LAHS Senior Fortis Brown has been recognized by Elio Academy of Biomedical Sciences. Courtesy/LAPS
LAPS News:
Los Alamos High School Senior Fortis Brown has been recognized by the Elio Academy of Biomedical Sciences for their advanced Biology project. The research was themed around Neuro-Genetics; specifically, they chose to work on Schizophrenia.
Fortis’ academic work may be viewed at here.
“As someone who struggles with a lot of mental health issues, things like schizophrenia and other mental disorders matter a lot to me,” Fortis explained. “I’ve written several other papers for school assignments on the genetics of autism and schizoaffective disorder. I know how much it can suck to live with these conditions, so I plan on going into neurogenetics research after college. I chose schizophrenia specifically because I was interested in hallucinations and psychosis and their biological causes. My mentor, Dr. Juhi Ojha, helped me develop the prenatal testing aspect of it so that my research would have clinical applications.”
Fortis became involved with Elio Academy through their summer program project. “I was looking for a summer program to do over the summer and after exploring several options online I ended up choosing Elio Academy due to their reputation and faculty.”
Fortis has garnered a summer internship with Elio Academy and will be a teaching assistant.
“My internship is a teacher’s assistant position, so I will be focused on educating current students on the programs they use to develop their own research projects. I will be teaching about Biorender, the National Library of Medicine database, MLA formatting using Google Docs, and poster creation using Google Slides, just to name a few.”
“I am very excited to work with Dr. Ojha again, as I enjoyed my time with her in my initial program,” Fortis said. “She is an incredible educator and professional who greatly influenced my career choices in the future. I also look forward to sharing my knowledge with my peers and building the research skills of future medical professionals.”
Following graduation, Fortis will be attending New Mexico State University to get a bachelor’s degree in Genetics and Biotechnology, with plans to continue on to pursue master’s and doctorate degrees. “I will use my degrees to either go into neurogenetics research, specifically deciphering the complicated polygenic nature of disorders like schizophrenia and autism or go into commercial genetic counseling.”
Elio Academy is run by a team led by doctors, pharma experts and researchers who have designed courses that provide high school students with interactive lectures / hypothesis-based research / development experience in medical biology.
Fortis added, “If anyone is looking for an online-based summer program, Elio Academy is an excellent choice. The faculty is built up of medical professionals in several different fields that can guide you to become the best researcher you can. They bring in several speakers to discuss leading research in your field and teach far beyond the basics necessary for things like AP Biology. The skills I developed in my program helped me ace my science and English courses in my senior year.”