Research Assistant
Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry
During the Buddhist Studies Program, I completed my Independent Study Project in Pune on Buddhist health activism among Ambedkarite Buddhists, bridging three topics I care deeply about. After returning to Brown University, I led meditation with the Brown Meditation Community a few times a week and also founded a weekly meditation group for people of color at Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. While an undergraduate, I also volunteered at a free clinic in Providence and coordinated a program that sought to help low-income students navigate college. I also spent summers at Washington University in St. Louis researching and publishing on the effects of poverty on newborn brain function. After graduating from Brown with a degree in neuroscience, I have since been working at Columbia University as a research assistant in the department of psychiatry. In this position, I research and write about the effects of environmental injustice and psychosocial stressors on child cognitive, emotional, and brain development. I am currently applying to medical school and hope to matriculate in 2021. Outside of work, I continue to practice meditation, primarily shamatha and vipassana, and I lead an online meditation space for people of color, offering meditation both in English and Spanish.