Post by UC San Diego

“I spend my days teaching computers to listen for the earliest whispers of Alzheimer's disease. I came to UC San Diego chasing a question that would not let me go: How do we catch Alzheimer's disease before it catches the person? Computational neuroscience pulled me in because it lives at the seam between mathematics and human experience. Dr. Judy Pa's lab offered me something I had not found anywhere else, a place where dementia research leaves the lab and meets people where they live. What sealed it for me was a harder truth. The communities most affected by Alzheimer's, including African and African diaspora populations, are often the least represented in studies that shape how the disease is diagnosed and treated. I wanted to study it for the people the field has been forgetting. I grew up in Nairobi, watching my mother raise me as a single mom and build a career in a field that did not always make room for women like her. She never sat me down to teach me resilience. She just lived it out loud, in front of me, every day. By 16, I had absorbed enough of her quiet stubbornness to leave Kenya on a scholarship for United World College in Costa Rica, surrounded by students from over 70 countries. From there, I went to Pomona College and then to UC San Diego for my PhD. My community here came together one room at a time. I found it when my labmates became collaborators. I found it in the Graduate and Professional Student Association, where I served as Vice President of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. I found it in the African Graduate Students Association, which I founded so that students from across the continent and the diaspora would walk onto this campus and find a home, not a waiting room to find their people. I found it on the mat, teaching free Pilates classes to fellow graduate students who needed somewhere to put the week down for an hour. Build the table you want to sit at. If the community does not exist, start it. If the question is not being asked, ask it. If the path is not visible, walk it anyway, and leave footprints for whoever is coming behind you.” -Cynthia Nyongesa (she/her), PhD in Neurosciences, Class of 2026 #TritonStories #UCSD2026 #UCSanDiego #UCSD #UCSDAlumni