Gessiane Pereira joined the Takeshita lab at Kent State University in 2022 as a visiting scholar to work on part of her PhD dissertation entitled: “Monitoring senescence and stress levels in neotropical primates”. Gessi has a Bachelor's degree in veterinary medicine and a Master's degree in diagnostic imaging techniques from the Federal Rural University of Amazon (UFRA), Brazil.
She received funding to cover her travel expenses and stipend from the Brazilian agency Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) and she worked on enzyme immunoassays, PCR, and qPCR techniques. While here, she attended two academic conferences: Midwest Primate Interest Group (Ann Arbor, MI) where she presented a project from her dissertation, and the BHRI neuroscience symposium, where she presented preliminary data on the PCR work that she did here. Her BHRI poster, entitled, "Comparative expression of steroidogenic genes in primate brain" was awarded second place!
Gessi is planning for her dissertation defense in Brazil in March, 2023 and will then be looking for a postdoctoral position.
