Anaam Amin is a rising senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pursuing degrees in Psychology and Neuroscience and a minor in Chemistry. She is passionate about harnessing the powerful combination of medicine and social policy to improve mental health outcomes in global communities.
This summer, she worked with Dr. Reuben Robbins to assess the accuracy and accessibility of NeuroScreen, a tablet app that automates testing of neurocognitive impairment and neuropsychological measures for individuals with HIV. She was responsible for scoring and verifying neuropsychological assessments and managed the NeuroScreen database for studies set in South Africa and Uganda. Additionally, she conducted a literature review on the effect of HIV-related immune system dysregulation on neurocognition to support the development of a grant investigating neurocognitive and mental health outcomes of HIV-exposed youth in Sub-Saharan Africa. To further contribute to the grant, she also created a comprehensive country profile of Uganda’s public health and education infrastructure. Finally, she began to create a training video that visualizes best practices for new users of NeuroScreen.
Anaam is grateful for the opportunity to explore her interests, build professional skills and connections, and gain valuable knowledge on HIV research. This experience has reinforced her goal to conduct population-focused research in the future, aligning with her commitment to making a meaningful impact on mental health care worldwide. She is excited to continue working with Dr. Robbins to complete the NeuroScreen training video as well as conduct and present analyses on past NeuroScreen data sets.