Ari Geary-Teeter

I am a junior at the University of Washington studying biology and philosophy. In my spare time, I love hiking, writing, and trying out new restaurants. I got involved in our current project because of its connection to neuroscience, a field I am especially interested in pursuing at the graduate level. Although we are preserving human fibroblast cells and not brain tissue, our experiments could theoretically be replicated in order to more effectively and inexpensively preserve the cellular components in brain tissue for diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases among other forms of analysis.

I'm excited for the opportunity to use science to help people and to develop skills that I will likely use many times over in the future, including creating a reproducible protocol, following the protocol carefully, analyzing our data, presenting our data, and writing in a clear, scientific manner. Additionally, I think the experience of attempting to self-finance our research will prove to be a particularly valuable skill for me, as I believe it is important to have passion for your work. If successful, the ability to make money from something I care about will be a major step towards this goal, no matter where life takes me.

August 2018