Life at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
David Ottenheimer is a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience. One of his favorite family traditions is spelunking in the caves of West Virginia (see selfie). He explains, “My grandfather was an avid caver, and he got my whole family hooked. During the trek, we take a moment to turn off all our lights and appreciate the total darkness.”
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. It’s a unique honor to be able to virtually address the School of Medicine graduates… Read More »2020 Convocation Speaker David Ottenheimer on Science and Miscommunication
Most days, I just think of myself as a scientist. But in honor of Pride Month, I am embracing my identity as not just any… Read More »Reflections on Pride Month As a Gay Scientist
As a fourth-year neuroscience Ph.D. student, I appreciate the variety of topics that lie within the umbrella of the nervous system. Nowhere is this more… Read More »Why Do Students Pursue a Ph.D. in Neuroscience?
In one of my courses in the neuroscience Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins, we recently discussed the 2016 National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate requiring… Read More »Discussing the NIH Mandate to Study Sex as a Biological Variable in Basic Biomedical Research
This October marks the publication of my first lead author scientific article, the culmination of my thesis work thus far. Simply put, I found a… Read More »Uncovering a Food Preference Signal in an Overlooked Brain Region
Most would agree that a principal goal of scientific research is to enhance society’s understanding of the world around us. In biomedical research, we are… Read More »Open Access: Making Scientific Findings Available to All
This June was Baltimore Pride, a tradition dating back to 1975 that celebrates the LGBTQ+ community in Baltimore. Over 200 members of the Johns Hopkins… Read More »Celebrating the Hopkins LGBTQ+ Community at Baltimore Pride 2018
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Kapil Ramachandran, a graduate student in the Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology (BCMB) Graduate Program who… Read More »A Conversation with Kapil Ramachandran, Johns Hopkins Graduate Student and Incoming Member of the Harvard Society of Fellows
Biology is a vast and rapidly evolving field. The science of life ranges from studying the physical and chemical interactions of molecules to mapping a… Read More »Drowning in Data: New Challenges in Modern Biology
You’ve probably heard of dopamine before. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter—a chemical in the brain responsible for conveying information from one cell to another. It has… Read More »What Does Dopamine Really Do?