Zeena Ammar is a 6th year PhD candidate in the program and is of Egyptian, Lebanese, and Palestinian descent. She graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering. During her time there, she took part in the Co-op program and worked in the Research and Development Department at Bard Medical Division. Her undergraduate research involved building a quantitative database for a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease and extracting data on the relationship between amyloid-beta levels and cognitive task performance. During her final year at Georgia Tech, she worked with the Grady Trauma Project and helped in collecting psychophysiological data to measure fear response in pregnant women across their pregnancy.

Now as a graduate student, Zeena is working with Dr. Sarah Shultz at the Marcus Autism Center where she is carrying out two projects: (1) Investigating the development of social visual engagement and the emergence of contingent social interaction in infants at high- and low- likelihood for Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) and (2) Investigating the brain-behavior bases of emerging social disability by collecting and analyzing diffusion tensor imaging and resting-state functional MRI data in a longitudinal sample of infants at high- and low-risk for ASD.

In addition to her research, Zeena has heavily invested in outreach and mentorship. She has worked as a graduate mentor for the Emory EPIC program, teaching high school juniors about neuroscience and mental health. She has also worked on the Trainee Committees for two societies, the Flux Society and the Fetal Infant Toddler Neuroimaging Group (FIT’NG), where she had the opportunity to develop and plan trainee workshops and mentorship initiatives at the respective conferences.

Outside of the lab, Zeena loves exploring coffee shops around Atlanta with a good book and as well as social dancing like swing and salsa.

Maha is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the program. Maha is originally Iraqi, but most of her childhood was spent growing up in the Gulf region of the Middle East. She received her B.A. in Neuroscience at The College of Wooster in Ohio, where she pursued a number of different research projects on topics from Alzheimer’s disease pathology to cognition and behavior. She also worked at the University of Michigan Medical School in the Emily Jutkiewicz lab on a project focusing on adolescent addiction and depression. In the Malavika Murugan lab, she is interested in studying the neural correlates that underlie familiarity and social recognition using tracing, optogenetic and in vivo imaging tools.

Maha is also passionate about teaching neuroscience and has sought out many interdisciplinary opportunities within Emory as well in our local Atlanta community, including the development of a course with the Philosophy department to explore the concept of difference through a Neuroscience and Philosophy lens and an interactive virtual course on Neurogastronomy where she worked with local Atlanta restaurants to combine chef’s flavor inspirations with relevant neuroscience concepts. Maha is also a leader in service to the Neuroscience Program; she is currently one of our Recruitment Coordinators and Co-President of EWIN and has served in many other roles within our program.

Outside of the lab, you can find Maha exploring Atlanta, usually at a park, hole-in-the-wall food spot, or a local brewery. She also enjoyed spending her time volunteering at a local Atlanta farm through Concrete Jungle.