A Mind for the Brain

Long before fourth-year student William Muliawan declared his major at Oberlin, he had a clear vision of what he wanted to study. What started with books and videos discussing the psychology of the human brain led to a fascination with understanding the progression of brain diseases. 

Muliawan took classes at Oberlin that were relevant not only to learning how brain diseases develop but also to understanding how research on those diseases helps develop new therapeutics and inform the public about potential exacerbating factors. 

His upper-level neuroscience lab courses “have only helped me find the kind of research that I want to do in the future,” he says. Those courses also allowed him to learn about research conferences such as the Society for Neuroscience and the Midwest and Great Lakes Undergraduate Research Symposium in Neuroscience, both of which he presented at in 2024, as well as an internship at the University of Texas Health Science Center–San Antonio in 2024.

While at UTHSCSA, Muliawan worked in the research lab of David Morilak, where he assisted with studying the effects of stress and a model of exposure therapy using behavioral tests that are translatable to human psychiatric disorders, namely post-traumatic stress disorder. The internship was meaningful in other ways as well, he says. 

“While learning a lot of new techniques involving animal work, I also learned the ethics of using animals in research,” he says. “More introspectively, it also made me realize that while animal work is difficult and important, it's not for me, and that I should pursue other avenues of research.” Such an insight will serve him well as he continues his studies after Oberlin. 

“As a student doing research, I think my liberal arts education allowed me to approach the different techniques that I learned at UTHSCSA and think critically about why we perform these techniques,” Muliawan says reflectively. “On top of that, I feel like I can voice my opinions about how the techniques are performed to my mentors in the program.”

Outside of the research lab, Muliawan, who is from Los Altos, California, is a member of Now Chorale, a student-led contemporary classical choir group. 

To learn more about summer internships as an Oberlin student, check out Career Exploration and Development.