Since his first semester at ԱƵ, Oscar Quintanilla ’28 has worked alongside Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences Anzela Niraula to research the neural and immune mechanisms of tadpoles. Sponsored by ԱƵ’s Science and Technology Accelerated Research Scholars (STARS) program, his project now continues into the summer, as Quintanilla and fellow researcher Ella Duchnowska ’26 investigate a shared research question: Why don’t frogs get fevers?
Founded in 2022 by Professor of Biology Krista Ingram, the STARS program supports first-generation college students and students from high schools offering limited science preparation by pairing them with faculty mentors early in their time at ԱƵ. During the academic year, they receive 4–6 hours of weekly work-study experience that may carry into the summer.
A neuroscience major on the pre-med track, Quintanilla is also active in the Minority Association of Pre-Med Students (MAPS) and the neuroscience club. Accordingly, his research project “exists at the intersection of immunology and neuroscience.” Under Professor Niraula’s mentorship, he’s testing how differences in thermoregulation, or the ability to control body temperature, shape immune responses in frogs compared to humans.
“Warm-blooded species maintain a constant internal temperature using energy from food,” says Quintanilla. “But cold-blooded species, like frogs, rely on external sources like the sun. That actually affects how they handle infections.”
In humans, a fever is one of the body’s foremost immune defenses — an internal temperature spike that helps eliminate bacteria. “Bacteria like our normal body temperature, but if it gets hotter inside, they can’t do their work,” says Quintanilla. Frogs, however, can’t generate heat on their own. Instead, they seek it out. “They’ll move to warmer environments to help fight off infection,” he explains: a behavior the group expects to observe in the lab. There, infected frogs naturally gravitate toward warmer water.
Using a population of over 90 tadpoles, the team is also studying whether microglia, the brain’s waste-clearing immune cells, play a role in the metamorphic changes that take place as tadpoles become frogs. Through immunohistochemistry, a technique that uses antibodies to visualize proteins in tissue samples, Quintanilla has begun analyzing frog brain matter to probe that question further.
“Collecting and analyzing slices is so rewarding,” he says, sharing his aspiration to pursue a future career as a neurosurgeon. “It helps me build on my surgical skills, and in the long term, it’ll be a form of experience.”