presentation of cases of Neurofibrillary Tangle Predominant Dementia in comparison to Alzheimer’s Disease cases (paper accepted by the Journal for Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinsonism) Summer internship shadowing doctors and assisting in clinical research -Reviewed the literature on the under-enrollment of minority subjects in Alzheimer’s Disease clinical trials and prepared an analysis -Analyzed the pathological and clinical presentation of cases of Neurofibrillary Tangle Predominant Dementia in comparison to Alzheimer’s Disease cases (paper accepted by the Journal for Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinsonism)



Smith College

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• STRIDE Research Scholar for Dr. Laura Katz

  • Aug 2014 - May 2015

  Laboratory internship to research the biodiversity of plankton populations in tide pools-Extracted DNA from tide pool samples and performed PCR to analyze the biodiversity of the sample-Utilized Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis to isolate and sequence the DNA of individual species.

• Research Assistant for Dr. Thomas Riddell

  • Aug 2014 - May 2015

  Final class project continued as an independent study to develop a proposal for walking tour to memorialize the Northampton State Hospital -Selected appropriate sites for stops on the walking tour along with focused content -Researched and wrote plaques for some stops on the tour -Presented to the Northampton community to begin dialogue about future implementation of memorials for the Northampton State Hospital



Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center

• United States
• Hospitals and Health Care
• 100 - 200 Employee

• Research Assistant

  • Jan 2014 - Jun 2014

  Research on the effect of community volunteering programs on the social skills of young adults with autism -Collected and coded video data, analyzed coded results, and explored different representations of data Research on the effect of community volunteering programs on the social skills of young adults with autism -Collected and coded video data, analyzed coded results, and explored different representations of data