The Final (Product) Frontier

Last week, I once again had the privilege of meeting with my mentor, Dr. Nyaz Didehbani, to discuss possible approaches to my Final Product. She informed me of her current research in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), her past work studying Alzheimer's and dementia in aging patients, and her department's recent initiative hosting a weekly therapy group for COVID-19 survivors. In this weekly group, Dr. Didehbani and her colleague Dr. Christian LoBue, an individual who I also mentored, host topical discussions on the lingering repercussions of COVID-19 on patients' lives and effective strategies to maintaining one's mental health. The therapy group also allows the survivors to discuss their experiences, whether it be from common symptoms such as losing your sense of smell or taste to even life-threatening complications such as strokes or neural inflammation. I am very interested in intersecting my interests in public health, mental health, and neuropsychology, so based on Dr. Didehbani's current therapy group I am planning on researching COVID-19's impacts on cognitive function and compiling the existing literature into an accessible public website. I feel I was successful in brainstorming ideas for my final product and finally creating something that will not only take my own initiative, but will actually require skilled expertise and guidance from my mentor and her work. Next week, I hope to initiate the project by organizing the literature I must review in a spreadsheet and discussing the works with my mentor for suggestions.