Edna Normand (she/her) is an MD/PhD candidate in the Department of Molecular Biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute (PNI), where she studies multisensory processing with Dr. Mala Murthy. She is an NIH NRSA F30 fellow, and an NIH BRAIN Initiative Diversity Supplement fellow.

At Princeton, Edna is a co-founder of PUNC, Princeton University’s Neurodiversity Collective, serves on the inclusive teaching committee at PNI, and has served as a mentor for undergraduates through EPSP (Empowering diversity and Promoting Scientific equity at PNI). During the pandemic, she collected and distributed personal protective equipment to under-resourced hospitals in her home communities in NYC, and was part of a team at Princeton that designed an inexpensive monitoring device and system for noninvasive ventilators.

Outside of Princeton, Edna works as a student doctor at the Promise Clinic in New Brunswick, which is a student-run free clinic for uninsured patients. In the past, Edna’s service work has included teaching HIV disease management to orphanages abroad, soup kitchen blood pressure screenings, teaching neuroscience in low-income schools, working with blind neurodiverse patients, volunteering as a patient advocate in a hospital emergency department, and working with developmentally delayed children. She also led award-winning post-hurricane disaster management efforts.

Edna herself is a first generation American from a family of Jewish Ukrainian refugees, first generation student, and from a low socioeconomic background, among other identities.