“I think I found my niches through UHP. I found the support I needed to branch out and explore interests I didn’t even know I had and found fields I didn’t even know existed.”
Written by Sommer Wagen, UHP Communications Intern
Photo courtesy of Lana Pinaula-Toves
Lana Pinaula-Toves is a UHP senior pursuing a degree in Human Physiology from the College of Liberal Arts, as well as a minor in Integrated Neuroscience. Already she has been an awardee of an Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority (ACARA) grant to institute a program concerning wellness and entrepreneurship in Uganda, gotten involved with research through the School of Public Health, and is now conducting research of her own, which she is preparing to present this spring. The University Honors Program is designed to give undergraduates access to opportunities like these.
“A lot of what I’ve worked on in the past couple of years has stemmed from being a UHP student and the connections I’ve made because of this program,” Lana said. During her first semester in UHP as a post-freshman admit, she took Seeking Solutions to Global Health Issues, a Grand Challenge Curriculum (GCC) course whose semester-long project led her and her classmates to create HEAL-Ed, a public health intervention project that was delivered in Uganda to educate local entrepreneurs about “the holistic concept of wellness, encompassing physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, environmental, and social health” in the workplace. For HEAL-Ed, Lana and her classmates were awarded the ACARA grant through a public and environmental health leadership challenge they heard about from their GCC professors.
An early conversation with her Honors Advisor led to a coding position on a School of Public Health research project. This experience was the seed that eventually grew into her current love of research. The project studied the differences between major news sources and those that are geared towards minority and marginalized communities in cities within Minnesota. Specifically, she was involved in coding hundreds of articles and eventually creating a poster which presented the findings of the research, which was recently accepted for the Minnesota Public Health Association’s annual conference. For Lana, it was her first research project, a unique opportunity to explore the evolving situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and her first hands-on experience with public health. It is with a similar approach geared toward intersectional public health issues that she conducted her own research into the effects of long-term noise exposure.
Another GCC, The Human Experience of Sensory Loss: Seeking Equitable and Effective Solutions, led her to become involved with the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), with an internship with Summer Undergraduate Research Internship or Experience in Acoustics (SURIEA) which has been instrumental in helping her conduct her own research about auditory exposure. Her study, which she has been working on since last May, “specifically seeks to investigate: (1) Whether a set frequency spectra of noise (such as machine-noise rumble versus high-pitched steam noise) has varying effects on pupil dilation response; and (2) if an individuals’ self-reported noise exposure, sensitivity, and annoyance correlates to variations in the strength of pupil dilation responses.”
Lana's research is largely informed by the relationship between noise and race as found by a previous study at UC-Berkeley. “Specifically (UC-Berkeley researchers) found that…noise pollution decreased with increasing percentages of white residents in any given neighborhood.” she said.
Lana is also interested in exploring these environmental inequities in noise pollution, as well as the effects of noise exposure besides hearing loss. “In the beginning stages of this study, one of my hopes was that its conclusions could contribute to collections of baseline data for further exploration of the impacts of environmental inequities in noise exposure (which are currently lacking), their associated risks, and the creation of interventions that will help eliminate them.” While deeper analysis into the data she has collected through her study is being conducted, she and her research mentors are hoping to present a scientific poster of her findings at the ASA spring conference in Denver this May.
Through her interest and experience in public health, Lana has also gained an interest in clinical research, which her internship at the Hennepin County Medical Center’s research institute has exposed her to. “The intersection of research directly impacting patient outcomes and their quality of care is extremely invigorating to me.” she said.
“I think I found my niches through UHP,” Lana explained. “I found the support I needed to branch out and explore interests I didn’t even know I had and found fields I didn’t even know existed.”
Lana's sense of curiosity and purpose are serving her well as an undergraduate, and her future is undoubtedly bright. The kind of interdisciplinary connections and inquiries she's making are at the core of the UHP experience. As a program, we are thrilled to see students like Lana taking action and using their talents to serve their community!