The Strand: What year are you, and what are your majors?
Sara Ciganovic: I’m in fourth year, and I’m doing a pathobiology specialist.
What is your research?
My lab studies how the brain develops and the stem cells that are creating the brain using mice models. We’ve done a lot of sequencing analysis on the stem cell populations that exists during different embryonic and postnatal stages, and we found that there was this subpopulation of stem cells that no one’s really talked about before. They are contributing not just to the brain development but also they produce oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, so they produce other cell types. I’ve been studying their dynamics—if they’re rapidly proliferating, if they’re slow proliferating, and then also just looking at their context in diseases like stroke.
Why is this an important thing to research, and how can this information be used in the future?
It’s really important to research because with a lot of neurodegenerative disorders, we can study all these stem cells that make up the brain. A lot of these stem cells go on to become what we call adult neural stem cells. It’s known in the literature that when there is a stroke or something like that in the brain, they tend to respond to the injury, but they’re not good at it. So, if we can understand the mechanisms of how they work and if we can learn how to mobilise them during brain injury, that’s super important. Just for therapeutic sake and in the future for different diseases.
How did you get this position?
I’m in the Pathobiology Specialist program, so my department has a lot of course opportunities to do research. They introduced a third-year introduction to research course for people who have never done research before. I did that course, and I emailed my supervisor, and there was a position available for an undergrad. The lectures were talking about different aspects of research like research ethics. How to go about writing a proposal, so you actually learn about the process. But then most of the component is you going into the lab and working throughout the week. Over the summer, I did their summer research program where I got to start the project I’m doing now with the stem cells, and then I presented a poster, and now I’m doing a fourth-year research thesis project.
What advice do you have for students looking to do research?
There are different ways to go about it. I know some people go through like [Research Opportunity Program] courses. I definitely recommend cold emailing. I think that worked the best for me, but it depends on the department because my department’s very small, so I think it definitely helped. Also, looking at the different opportunities, like whether it’s a course. I think the fact that it was a course really helped me. When I reached out, I had something to talk about, like, ‘Hey, I’m really interested in this lab. I want to do this course,’ and that helps show your interest.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
