Meet the team

Ara Bakhteyar (She/her) is a Columbia University undergraduate student studying biophysics. Ara is a co-founder and co-president of the Neurodivergent at Columbia University, and she is passionate about raising awareness and acceptance of neurodevelopmental disabilities, as well as supporting neurodivergent individuals at Columbia and beyond. Ara has worked on various research projects throughout her studies, and she was recently awarded the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) to study the role of bacterial infection in the development of autism spectrum disorder and Alzheimer's disease. She is currently a research assistant at the department of Mechanical and Biomedical engineering.