PhD Student Always Makes Time for Service

On a Saturday morning, you might find fourth-year BME graduate student Loi Do helping autistic children and adolescents conduct science experiments, or mentoring his fellow graduate students on how to acclimate to the rigors of a PhD program. 

“Teaching has been part of my life for my entire life,” said Do, a winner of the 2018 Centennial Doctorate Degree Award, established by the UA Graduate College to recognize outstanding achievement in the face of social, economic and educational obstacles.

Do’s research in professor Ted Trouard's lab combines pharmacology, psychology and bioengineering. Do’s primary focus is using magnetic resonance imaging to image the connections in the brain. In his collaboration with Roberta Diaz Brinton, professor in the pharmacology and neurology departments and inaugural director of the UA Center for Innovation in Brain Science, and Aarti Mishra, a PhD candidate in the Brinton Lab, he’s studying the correlation between Alzheimer’s disease and ApoE 4, a fat-shuttling protein indicated in Alzheimer’s disease.

“My research with Trouard allows us to noninvasively explore how the brain’s connections change as we age,” Do said. “The long-term translation of this research is to develop therapies that will preserve the important connections to maintain a high quality of life in old age.”