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A Week in Our Lab
Catch up with our team!
Dr. Lana Ruvolo Grasser Winters aka "Dr. Ruvvy" & Naga Alyamani
September 03, 2025
In this week’s newsletter, we offer insight into our day-to-day activities at the lab. Do you have questions about what it’s like to work in a scientific research lab? Do you want to see more content like this? Email us at [email protected]!
Welcoming Dr. Becca Easter
Last week, the Ruvvy Resilience Lab was proud to welcome Dr. Rebecca (Becca) Easter from Johns Hopkins University to train with us. Dr. Easter is using a method called “fear-potentiated startle” to study how the nervous system perceives and responds to information signaling threat versus safety. You can read more about this method here.
Dr. Ruvvy used the same method to study how exposure to war and forced migration affects youth. You can read more about that research here.
Lab Manager Ujala Janjua models the set up for the fear-potentiated startle task. During the task, participants see, hear, and feel different things. We use sensors, wires, and computers to measure participants' eye blinks, sweat, and heart beat to understand how the nervous system perceives and responds to that sensory information that may signal threat or safety!
The Role of Mentorship
A training visit like Dr. Easter’s is an example of mentorship. Mentorship is a critical part of the day-to-day life of a scientist. We teach each other new methods and information to strengthen the work we do and better enable us to make discoveries that can positively impact health.
Community Engagement
We also visited our friends at the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child and Family Development to learn more about community engagement. As you may know, the Ruvvy Resilience Lab has a Community Advisory Board, that guides our research and ensures our science reflects the wants and needs of stakeholders.
Closing Thoughts
Science is better when we work together as a team. This team includes not only the workers and volunteers in our lab, but also colleagues at Wayne State and around the world (like Dr. Easter), and community members—like YOU! If working as a team to better understand how our experiences shape our development sounds exciting to you, please reach out to us about job and training opportunities, or opportunities to participate in our research at [email protected].
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