In the spring of 2015 I graduated from UNM with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and biology and have gained experience participating in research in my last 3 years as an undergraduate student. I worked in Dr. David Witherington’s lab for a year and a half as a student research assistant on a project examining when children delineate exterior verses interior qualities as a definition what an object is. In an attempt to expand my understanding of research and knowledge as part of the McNair program I joined Dr. Jonathan Brigman’s lab. Over the next year and a half I studied learning and memory behavioral phenotypes with regard to genetic knockouts and prenatal alcohol exposure using standard testing procedures and touch screen paradigm. The next step is to gain more experience in Dr. Benjamin Clark’s lab studying spatial memory and place cell in mechanical knockout models with future plan to study Alzheimer’s disease and their phenotypic response in spatial task.