Achievement

The IGERT has allowed Shabnam Hakimi to develop further academically through its focus on interdisciplinary coursework. She was able to take a course in Neural Computation, which drew from diverse fields to teach students how it is believed that the brain performs computations. As someone whose background is in psychology and neurobiology, this material was quite new to her, and she was encouraged to integrate her knowledge into this new skillset. Her work in this class allowed her to approach her research in a way that had previously been unavailable to her, and she was able to look at previously collected data with fresh perspective. This sort of interdisciplinary and integrative instruction has been invaluable, serving to foster intellectual curiosity while expanding the tools available for the conduction of innovative research.