About Tara Isabel Dee Lago
I am a sophomore at Columbia University, intending on majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior on the pre-med track. Throughout my four years of high school, I conducted research related to social science, depression, and animal behavior, and I am currently exploring behavioral and computational neuroscience research at the Columbia University Medical Center. I have received many awards for my research, such as becoming a 2023 ISEF Finalist to represent NYC. Outside of science, I am a published storyteller and poet on Teen Vogue, Green Asia Network, and the NYPL.
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Recent Comments
Hi, Jasmine! This research sounds super cool and I would love to discuss this with you and the current work you are doing now :)
Aww this is so wholesome. Love the team bonding!
You're brave for this Tara
Not all heroes wear capes haha :)
Whoa this image of the moon is so amazing. The power of magnification and lens continues to astonish me. I am excited to see how you apply your telescope work for your leadership-in-action abroad!
1. In the course of working on the Mapping Historical New York project, I encountered several new ideas and challenges, especially regarding data collection and digitization processes. One significant challenge was the accuracy and completeness of historical data. For instance, inconsistencies and gaps in the original census records required creative solutions such as cross-referencing city directories and non-digitized maps to confirm or infer data. This sometimes contradicted our initial assumptions about urban development patterns and required adaptations in our methodology. As the scope of my project has narrowed down to 1880 Queens, I am also currently working to find additional Enumeration District maps for areas that we don't have little to no maps for (i.e. The Rockaways). I have applied the skills I learned to street validation, street naming, as well as geometry edits. In the project, we now entered the phase of Quality Assurance & Quality Checks so we can move to a different GIS method.
Overall, these challenges and new knowledge has enriched my understanding of historical urban studies and emphasized the need for meticulous source verification and innovative data integration techniques. I have also expanded my search for understanding the demographic and industrial transformation of Queens to include the street and world grid, and deepen my research into cultural and economic impacts on urban development.
2. Research resources like physical books, oral narratives, and mostly maps themselves have been instrumental. Also, field visits to sites and collaborating with the Queens Historical Society have provided real-world insights and primary source materials, enhancing the project's depth and authenticity. I am looking forward to continuing my search during the school year, possibly adding in the NYPL. These resources have proven to be important in tracing and interpreting the spatial and demographic transformations of the boroughs over time.
The NYPL!! I have been a patron of the NYPL since my childhood, and they have immense resources and archives that could definitely help with your project, like this one https://spacetime.nypl.org/. I'd be curious to learn more of how you find data of neighborhoods with little maps or how you reconcile changing names/districts over the 1880s!
I am currently facing the challenge of analyzing the data for one of the behavioral tasks in my experiment. I am using my problem-solving skills to think outside of the box with my code and how to accurately quantify the effects I visually see. My initial focus in this project was to quantify exploratory movement but I am actually focusing on memory, which I am especially intrigued by considering there are few studies that test ELS and social memory. Learning the analysis side of things has been a grueling yet rewarding process as well!
The two postdoc mentors at my lab have been particularly useful in helping me understand the purpose of the behavioral tasks and in the troubleshooting of my analysis. SCOPUS has also been beneficial in my exploration of the literature available for these social memory tasks. I will definitely continue to use SCOPUS as I start working on the SLR task, short for spontaneous location recognition task.
My current work is generating data that contributes to an ongoing research study exploring a new method of diagnosing preeclampsia. In the much longer term, I hope that this will be actually be implemented to diagnose the disorder, especially in the low income countries that suffer from a disproportionate number of deaths due to a lack of diagnosis.
Sadly, women’s health is too often ignored in medical research as a whole, despite being relevant to 50% of the population. I myself have experienced the effects of this first-hand, and the stakes are all the higher with a potentially lethal condition like preeclampsia. I am proud that my research primarily helps a group of people—women in low income countries—that are oft-neglected in medical research, and it is a promising pathway to tangibly help these women.
Priyanka, thank you for bringing up a relevant point about disparities in medical research, especially in terms of gender. I remember watching a video (I think about Barnard research haha) and how most participants of studies have historically been men, which clearly skews sample sizes. As such, I really admire how your work is not only based in improving diagnosis but also potentially based in improving global health incomes for women in low income countries.
My research this summer can be seen as the first part of a two-step research process. I am currently recommissioning a food radiation detector and writing a data analysis framework, aspects that will prove important in the next summer. During the second summer of Laidlaw, my group and I will travel to Kiribati in person, collecting radiation measurements in-situ. My other labmates are also working on projects that will all intertwine next summer to provide a complete view of the island, from the radioactive state of the food to elevation levels.At the end of the program, my aim is for a paper/poster about findings on the island.
My research on Kiribati – specifically, Kiritimati Island – matter because there are real, actual people involved. We do not know yet whether these people are consuming radioactive food on a daily basis, rendering this study urgent. Whenever there are implications on real people and real communities, it is undeniable that action has to be taken.
Kate, I think it is amazing how your research is at the intersection of technology and advocacy! I really see the importance of helping people from under-represented and often overlooked communities while at the same time, developing critical cultural competency skills. I cannot wait to hear more updates about your work during our graduate mentor meetings :)