![\"\"](\"\/ombs\/files\/2019\/03\/RamirezPhotoEdit2Final-636x636.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Any view from one of the offices near the top of the Kilachand Center for Life Sciences and Engineering building will leave you speechless. One particular office, with a baseball nestled amidst countless awards scattered about the desk, a bottle of celebratory champagne waiting to be popped open, and a giant inflated T-rex standing beside a whiteboard scribbled with complex calculations, tends to stand out from the crowd. This is the office of Dr. Steve Ramirez.<\/span><\/p>\n Dr. Ramirez is what you would call a \u201ctrue Bostonian.\u201d Growing up in Everett, MA, Ramirez decided to stay around the area by attending Boston University for his undergraduate career. However, he found a lot of trouble in deciding what he wanted to major in. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI enjoyed everything,\u201d Ramirez explained, \u201cFrom physics to biochemistry to literature.\u201d It wasn\u2019t until he had a conversation with a familiar face of the BU community when he decided neuroscience was his fit. A conversation with Paul Lipton, \u00a0BU\u2019s current undergraduate neuroscience director, eventually persuaded Ramirez to study the organ that had created everything he had a passion for, joining BU\u2019s first graduating class of neuroscience majors. <\/span><\/p>\n After BU, Ramirez made the long journey across the Charles River to pursue his PhD at MIT. Here, Ramirez describes as \u201cthe best five years of my life.\u201d Along with playing Mario Kart with his roommates whom he refers to his closest friends, Ramirez credits MIT with where he first got the inspiration in researching the interactions with memories. <\/span><\/p>\n Ramirez continues this research with his next long venture to Harvard University, where he completed his fellowship, serving as the \u201claunchpad\u201d of his own lab. Ramirez\u2019s current research focuses on depression, anxiety, and PTSD, in which he is questioning whether it is possible to turn on positive memories – or turn off negative memories – to curing these diseases. This is done by tracking brain cells that respond to certain signals of light and then reactivating the cells to reproduce (or halt) the previous emotion, otherwise known as optogenetics. <\/span><\/p>\n At BU, Ramirez is the instructor for NE 337, Memory Systems of the Brain. This course works to study to neurobiological mechanisms of memory. By studying amnesia in humans and experimental models of amnesia in animals, the course is engineered to focus on evidence for multiple forms of memory and the distinct brain systems that mediate them.<\/span><\/p>\n The classes taught by Dr. Ramirez aren\u2019t like your typical STEM courses. Ramirez makes it a priority to relate neuroscience to modern types of multimedia, basing his teaching methods off of a course he taught at Tufts called Neuroscience and Hollywood. It\u2019s not uncommon for a homework assignment from Ramirez is to watch the Bourne Trilogy or Inside Out. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA lot of stuff is wrong, but there are certain concepts they actually get right,\u201d Ramirez explains. \u201cThe material has to be grounded in \u2018why do I care?\u2019\u201d Ramirez answers as to why he assigns these films. \u201cOf course there are also TED Talks and research articles, but I include these movies because they\u2019re what I like to watch for fun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When asked how Ramirez likes working at BU, it was very evident the impact the community makes on him. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAt BU, the learning and memory community really are here to help in any way possible,\u201d he begins, \u201cUnlike other universities, research teams are not their own separate islands here.\u201d Another important aspect Ramirez highlights is that \u201ceverybody actually has a real life and can enjoy life outside of the lab,\u201d demonstrated through the Macaroni Mondays and Taco Tuesdays he partakes in with his peers.<\/span><\/p>\n For an undergraduate interested in getting involved in research, Ramirez suggests to reach out to professors and see if they could entertain having you in their lab. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNot all research is going to interest you, but getting involved will help to determine what you are interested in.\u201d Ramirez assures that it\u2019s okay to not know exactly what you want to do with your neuroscience degree after BU. \u201cNeuroscience is constantly changing, and with that, so are the opportunities. So the job you might have 10 years from now might not even exist today.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n This type of encouragement stems from the overwhelming adoration Dr. Ramirez feels for his parents, whom he continues to call twice everyday. \u201cI owe them my life,\u201d he explains, \u201cComing into the country illegally to give me a fighting chance at an education.\u201d This sense of altruism is conveyed through his interactions with his students. \u201cI want to see them fight through the tough questions science has to offer and succeed, and I genuinely think they will.\u201d Ramirez credits his father with his sense of continued optimism. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a million different reasons to be angry in 2019, but there\u2019s a couple worth celebrating,\u201d Ramirez explains.<\/span><\/p>\n You are one of the few, Dr. Ramirez. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n Writer: Trey Moore<\/span><\/p>\n Editor: Emme Enojado<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Any view from one of the offices near the top of the Kilachand Center for Life Sciences and Engineering building will leave you speechless. One particular office, with a baseball nestled amidst countless awards scattered about the desk, a bottle of celebratory champagne waiting to be popped open, and a giant inflated T-rex standing beside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1366],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7877,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875\/revisions\/7877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ombs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}