As a Neuroscience major and Military Science minor at Ohio State, senior Cordell Rubio (Class of Fall 2025) spent summer 2025 in Undergraduate Research Apprenticehip Program exploring how movement can transform mental health, both in theory and in practice. Through his work in Dr. Carmen Swain’s lab, Rubio helped develop Exercise is Medicine for Resilience (EiM-R), a 6–8 week intervention designed to support college students who are underactive or navigating stress-related challenges.
The program blended personal training, behavioral health education, and wearable technology to track shifts in sleep, activity levels, and psychological resilience. Rubio played a key role in spearheading the study’s IRB protocol, helping lay the groundwork for research that directly connected physical activity with improved mental well-being.
What drew Rubio to this work was its immediacy and authenticity. “This research gave me a perspective beyond the lab bench,” he explained. “The people I worked with truly lived by the values they promoted.” Weekly running meetings with his mentor doubled as both training sessions and strategy discussions, an embodiment of the idea that exercise is not just a subject of study, but a lived practice.
His experience also reshaped how he viewed research itself. Rubio emphasized that meaningful discovery came from personal investment and passion. That mindset led him to become a certified personal trainer, allowing him to extend his involvement with the project beyond the summer and apply its principles in real time.
“I wasn’t just studying a possibility,” Rubio said. “I was helping shape something that could improve lives, including my own.”
Head into the lab to learn more about Rubio’s research and how he turned science into action.
