NIH InnovatesA year-long internship as a histology technician at the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) unknowingly set the foundation for my career rooted in psychology, built on experimentation and curiosity.
As a high school senior with no prior lab experience, I joined Dr. Mortimer Mishkin's neuroscience team to support research on delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) memory processes in primates. The precision required in both tissue preparation and behavioral observation was a significant leap in my technical capabilities at that stage (despite also running the school photography lab with a similar timed chemical bath setup), and it taught me the meticulousness that has shaped my approach to research ever since.
I began by preparing and staining brain tissue slides for analysis, building foundational skills in handling specimens and following exact protocols. Working with brain tissue on slides introduced me to the concept of the section cut, an unlikely precursor to my architecture career.
After demonstrating consistency and attention to detail over several months, I was invited to assist directly with behavioral testing of live monkeys: setting up the testing apparatus for each session, recording which objects the monkeys selected during memory tasks, tracking response times, and managing the reward schedules that reinforced correct choices.
My contributions freed the postdoctoral researchers to focus on higher-level data analysis rather than session setup and real-time observation. The detailed logs I kept caught inconsistencies early, protecting data integrity. By the end of the internship I was running full testing sessions independently, doubling the team's experimental throughput and accelerating the pace of the research program.
