Alisha Tejada ’25 — the URECA Researcher of the Month for August — is a biomedical engineering major and first-generation college student in the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) honors program. She was introduced to research in Associate Professor Wei Yin’s laboratory through the SUNY SOAR undergraduate research program — a pilot program of the SUNY Chancellor’s Summer Research Excellence Fund award to Stony Brook, which expands opportunities for undergraduates with financial need and/or first-generation college students.
Through the professional development workshops offered in the SOAR program, Tejada developed a wider perspective about career paths, and is now considering a graduate program.
Tejada’s project models the effects of blood clots on abdominal aorta walls. She presented a poster on the “Effects of Thrombosis on Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms” at the Summer Research Symposium and will continue her research under Yin’s mentorship this fall.
Tejada particularly enjoys classes where she works on team projects. She credits her experiences in BME 203, Emergent Biodesign, such as working on bilateral support for a hypothetical patient with a spinal injury, or the EKG Wave App project she did in BME 100, Intro to Biomedical Engineering, as valuable preparation for doing research in the Yin laboratory.
On campus, Tejada works at the Campus Recreation Center as an operations monitor and intramural referee, is vice president of the Volleyball Club, and is a member of the Sigma Beta Honor Society.
Look for Tejada’s poster at “Find Out in 15” at CommUniversity Day on September 23.
Read the interview with URECA Director Karen Kernan.
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