CSUEB Graduate Student Wins Grad Slam Award for Breakthrough Pain Relief Research
BY ELIAS BARBOZA
For the second year in a row, Cal State East Bay’s Hayward campus hosted its Grad Slam Research Presentation Competition in the spring. The event is a campus-wide competition for the best concise research presentation. Seven undergraduates and nine graduates from varying academic fields are allowed three minutes each to present their research to the best of their ability to a small panel of judges who have no prior knowledge of the topics. This year’s first-place undergraduate winner was Pre-Professional Health Academic Certificate Program (PHAP) student Gabrielle Gorostiza for her research on revolutionary pain medication conducted on the Hayward campus.
“Winning Grad Slam was a stepping stone into being more comfortable to present!,” said Gorostiza, who went home that day with a cash prize. “It was also really good for me because it helped put the work that I’m doing in a different perspective.”
Since January, Gorostiza and her team of five other students and one professor have worked together to design a drug to alleviate acute pain, which is short, sudden pain in a local area instead of recurring pain. The drug works by inhibiting certain molecules in the brain to alleviate pain, and was tested on rats inside Hayward campus science classrooms. Gorostiza assisted in handling the rats that were given the medicine, describing the experience as “really interesting, but a little bit nerve-racking” because they moved and squirmed in her hands. After refining the medicine, it proved to be effective in decreasing the pain in rats, and Gorostiza’s team aims to apply it to humans following more testing throughout the summer.
While creating and testing the medicine, Gorostiza was a PHAP student, earning her certificate in the spring. She first heard about Grad Slam from a flier she saw posted on campus after a PHAP course. PHAP is a one or two-year program designed for students who are interested in entering or changing into a healthcare or biomedical career, but don't have a science degree or the desired grade point average for applying to health professional schools. It provides students with the advantage to enter into health professional schools and, ultimately, a career in the healthcare industry. Prior to joining PHAP, Gorostiza earned her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from CSUEB, but decided to switch her career goals after graduating in order to focus more on science. “I want to be on the biology side of things and see the faces of the people I will be helping,” said Gorostiza. “Working with computers and understanding math are becoming more important in the medical field, there’s more of a need towards that, so I want to bridge that knowledge I already have into a biology related field.”
Throughout her time in PHAP, Gorostiza appreciated the sense of community from her cohort and recommends the program to anyone wanting to enter a higher-end medical career.
“Overall, the environment in PHAP is relaxed,” said Gorostiza. “I feel it was very easy to network and relate to other people’s experiences, especially with my peers.”
Additionally, the constant advice and support she received from PHAP’s faculty helped her solidify her career goals. Her professors consistently reminded her to focus on her own path and not compare herself to others, which is important because the medical field can be very stressful, she said.
“The professors are very down-to-earth and go above and beyond,” said Gorostriza. “They’re really knowledgeable in the specific things that they studied, and their passion and their wanting to impart that knowledge really inspired us to study well and to actually learn the material.”
Before finishing the pain relief medicine testing with her team, Gorostiza will stay busy applying to medical schools. After graduating with her doctorate, she aims to become a neuroscience researcher, focusing on neurodegenerative diseases which include Parksinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. She credits PHAP for mentally and emotionally preparing her for the next steps in her student career.
“I probably couldn’t pursue my future career without PHAP, not just for the requirements to get into schools, but because it’s really given me a lot of knowledge about the whole process about the medical field and what’s required,” said Gorostiza. “[PHAP] helped me get my foot in the door, but the information that they gave me makes me an actual candidate to be able to compete with everybody else that’s trying to get in. But also, [PHAP] made me a better person, as someone who’s more present in the things I have to do.”
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