Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481
plai@wellesley.edu

My name is Rosalind Lai. I am a rising sophomore at Wellesley College, and am majoring in Neuroscience. I have always been fascinated with working in a research lab, and decided to come to Wellesley, which would give me the opportunity to fully engage in scientific research. I joined Professor Tetel’s lab in the spring of my first year, and I hope to continue working in this lab throughout my undergraduate years. After graduating from Wellesley, I plan to attend medical school and be engaged in a field that involves both medicine and research.

Currently, our lab is working in collaboration with the Wolfson Lab in studying the presence of Thimet oligopeptidase (TOP) and Estrogen Receptor (ERα) in the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMN) of female mice. TOP, a bioactive peptidase, is involved in the regulation of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, and estrogen. We are currently using dual label immunohistochemistry to study the expression of TOP and ERα in the VMN to investigate the effect of estrogen on TOP levels in the brain.