top of page

Research Experience

​

Background

The summer after my freshman year, I interned at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, where I worked as a physical therapy and occupational therapy assistant. During this program, I also had the opportunity to collaborate with the Rehabilitation Robotics team, assisting physical and occupational therapists in using robotic equipment, like the RT300, during therapy sessions. One of the patients using the RT300 had a C2 spinal cord injury and relied on a ventilator to breathe. He expressed to me his wish for an alternative to the ventilator. That night, I went home and began researching, which led me to discover Dr. Dale’s lab at the University of Florida. Her lab was studying how to restore breathing after cervical spinal cord injury using closed-loop epidural stimulation. Fascinated by her research, I reached out a couple of months after completing my internship to inquire about any undergraduate research assistant openings. Fortunately, she had a position available, and I joined the lab in August 2023!

Photo of me trying on one of the exoskeletons the rehabilitation robotics team uses in physical therapy

Photo from my poster presentation at the end of my internship

Dale Lab

In the United States, there are about 18,000 cases of spinal cord injuries every year. Injuries that occur at the cervical level diminish an individual’s ability to breathe, often leading to respiratory failure and ventilator dependence. The Dale Lab’s primary goal is to restore breathing after cervical spinal cord injury using closed-loop epidural stimulation (CL-ES). Our lab’s closed-loop approach uses diaphragm EMG activity to trigger stimulation, so treatment is applied only when the animal is trying to breathe.

​

My responsibilities in lab include

  • Training other undergraduate students on:

    • Sectioning tissue with the cryostat

    • Immunohistochemistry (IHC)

    • Imaging 

  • Attending undergraduate science hour hosted by one of the grad students in our lab, Alyssa Mickle.

  • Sectioning tissue 

  • Estrous-staging 

Poster Presentations

University of Florida Spring Undergraduate Research Symposium                                                            Gainesville, FL 2024

  • c-Fos Distribution in the Thoracic Spinal Cord After Cervical Spinal Cord Stimulation and Injury

North Central Florida Society for Neuroscience                                                                                          Gainesville, FL 2024

  • c-Fos Distribution in the Thoracic Spinal Cord After Cervical Spinal Cord Stimulation and Injury

Published Abstracts

Mickle A., Peñaloza-Aponte JD, Brennan C, Dale E. (2024, April 4-7). Closed-loop epidural stimulation

elicits respiratory plasticity in a rat model of acute spinal cord injury. [Poster Presentation]. American

Physiological Summit, Long Beach, CA, USA

Research Interests

Below is a list of my research interests, shaped by my clinical experience and what I have learned in Dr. Dale’s lab.

  • Neuroscience

  • Spinal cord injuries

  • Respiratory physiology

  • Neuro critical care

  • Strokes

  • Traumatic Brain Injuries

bottom of page