Martina Velichkovska is a third-year undergraduate from Macedonia, majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Miami. Having dedicated herself to research since high-school, she was excited to diversify her training when she came to the US as undergraduate. As a freshman she joined a lab focusing on the molecular neuroscience of the brain, where she worked on several projects and became a co-author on papers investigating the mechanistic pathways for glucose and mitochondria uptake in pericytes as well as methamphetamine influence on HIV-infectivity of neural progenitor cells.
She became excited about aging-related research while working on her undergraduate thesis which focused on the underlying pathway of HIV-dependent aging. This past summer she worked with the MitoSENS team at SENS research center.
Even though she is passionate about the underlying molecular mechanisms of health and disease in general, she perceives aging-related diseases as one of the greatest biomedical puzzles of our time; hence, she feels excited to possibly continue her career in this field.