About Maryam
Maryam Badr is a senior at Wesleyan University double majoring in Neuroscience and East Asian Studies. As a Mellon Mays Fellow, Maryam is completing a multi-year senior capstone examining the deterioration of elder healthcare in South Korea. The project is a comprehensive exploration of South Korean welfare, family policy, Confucian values, and feminist views. Maryam’s work hopes to challenge ageist policy and reframe public health for the most vulnerable populations. She has presented her work at Yale University and Williams College, participated in a language immersion program at Sogang University in South Korea, and conducted archival research at Harvard’s Yenching Institute with support from Wesleyan’s Davenport Study Grant.
She has also been an undergraduate research assistant in a Aaron neuroscience lab for the past three years, exploring Zebra finch song using various methods of histology including transcranial perfusions and brain dissections, immunohistochemistry, and confocal microscopy. In 2023, Maryam spent the summer in New Delhi, India, conducting neuroscience research at Shiv Nadar University.
At Wesleyan, Maryam is the Co-President of the Wesleyan Refugee Project, a student group that provides free English tutoring, fundraising, and resettlement services to displaced people abroad and resettled refugees in Connecticut. Maryam is also a former Resource Center Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality Intern and the Director of the People’s Free Grocery Program—a food-access program supporting low-income families in Middletown, Connecticut. For her work, Maryam received the Morgenstern-Clarren Student Social Justice Award, Wesleyan University’s highest award for social impact.
In 2023, Maryam joined Unveiling Media, a company dedicated to translating neuroscience research on grief and loss into an Arabic educational video series. Maryam researched and created culturally-informed content to illustrate complex psychological phenomena for Arabic speaking audiences.
With plans to pursue a medical degree, Maryam hopes to provide marginalized communities with dignified and compassionate healthcare.
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