Daya Mena earned a prestigious NIH-funded Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) Fellowship at UMass Amherst to support research aimed at uncovering new mechanisms of glial biology that may inform future therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. Working in the laboratory of Dr. Jennifer Rauch, Daya uses transcriptomic, proteomic, and phenomic approaches to investigate how reactive astrocytes process pathological tau protein and how changes in glial function influence the spread of neurodegenerative pathology.