Hana Shafique is a Wells Scholar at Indiana University studying Molecular Life Sciences in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biochemistry as well as Neuroscience in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, with minors in French and Chemistry.
She attended Park Tudor School in Indianapolis, Indiana. During high school, Hana interned at the global pharmaceutical drug company, Eli Lilly and Company, for two subsequent summers, where her passion for research was fostered. Following her junior year, she worked in the Eli Lilly Research Laboratories Bioinformatics department, analyzing gene expression data to determine novel drug targets for the autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis. After graduating, she returned to Lilly, again working in Bioinformatics, however, this time to identify novel oncological drug targets using artificial intelligence. She presented at the BioCrossroads Indiana Life Sciences Summit 2017, Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute Annual Meeting 2017, and Indiana Physiological Society Annual Meeting 2018, where she has won poster and presentation awards.
These extremely fulfilling pre-undergraduate experiences prompted her to join the Mackie research lab, focusing on the role and function of the endocannabinoid system. During her freshman and sophomore years, she has worked on a project regarding the sex-related differences with brain-derived neurotropic factor with respect to varying treatments of THC and CBD. After completing her freshman year of university, she participated in the Medical Neurosciences Undergraduate Science Research Program at the Indiana University School of Medicine where she spent the summer in the McKinzie lab, developing a novel radial arm maze assay to assess cognitive function in diabetic mice and subsequently presented at the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute Summer Symposium as well as the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute Annual Meeting 2019. When she is not in the laboratory or in the classroom, Hana is a certified EMT and involved in her community as the Director of the Wells Activism and Volunteer Effort, as well as on her university campus as the Director of Health and Wellbeing on IU Student Government, a curator on the TEDxIndianaUniversity team, and a Natural Sciences editor for the IU Journal of Undergraduate Research.
Hana will be studying Biochemistry at the University of Oxford during her junior year of undergrad and hopes to conduct research there as well. She aspires to be a Physician-Scientist in the future focusing mainly on Clinical Neuroscience and Biochemistry.
