By Cassady Brockman 

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- On certain afternoons, Alani Moore, a University of Kentucky sophomore neuroscience major from Atlanta, can be seen playing the grand piano in the atrium at the UK HealthCare Pavilion A through the Arts in HealthCare program.  

Moore, a Lunsford Scholar, once was a music performance minor. Despite dropping the minor, she is still passionate about music, and through UK Arts she gets to combine her interests in music and science by playing the piano for patients and visitors.  

“I’ve been playing (piano) for as long as I can remember,” she said. “I grew up playing in my church, so I definitely knew that (music) was something I wanted to take with me to college. The UK Arts in Healthcare program has given me an outlet to still play and explore music.” 

Moore came to UK to follow her dreams of moving out of state and majoring in neuroscience in UK’s College of Arts and Sciences.  

“I like that the neuroscience major has a combination of psychology classes and also biology classes,” Moore said.  

She also is minoring in philosophy, focusing on the dialectic of ethics, knowledge and reality. Moore also chose to come to UK because of its resources for students and its reputation as a research institution.  

“It has something for everyone,” Moore said. “Even though it’s such a big campus, you can make it your own with different communities you are a part of.” 

Moore is a College of Arts and Sciences ambassador and a community service chair for Hues in Medicine, a student organization for minorities who are interested in pursuing careers in the healthcare field.  

“Just getting to take leadership roles in these organizations has helped me to get my priorities more together and learn better how to prioritize my time,” Moore said.  

In the College, Moore develops leadership and communication skills while she and other ambassadors represent the college to perspective students, alumni and the current campus community.   

“A lot of things are about who you know, and UK gives us the resources to connect to people who can get you to those places,” Moore said.  

She also joined UK’s Black Student Union, where she’s treasurer.  

“As a minority on campus, one of the first places you look is somewhere where you can see people like yourself and feel like you belong. I found that in Black Student Union, which is why I decided to apply to be on the executive board this year,” she said.  

Moore also works at the Dan Lee Lab at UK’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, studying the protein Tau, which is associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Through their research, they hope to find mechanisms to cure these diseases. 

“It’s a basic science lab where we do research,” Moore said. “We don’t really interact with people. It's not clinical. Mainly we work with mice. I do western blotting, which is a protein detection mechanism.” 

After earning her undergraduate degree, Moore plans to move north to attend medical school where she eventually hopes to specialize in forensic psychiatry.