Having attended a Florida golf academy for her last two years of high school, it was essentially a given that Mackenzie Morrison would tee up in college.

"UCI offered a perfect marriage between a great academic school and a great athletic school, being DI," she said. It didn't hurt that she got along well with members of the golf team whom she got to know ahead of time. "I really loved the girls that I met when I was on my tour," she said. "We all were very focused and committed to both our athletic and academic pursuits."

However, Morrison never aspired to play professionally — she always dreamed of going to med school. That dream has been steadfast even as she experienced a series of life events that altered her course halfway through college. First, there were the challenges of the pandemic. Then she injured a ligament in one of her thumbs playing golf. And finally, she entered treatment for an eating disorder, something that is unfortunately common among college athletes. "It is much more prevalent than people are aware of," she said.

Morrison decided to step back from the golf team and refocus her life. In 2023, she founded the Solaire Institute for Eating Disorders, a virtual startup designed to raise awareness about EDs among college athletes. In the meantime, she also switched her major from economics to psychology and decided to zero in on cognitive neuroscience. "I always had an interest in the brain," she said. "I took Dr. Brewer’s brain disorders class during sophomore year and ended up falling in love with it."

On a pre-med track, Morrison is also minoring in biological sciences. She's found herself drawn to a multidisciplinary approach to medicine that doesn't neglect the humanistic side in favor of science alone. "A lot of the altruism that medicine was initially based on can get lost in the science," she said.

Morrison works with no less than four research labs at UCI, including those of Dr. Tallie Z. Baram and Dr. Julie Patterson. "I have been really lucky in that a lot of my labs are women run — the PIs are women. It’s inspiring for the future of STEM," she said.

But Morrison spends the most time at the Hearing and Speech Lab, which she manages. There she assists with research on the cocktail-party effect (that is to say, one's ability to listen to a particular stimulus—for example, a conversation— while filtering out other background noise) among those who have tinnitus. Morrison initially approached the PI there, Dr. Fan-Gang Zeng, and expressed an interest in working at his lab.

"We had a great conversation," she recalled. "He took a keen interest in me and my future and was really interested in helping me pursue a career as a physician-scientist." Through Dr. Zeng, who Morrison says has been an incredible mentor, she has been able to contribute to cognition-in-noise projects as well as pilot vagus nerve stimulation research for auditory conditions. He ended up offering her a position as a research assistant on the UCI medical campus, which she'll be doing next year while she applies to med school for the fall of 2025.

"I would love to go to UCI," she said. "UCI has allowed me to realize my passion for clinical neuroscience, and the community has supported me in all aspects of my journey. It would be a privilege to continue my education here.”

She's excited to apply to med school, and hopes to explore the possibility of a career in neurosurgery. "It's something that I have looked forward to my entire life," she said. "I have always wanted to go into clinical care. Post med school, I ideally would like to go into a surgery-based residency."

In the meantime, she's also interning at a med-tech clinic in Beverly Hills, working toward two UROP projects, and still finding time to volunteer with children who have visual impairments, through her sorority. It's an almost overwhelming resume, but Morrison is chipper.

"Everyone is very ambitious," she says of UCI. "I find that environment very inspiring and very fitting to my personality. Being around like-minded people has really been a great motivator."

What she's been through in the last few years has pushed her outside of her comfort zone. Ultimately, though, it's those experiences that have allowed her to grow the most, not only as a person but also as an academic. "My experience at UCI has allowed me to become a more rounded individual with experiences that'll help me better care for my future patients."

-Alison Van Houten for UCI Social Sciences