Becoming a Political Scientist

Haneen Hegazi is a Verrazano graduate, class of 2019. She earned a degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology/Anthropology.

I studied American foreign policy in the Middle East. Since my project was mainly concentrated around politics and foreign relations between countries, it opened my eyes to a lot of things. I realized that international relations are a lot more complicated than the general public like to think. There were a lot of things I questioned before starting this project, mainly questions about why the United States make the decisions that they make in regards to dealing with other nations and how these decisions can have an impact on the U.S. and the world as a whole. As my project developed, my questions started to change and I started to grasp the concept a little more. As a political scientist, and hopefully a future lawyer, this project taught me to take a step outside of my thinking box, and learn new perspectives and many forms of critical analysis. Furthermore, getting indulged in the world of politics, I decided that I will attend Law School and with that degree my goal is to become politically involved in the government in regards to international relations, change happens one step at a time. 

Haneen presenting at the Undergraduate Research Conference

One major problem that has occurred during my research was being able to connect all the different theories, analyze them and develop my own theory to explain the inconsistencies that occur in American foreign policy. Many theories contradicted themselves, or would explain one part of the problem but not the other. In addition to this, I had a problem fully understanding foreign policy towards the Middle East, it just did not make sense to me because one minute I am reading about how the U.S promotes democracy and human rights and the next minute I am reading about how they have strong alliances with authoritarian regimes. The Offensive realist theory helped me connect all of this because at the end of it all, states just want to maximize power at any cost. Thankfully, with the assistance of my mentor, I was able to critically analyze and form my own explanations for the matter, thus developing the supply and demand concept. 

Even though, my thinking has evolved through this process, I strongly believe that my research can help future decision making in foreign policy and can help students learning about this topic to grasp it and understand it further and maybe even develop other foreign policy theories to help reduce future poor decision making. 

Exploring Paths to Treatment of Alzheimer's

Daniel Krichavets is a Verrazano graduate class of 2019. He earned a degree in biology with a concentration in neuroscience.


Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, characterized by the progressive loss of memory. Learning about the pathology on a molecular level allowed me to further empathize with individuals that struggle with AD. The main culprits of AD are intracellular neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs ), composed of abnormally hyperphosphorylated Tau protein and extracellular senile plaques, consisting of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides. The results of the disease are truly debilitating and eventually lethal.
Working with Dr. Shen ultimately taught me how to conduct and review elaborate research utilizing immunohistological staining methods to illustrate drug efficacy. If I continued to pursue the study, I would focus on the mechanism responsible for activation of passive immunization with monoclonal antibody 43D to gain a better understanding of how microglial cells can aid in eradicating Aβ pathology. It is also essential to study the intracellular interaction among Tau against 43D antibody so that the possible mechanism by which Tau pathology affects Aβ pathology may be further explained. Studies indicate that hyperphosphorylated Tau enhances the Aβ plaque load via a prion-like mechanism. Other research states that Aβ plaque load induces intracellular Tau accumulation. The study of extracellular Tau provides a conceivable treatment as well as a means to explore the mechanism behind inhibiting pathogenesis in AD.

Possible future work can also run similar experiments, ideally using more mice along with collecting and analyzing cerebrospinal-fluid to speculate whether the inhibition of Tau pathology observed by immunization with 43D was due to clearance of only extracellular or both intracellular and extracellular Tau. Ultimately, immunization with 43D prevents the seeding and propagation of Tau pathology as well as inhibits the promotion of Aβ pathology in 3 × Tg-AD mice.