Hello! I’m Sequoia Ernst, I’m a senior majoring in Exercise Physiology; I’m especially interested in regulation of the cardiovascular system and plan to attend graduate school to continue studying it. I did an IDEA Grant last year with a group of two other undergraduates and had a great experience. While I enjoyed it, I wished I’d been able to take more ownership over and responsibility for the project. That’s why I’m grateful to be back, with a vengeance, doing another IDEA Grant, this time as an independent student rather than a group. For my original project we investigated if the supplement creatine can reduce cardiovascular disease incidence.
There is an absolute wealth of research showing that it can improve athletic performance, and it has traditionally stayed in this role. Recently, cellular work was conducted showing that it may have antioxidative properties. Based on this and knowing that oxidative damage contributes to vascular dysfunction, we wanted to study creatine’s effect on the vascular health of older adults. Unfortunately, the study was expensive and time consuming and we were unable to get enough participants through it to see any clear effects. Since then, the PhD student I did research under graduated and I have transitioned to another lab in our department, that we worked closely with. The projects I’ve helped with have related to the intersection of respiratory and cardiovascular physiology.
While I was already familiar with cardiovascular physiology, the respiratory side of our lab’s work was new and exciting to me. We had a project that included a eucapnic voluntary hyperpnea test where you breath very big breaths very quickly. Looking at the literature, there was no clear standard for the respiratory rate to use. I decided to fill this hole with my IDEA Grant project. Over the summer I’ll be having participants complete eucapnic voluntary hyperpnea tests where they breathe the same total volume of air each minute at 20 breaths per minute and at 30 breaths per minute. I’ll record their cardiovascular response to both of these trials and analyze the results at the end of the semester. I’m excited to work on this project and develop skills I can use for my future career.
I’ve had a fantastic experience with research as an undergraduate, which has led me to aspiring to make it into a career. I want to pursue graduate schooling in physiology and work toward becoming a professor. It’s difficult for me to narrow down exactly what I’ll study in these phases of my life as I’m someone who finds a lot of things interesting and struggles to narrow down my interests, but I’m currently having a wonderful time learning about the cardiovascular system. I will likely continue researching this, but I also find the science of learning new skills and knowledge, the effect of vascular health on brain function, the metabolic roles of lactate, pragmatic exercise training programs for people with PCOS, and exercise training programs to improve tendon stiffness very interesting areas of research. I’m going to graduate this fall, so I’m about to start looking for graduate programs to apply to for fall of 2026. I’m nervous and excited but I’m also grateful to have had research opportunities like this to prepare me for the rigor of graduate school.
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