Nicole Kim

  Many of the antibiotics used today are natural products of bacterial secondary metabolism. Streptomyces spp., in particular, have been found to produce many secondary metabolites, including antifungals, antibiotics, antivirals, and antitumorals. The modern age is facing a problem of rapidly increasing antibiotic resistance coupled with a lack of discovery of new antimicrobial compounds. This project seeks to identify and investigate the spectrum of action of a potentially novel antifungal compound produced by a Streptomyces sasae isolate from burned soil plots in the Blodgett Research Forest. This compound has been […]

Jonathan Mui

Ambient light is essential to a wide variety of biological processes, including behavior, reproduction, and physiology. Accordingly, changes in ambient lighting may induce stress and thereby affect the health of an animal. Analysis of glucocorticoid (GC) hormones, the hormones that help mediate stress responses provides an important means of evaluating such effects. GCs increase blood glucose levels and stimulate glucose production to provide energy for the flight or fight response to stressors. My project seeks to understand how GC levels in colonial tuco-tucos (Ctenomys sociabilis) vary in response to different […]

Jaeson Kim

Cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) is a degenerative change that occurs in the cervical spine and causes compression of the spinal cord. Patients with CSM can experience a wide range of symptoms, including weakness and numbness in the hands and arms, loss and balance and coordination, and neck pain. CSM is the most common spinal cord dysfunction in older persons and is likely to increase in incidence as the number of older persons in the United States increases. My research will focus on the diagnosis and treatment of CSM. More specifically, […]

Lillian Litvak

  Our research aim is to provide greater insights into the functions of NLR immune receptors, which are part of the second tier of the plant immune system, based on our current knowledge of their protein structure and mechanism. As we work toward this goal, we will answer basic research questions about how these highly conserved immune receptors detect pathogens and signal an immune response. More specifically, what region of the receptor recognizes the pathogen effector? Does this region also play a role in switching the receptor to the activated […]

Samuel De Riseis

Sorghum bicolor is a biofuel feedstock and staple food crop. My research focuses on understanding the role of a core circadian clock component, Sorghum bicolor Gigantea (SbGI), in modulating sorghum sensitivity to cryptochrome signaling at different times of the day. In related grasses, cryptochromes, activated by blue light, upregulate active gibberellin degradation genes to strategically cease plant elongation. Importantly, the SbGI mutant has a severe stunted-growth phenotype relative to the wild type, and preliminary protein interaction results suggest that SbGI and cryptochromes interact. These observations inform my hypothesis that SbGI […]

Diana Chernyak

Challenges to the immune system mobilize immune resources to trigger physiological and behavioral changes in a host. Alongside fever and cytokine responses, organisms initiate “sickness behaviors” like lethargy, social withdrawal, and decreased food and water intake to facilitate recovery from illness and prevent disease transmission to conspecifics. Yet, some species mask their sickness behaviors in group contexts to take advantage of survival and reproductive benefits, a form of social modulation. Prairie voles are a unique model for human social behavior, as they form selective, enduring social preferences for opposite-sex mates […]

Nabiha Hasan

One of the difficulties in chemistry research comes from bridging the gap between the data collected by experimental chemists and the computational data analysis done by theoretical chemists. There can be a significant disparity of knowledge between the two branches of chemistry, which can hinder the progress of research and education on both sides. Furthermore, understanding the results of the chemical data can be a daunting task for newcomers to chemistry research. My intention is to bridge this gap by developing a computational framework that gives easily understandable statements on […]

Sydney Abelson

Microbial communities are essential for plant development, growth, productivity, and health. Aerial parts of the plant, referred to as the phyllosphere, consist of multiple habitats for microorganisms to thrive, including beneficial and pathogenic bacteria. The vast and dynamic interactions among bacteria in the phyllosphere microbiome have the potential to significantly affect the fitness of plant populations; therefore, studying these relationships serves as a strong indicator of plant health. This project seeks to identify culturable bacteria within the pear tree phyllosphere and assemble a map of interactions between different members of […]

Vani Gupta

My URAP Project “Choosing My Major” began in Fall 2021 with the purpose of assisting undergraduates students in choosing their major, as well as understanding why college students pick their majors. One of the main goals of this project was to collect real stories from current undergraduate students on how they came about choosing their major. Another goal was to develop a pilot survey in order to collect information from students on their decision-making process. This initial pilot survey was sent out to 78 undergraduate students, and they answered 30 […]

Veronica Arriaga

Chemiresistive sensors detect gas concentrations based on the change in resistance of a sensing material, providing low-cost detection in applications such as environmental monitoring. SnO2 is an industry-standard material system for chemiresistive sensing. SnO2-based sensors typically have high baseline resistance and slow dynamics at room temperature, and thus require on-board heaters to improve their sensitivity and response time. Although heating greatly improves the response of SnO2-based sensors, prolonged operation at requisite temperatures (200–300°C) results in baseline drift and changes in sensitivity over time. Such degradation is observed even in commercial […]