A Passion for Mental Health - Oleksandr Sharlai

The star student was accepted to several top universities in the United Kingdom, but his path led him to Southern California instead. In San Diego, he was able to obtain treatment for his depression. Since then, he’s been passionate about mental health issues.

“I know that depression is not because something is wrong with you, it’s just your brain function,” said Sharlai, who now plans to pursue both an M.D. with a specialty in psychiatry and a Ph.D. in neuroscience. “I want to help because I know that you can feel amazing.” 

Within two months of arriving in the U.S. as a refugee, Sharlai began attending San Diego Mesa College. He learned about the CADRE internship program from a peer mentor in his chemistry class who shared an interest in neuroscience. He was excited about the potential to jump-start his career goals by gaining research experience in a UC San Diego lab.

“ His unbridled enthusiasm is a little infectious — he was just raring to go and interested to learn everything,” said cognitive neuroscientist Christine Smith, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine who mentored Sharlai and one other Mesa intern.

Smith’s lab investigates the biology behind memory disorders. During his internship, Sharlai was tasked with updating  neuropsychological assessment questions based on news events. The questions are part of a cognitive test the lab uses to detect the onset of retrograde and anterograde amnesia (memory loss of past events and the inability to form new memories, respectively) in people who suffer traumatic brain injuries or other neurological disorders.

For example, a question Sharlai developed that was linked to the year 2022 included “Which celebrity slapped host Chris Rock during the Oscars ceremony? (Answer: Will Smith), and for 2023 included “Whose memoir depicts strained relationships and past substance use in the British royal family?” (Answer: Prince Harry).

“Those questions can show what year the amnesia started happening, because news events can indicate someone's memory really effectively,” said Sharlai.

“As time passes, you need to continually make new questions for this news event test,” said Smith. But developing scientifically valid questions can be trickier than it might seem. “Oleksandr was very surprised to learn how painstaking you have to be.  We spent the whole time developing questions and fine-tuning them, so I think one of the takeaways he had was that it's a lot of work to create a new measure.”

Smith and her fellow CADRE mentors collaborated with ACTRI to establish learning objectives to augment their mentees’ research experiences. Sharlai saw his first human brain during the internship as it was being prepared for further study, and sat in on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sessions of the human brain.

To integrate them into lab culture and expand their understanding of the field, Smith had her interns participate in lab meetings and journal clubs, observe how  neuropsychological assessments are conducted, scored and analyzed. Building camaraderie was also important. In one lab outing, Sharlai experienced his first baseball game in the U.S.

“ I'm incredibly grateful to my principal investigator for how much she contributed to a positive and friendly environment in the lab,” said Sharlai. 

Sharlai also participated in a workshop about the Last Gift study, a program that allows HIV patients to donate their tissues to research upon death. This inspired him to reflect on the ethics of working with human subjects who participate in research.

“Our science is not only about the data,” he said. “Some might think that it's not ethical to ask people to donate their body, but at the same time it can help so much in HIV research. And it shows me how science actually is a powerful tool that can really help society.”

After his CADRE internship ended, Sharlai was accepted into a yearlong internship at Scripps Research, where he is investigating brain changes, gene expression, and behavior in rodent models of alcohol use disorder, anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He credits the science he learned during his experience as a CADRE intern for helping prepare him for his current internship.

Sharlai is one of 10 members of the 2024-2025 Young Leaders Council with Mental Health America, a national organization for mental health advocacy. His internship experiences have helped reinforce his commitment to speaking out about social justice and mental health issues that began with his own personal experiences. 

“That’s  why I loved the CADRE program so much: here you can be literally a refugee from Ukraine with a thick accent coming here as a nobody, and you can be a researcher, you can be a national leader in mental health advocacy, you can be a winner in speech and debate competition,” he said.

After completing his San Diego Mesa College studies, the biology major hopes to transfer to UC San Diego’s neuroscience program before pursuing an M.D./Ph.D. program.