Influential conference attendees are everywhere, but they're all strangers to the student. Lea Veras stands in front of her poster nervous, though prepared, to answer questions. Her poster represents results related to NMDA, a glutamate receptor in the brain. If the receptor doesn't regulate the amount of calcium properly, the condition can make people susceptible to neural disorders such as a stroke or schizophrenia. The chemistry PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon is working to understand how the process works.
She won the Biophysical Society's Student Travel Award for her research, which is why she is presenting her poster at the society's annual meeting, which attracts more than 6,000 research scientists.
A native of Brazil, Veras, 27, studied chemical engineering at Instituto Militar de Engenharia and first became aware of Carnegie Mellon as an undergraduate. She watched a television program featuring "Last Lecture" professor Randy Pausch and says, "I saw someone who was so passionate about science and learning, and I thought, 'I would like to study in a place like that.'"
—Jonathan Barnes (HS'93)
