PhD Student, Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience
PhD Student, Pak Lab, Department of Pharmacology and Department of Neuroscience
Research Interests: Neurodegeneration, synaptic plasticity
Advisor: Daniel Pak, PhD
Rotations: Bill Rebeck, Kathleen Maguire-Zeiss, Daniel Pak
Prior Education: Williams College, B.A. Biology and Neuroscience
Nicole Alvarez (she/her/hers) is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience (IPN). She graduated from Williams College in 2022 with a Bachelors in Biology with honors as well as a concentration in Neuroscience. As an undergraduate researcher, Nicole was a recipient of the Allison Davis and Stratton research fellowships for her work on neural-based sickness behaviors in Drosophila.
As a Patrick Healy fellow here at Georgetown, Nicole is working under her mentor Dr. Daniel Pak to study the role of specific proteins in synaptic processes such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). Her main research project is currently focused on identifying a role for synaptic CREB in response to local LTP induction. She hopes to elucidate the phosphorylation signatures and protein-protein interactions that characterize this specific CREB subpopulation, using techniques such as immunoprecipitation, mass spectrometry, and Western blotting. Nicole was also a recipient of the Lannan Fellowship here at Georgetown in 2024, and in the future she hopes to pursue a professorship and a career in non-fiction science writing.