Victoria Venardi
This summer, I will be working on developing highly efficient and stable catalysts for the production of propylene oxide (PO), a chemical used in construction, upholstery, and automobiles. The instability of the current industrial amorphous catalyst causes numerous shutdowns per year during production and creates unnecessary waste, including 750 thousand tons of carbon dioxide, and costs $930 million dollars to manufacturers per year. In my research, I will modify current crystalline catalysts to become more stable by avoiding polymerization side reactions that are initiated by small amounts of water on […]
Ashley Yang
Glioblastoma (GB) is the most common and aggressive brain tumor in adults, composed of a microenvironment that suppresses the defense function of T-cells and Natural Killer (NK) cells. Chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) have recently become a robust form of adoptive cell therapy, also known as cellular immunotherapy. Studies on GB treatment using CAR-NK cells have identified epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFRvIII) as a target which distinguishes GB cells from healthy brain cells. Currently, there is a lack of CAR-NK cell mouse models. My project will seek to fill the gaps […]
Yonna Kim
Solid-state defect centers such as the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond are promising nanoscale quantum sensors capable of operating at extreme pressures and temperatures. Their sensitivity to magnetic field noise allows for the characterization of a wide range of dynamical phenomena arising from charge, spin, and phonon fluctuations in correlated matter. The frequency dependence of these fluctuations encodes unique information about the underlying physics processes that cannot be gleaned from the static signatures that are typically used in standard magnetometry. With NV centers, one could measure the magnetic response of […]
Ashley Elizabeth Bendl
You may have heard the phrase You look just like your mother, but how often have you heard You look just like a bacteria? The former is an example of the type of genetic inheritance most of us are familiar with, vertical, or inheritance from parents to offspring. This project, however, involves horizontal inheritance: that is, the exchange of genes between species, otherwise known as horizontal gene transfer (HGT). The project involves investigating how and why a horizontally transferred gene was transferred from viruses to insects several million years ago.
Marina Norfolk
Interactions between infectious diseases and their hosts underpin a vast array of ecological and evolutionary dynamics. These host-parasite interactions are thought to contribute to the maintenance of genetic diversity in animal, plant, and insect hosts. One important factor in this is called the monoculture effect where genetically homogenous host populations may select for more virulent pathogens. This project seeks to test the monoculture effect in the Boots labs Plodia interpunctella (Indian Meal Moth) and granulosis virus model system.
Sonnet Phelps
Research in conceptual metaphor has established that, far from being a decorative flourish, metaphor is integral to human reasoning: we extrapolate from our immediate experience to make sense of abstract objects and processes. Climate change is such a process, happening on spatial and temporal scales far beyond our perceptual horizons. While metaphor is indispensable in every genre of climate discourse think greenhouse gas, carbon footprint, and tipping points poetry is a particularly rich generator of innovative metaphoric framings. In this project, I will put insights from cognitive linguistics in conversation […]
Elisa Yang
Nest structures are widespread across animals and yet are one of the most understudied components of avian life history. Some of the most remarkable examples of elaborate nest design are within the Weaverbirds (Ploceidae), an Old World family of birds containing over 100 species, making them an ideal model system for studying patterns of biodiversity. While it is known that each species constructs a uniquely designed nest, the evolutionary factors that influence design are unknown. Research questions to address include: 1.) What are ancestral versus derived nest characters? 2.) Are […]
Susana Torres-Londono
For my research, I will use a computer simulation to predict the macroscopic behaviour of a material, FeCoNbS2, by making assumptions about its microscopics. To do this, I will use the Monte Carlo method to simulate FeCoNbS2’s magnetism. The Monte Carlo method is a random sampling algorithm that has been applied to everything from investment banking to climate change models. Magnetism is a fundamental physical phenomena that has vast implications in computer and circuit technology. Thus, studying magnetism using the Monte Carlo method is a pretty interesting task which combines […]
Giancarlo Tucci-Berube
In the realm of poetry, lyric, as a noun, signifies a category of poetic form, as an adjective, abstract subjectivity. The Italian poet, screenwriter, film director, and essayist-critic Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) takes up these definitions of lyric and through a diversity of mediums expands them beyond poetry, and beyond mere signification: articulating a possible critical consciousness of the concept itself. Pasolinis poetry and films are conceived through a lyric style or form that actively connects sensuality, rigorous thought, intellectual and political critique, experience of contradictionand in terms of the […]
Jenny Lai
Despite the ever increasing number of identified genetic diseases, many of the genes associated with these human disorders are still either poorly understood or have not yet been functionally described during development. My work will pursue the characterization of three genes: scinderin (scin), angiotensin-I-converting-enzyme (ace), and clustered mitochondria cluA homolog (cluh), which are all expressed in the kidney according to preliminary findings in the Harland lab. Using Xenopus as a model, I will study the role of these three genes in nephrogenesis and kidney function through a series of experiments […]