During my freshman and sophomore years at Columbia, I worked in the lab of Stephen Rayport, MD/PhD at the NYS Psychiatric Institute and CUMC Department of Molecular Therapeutics carrying out a high-throughput screen for inhibitors of phosphate-activated glutaminase. Glutaminase, major metabolic enzyme that catalyzes the deamination of glutamine to form glutamate, is a key regulator of glutamatergic transmission in the brain. The inhibition of glutaminase has potential in the pharmacotherapy of a wide variety of diseases, from schizophrenia to cancer. The summer after my sophomore year, I worked in the lab of Seth Darst at Rockefeller University studying the structural biology of bacterial RNA polymerases and sigma factors as part of Rockefeller's SURF program.