(continued)

“I got involved in research in professor John Green’s laboratory early in my time at UVM. That led to other opportunities including a summer internship at ArQule, a small biopharmaceutical company outside Boston. When I got the call from Merck, I felt like I had developed pretty advanced skills in  rodent surgery and behavioral neuroscience—just about everything they were looking for.”

At UVM, his honors thesis “The Effect of Secretin on Extinction of Eyeblink Conditioning" investigated the role of a poorly understood neuropeptide in induction of synaptic plasticity in the rodent cerebellum, which led to an article he co-authored for the peer-reviewed journal Learning and Memory.

Robinson transferred to UVM after spending two years at a small college in Massachusetts--he enjoyed studying psychology there, but was interested in getting hands-on research experience. He found that at UVM.

“It is relatively rare to be able to publish and develop advanced lab skills as an undergraduate, but it really does happen at UVM.”

Robinson is interested in giving back to the institution that helped him launch his research career. He’s spearheading an effort to raise money for more undergraduate research grants that will benefit the next generation of UVM neuroscience students.

“There’s so much support at UVM to fund student research and I’m really looking to expand that. There’s a lot of enthusiasm among recent graduates to support the program, and we plan to offer multiple grants of $500 per year.”