(profiled in 2018) Emily Passalaqua ‘20 is a rising Junior on the Pre-Med Track with a major in Cognitive Science and a minor in Sociology. This summer, she studied at the National University in Galway (NUIG) through Lehigh’s program in Ireland. Emily participated in research at the school’s center for Economic and Social Research on Dementia, where she learned how to create efficient surveys directed towards a specific audience and was involved with research that analyzed the use of the RUD instrument in various countries. This research aimed to find out the average hours of informal care by ADL, IADL, and supervision and the costs of caring for patients with dementia. Emily also did research centered around Public Patient Involvement in dementia. According to Emily, “Cognitive Science can be related to the research that I did because new ways of helping patients with dementia and caregivers are continually being thought of and developed. Questions such as ‘should caregivers be replaced by artificial intelligence’ are frequently discussed. While this was not the focus of my research, it was something that I learned is important to understanding the extent to what caregivers do for patients with dementia.” In the future, she hopes to do research related to biomedical artificial intelligence. “I think that the biomedical field could benefit significantly from A.I. by being able to treat more people and give them the extensive care that they need. I think that A.I. is one of the more interesting topics in Cog Sci because it is so new and there is so much to be developed.”