Blake Stoner-Osborne

Global change occurs at unprecedented rates within the Anthropocene and the drastic changes to coral reef ecosystems around the globe are unparalleled. Long-term ecological monitoring datasets from coral reefs in the Carribean and Indo-Pacific regions contain key information for assessing modern changes to tropical reef ecosystems. Abundant data on oceanographic conditions and organismal density hold the key to examining relationships between the biotic and abiotic factors that have changed coral reef community composition in the recent past. This project will use long-term ecological monitoring datasets from tropical islands in the […]

Stephen Gee

This project is exploring the tunability of helical van der Waals nanowires. These nanoscale wires are made of layers of Germanium Sulfide stacked on top of each other, similar to graphite being made of stacked layers of graphene. However, in these nanowires, there is a literal twist running down the middle, resulting in a double helix structure that produces unique properties. This Eshelby twist links the twist rate of the nanowire with a dislocation in the middle of the nanowire, and the cross-sectional area. Through modulation of the catalyst size, […]

Jonathan Kuo

Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) is a critical process in cells that maintains the balance of signaling and receptor molecules on the cellular surface. This balance is critical in the development of the human cerebral cortex, during which neuroepithelial stem cells must choose to divide or differentiate. These cell fate decisions are dependent on the distribution of membrane signaling molecules and receptors, distributions we hypothesize are regulated by CME. However, technical limitations have, until recently, made it nearly impossible to study the dynamics of CME in the highly polarized NECs of a […]

Angela Sun

Exosomes were initially thought to act as cellular waste compartments because of their extrusion from the cell. It was only recently discovered that exosomes contain not only cellular proteins, but also act as natural carriers of nucleic acid material, playing an important part in communication in the brain. Previous studies have demonstrated that exosomes play a role in processes that have long been hypothesized to be involved in psycho-pathology of mental disorders, such as neuroinflammation, neurogenesis, and neuro plasticity. Currently, little is known about the secretion mechanisms of extracellular vesicles […]

Abby Jackson-Gain

I am interested in the relationship between hybridization in plants and preferences those plants have for specific environments. When two plants hybridize, creating a new hybrid species, we often observe those new hybrids occupying broader ranges and being able to tolerate a wider array of environmental conditions. I am interested in how widespread this pattern is and will be creating species distribution models for hybrid plants and their parent species. I plan to do this with as many different species as possible to better characterize the relationship between ecological niche […]

William Sheu

The mystery of dark matter and the nature surrounding the cosmic expansion rate (H0) are among the most fundamental questions in physics today. Dark matter outweighs ordinary matter (which stars and planets are made up of) by a ratio of 5:1, and yet much surrounding dark matter is unknown. H0 dictates the expansion rate of the universe, and yet the two current methods of measuring H0 are discrepant at a statistically significant level.Gravitational Lensing is a rare phenomenon that plays a critical role in addressing both of these problems. The […]

David Michael

Approximately 785 million people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. Though often ignored as a viable source of drinking water, Earths atmosphere contains 13 sextillion liters of gaseous water. In recent years, advances in materials science have bred a new class of materials, known as metal organic frameworks (MOFs). Upon judicious construction, MOFs can extract this watereven from low humidity air. Unfortunately, chemists interested in so-called water harvesting must comb through much literature in order to determine if a certain MOFs water sorption properties have ever been studied; to […]

Nevan Powers

Any significant damage to our heart tissue results in permanent scarring and irreversible loss of function, but animals like newts and zebrafish can naturally replace the lost tissue and recover to a healthy state. Looking at trends between species, it appears that mammals may have evolved to lose regenerative potential as they acquired endothermy. Interestingly, we can see a similar trend in a single mouse. In its neonatal stage, a mouse can regenerate functional heart tissue, but loses this ability within a few days as its body temperature increases. This […]

Trishna Patel

The recent COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), has catalyzed a global public health crisis, and effective therapeutics as well as a deeper understanding of the mechanism of severe disease induced by SARS-CoV-2 infections are desperately needed. Severe cases of COVID-19 are associated with vascular leak in the lungs of infected individuals, a similar pathology to that of flaviviruses, for which preliminary research has shown that synthetic sulfated glycans may function as potential antivirals. In particular, cyclodextrins, a family of cyclic oligosaccharides with potential use as active pharmaceuticals, […]

Anderson Lee

This summer, I will be creating and analyzing a pangenome of cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria have long been of interest in the synthetic biology world because of certain traits, such as hydrogen and biopharmaceutical production. The pangenome will compare all of the genes of the sequenced cyanobacterial strains, not only allowing the construction of a phylogenomic tree but also illuminating which genes correspond to specific physiologies. Hopefully, this mapping will allow for optimization of biological processes through deletion of unnecessary steps, insight into which genes make some cyanobacteria filamentous, and enlightenment of […]