Mara Lindqvist — Undergraduate Researcher, Neuroscience
Chapel Hill, NC
Fourth-year neuroscience student at UNC Chapel Hill applying to PhD programs in systems neuroscience for fall 2027. Two years of chronic two-photon imaging in mouse barrel cortex, a first-author methods preprint, and a spine-detection pipeline that cut manual scoring from nine hours a week to one.
Experience
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Synaptic Plasticity Laboratory, UNC Chapel Hill · September 2024 – present
Chronic two-photon imaging in juvenile mouse somatosensory cortex; 15 hours a week during term.
- Runs the imaging sessions and spine-tracking analysis for a 14-animal longitudinal study, now in revision at a physiology journal.
- Wrote a semi-automated spine detector on 2,400 hand-labeled images that cut manual scoring from nine hours a week to one, with 96% agreement against two blinded scorers.
- Designed and built a head-fixation plate for juvenile animals after the commercial part failed on three mice; the design file is now used by three other laboratories.
- Trains incoming undergraduates on stereotaxic surgery and perfusion; four of the five have stayed past a year.
Summer Research Fellow, Ridgeline Institute for Brain Science · June 2025 – August 2025
- Quantified interneuron density across six cortical layers in 42 sections, reaching the lab reference values within 4% on a first attempt.
- Presented the ten-week project to an institute-wide audience of 90 and was one of two fellows invited back for a second summer.
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Introductory Neurobiology, Department of Biology, UNC Chapel Hill · August 2025 – May 2026
- Led two weekly discussion sections of 24 students and held four office hours; section mean on the final sat 6 points above the course mean both terms.
Education
- B.S. Neuroscience, minor in Statistics · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · August 2023 – May 2027
Skills
- Laboratory: Two-photon imaging, Stereotaxic surgery, Immunohistochemistry, Cryosectioning, Mouse colony management
- Analysis: Python, MATLAB, R, ImageJ, Mixed-effects models, Bootstrap resampling
- Scholarly practice: Manuscript drafting, Animal protocol writing, Poster design, Peer mentoring
