Though Patel is committed to a career in neuroscience, she didn't always know this would be her path. As a high school student growing up in Morristown, New Jersey, she thought she might study environmental chemistry.

But during her first semester at Bowdoin, she recalls wandering through the Fall Research Symposium on the Quad, an annual event where students present their summer work. She stopped at a poster by two neuroscience majors and said she was "blown away by their research on DNA methylation in early-life adversity," referring to an epigentic mechanism that, responding to environmental factors, alters gene expression.

She reached out to their advisor to ask whether she could join the lab, and since then has worked as a research assistant to Honeycutt almost continuously, aside from one summer spent at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy through an NSF undergraduate research grant.

"I've gotten a lot of training at Bowdoin and in [the Honeycutt] lab that I don't think would have been possible in many other places, especially not at bigger research institutions," she said. In just three years, Patel has co-authored three papers-one published, one under review, and a third in progress-with Honeycutt and other Bowdoin students.

She credits Honeycutt for giving her the freedom to carve out her own research path and to take on a leadership role in the lab. "I have a lot of autonomy over what I do," she said. "The fact that I've been able to do research since my first year and pursue independent projects has been amazing."