Bright Eze

Background

About Bright Eze

My love and interest in research emanated from an initial research encounter as an undergraduate honors nursing student. As an honors student, I conducted a primary research that was ultimately supervised by Dr. McDonald. My honors research focused on pain management among African American young adults and pain reduction strategies. The honors research lead me to become first Author publication. I also did a poster presentation in various organizations/conferences such as ENRS, Frontiers, Tau Rho Chapter STTI, etc on my honors research thesis. My involvement in research as an undergraduate provided me with the understanding of pain and how it may affect vulnerable populations. As an undergraduate at the UConn School of Nursing, I was opportuned to work with Dr. Annette Maruca to become a Co-author on a research study titled “A Feasibility Study to Evaluate a Brief Treatment Intervention for Incarcerated Persons in Community Halfway Houses. This research was funded by Scholarship Facilitation fund. Working with the incarcerated persons has added to my understanding of vulnerable population. Furthermore, I was also involved in an innovative project as an undergraduate in collaboration with the UConn School of Engineering to develop a non-invasive ultrasound sensor device that helps blind people navigate their way with ease. This device serves as their second eyes to help eliminate the use of a cane, which has not been proven efficient. This innovative project was supervised by Prof. Christine Meehan (UConn SON), Prof. Anna Bourgoult (UConn SON), and Dr. Patrick Kumavor(UConn ENGR). During my time as an undergraduate UConn nursing student and currently as a PhD student I have been working with the Center for the Advancement of Managing pain (CAMP). The goal of CAMP focuses on advancing and generating new knowledge that centers on pain management and pain mechanisms. CAMP enlightens my understanding in interdisciplinary pain education and innovative/novel approach for advancing precision in pain management. Working in CAMP’s lab helped me to understand various steps of participant recruitment, sample collection, and sample processing. As a UConn Nursing PhD student, I currently work with Dr. Angela Starkweather with the effort in continuing my education and research in Pain Management, gene expression profiling, Pain neurophysiological correlates and Omics.