"My name is Phuong Nguyen.
We are in Dr. Miranda's lab in Drexel University.We have done the massive screening of 264 drugs
that target specific receptor in a cells.
We express human protein in fruit flies and that's kind of mimic the Alzheimer's disease
and we treat them with different drugs to see if the drugs we are able to rescue.
So I'm from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
I got first interested in science the senior year of my high school.
So I was exchange student in Virginia and my host family, one of them is a biology,
high school biology teacher.
So that's why I get interested in.
She started talking about the field and what are the opportunities, how that's suitable
to my personality.
I'm a scientist because I like to explore things.
I like troubleshooting and problem solving and I really interested in research that related
to human diseases and I feel that's important to kind of get an active role in how to help
people, compared to working in medical field.
It's great but I want to take an active role in [INAUDIBLE].
I'm interested in human disease because my dad passed away when I was little because
of cancer and I think, I was struggling with the fact that he was a doctor so I really
want to take a role in that, this field related to human diseases.
I'm interested in this lab because I think it's, Alzheimer disease is getting so costly
and still haven't had a cure for it so that's why I go in this lab and doing that.
For our project we'll make the food, like the different drug food and then feed the
flies with the food.
Then we look at, like we collect the flies and look at their external morphology.
Look if they have a defects and then we going to note that.
We also do the climbing assay, do a test if the fly have a defects in central nervous
system.
And what I also do, learning and memory in flies.
That, maybe it sounds really like do for people but we actually can test the learning memory
ability of flies.
I'll hope obviously that we going to move forward to understand the mechanism and then
maybe move into the mice model.
Or but if it turns out great we can move like further into clinical trial.
I just think that if you really like something you should go for it.
You never be effective at doing something if you don't like so if you have a passion
for it, go for it.
Don't let anything hold you back."