Rasika Iyer is a Neuroscience PhD candidate in Ian Maze’s lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her dissertation work focuses on investigating how ovarian hormones impact H3K4me3Q5ser, a novel epigenetic mechanism important for neural plasticity and stress responsivity. In addition to her research, Rasika is passionate about youth mentorship and is the co-president of two outreach organizations at ISMMS, Mentoring in Neuroscience Disovery at Sinai and Get Empowered in Medicine and Science. Rasika received her BA in Neuroscience from Middlebury College, where she completed an honors thesis studying the Effect of Testosterone on Spatial Memory in Ovariectomized Female Rats in the lab of Mark Spritzer. She then worked as an associate researcher in the lab of Roger Clem at ISMMS, where she used immunohistochemistry and fiber photometry to investigate interneuron activity in stressed and non-stressed mice.