Victor Canta-Gallo

This project focuses on gaining a deeper understanding of transposable elements (TEs) within monkey flowers. Previously, TEs were thought to be virus-like, parasitic parts of genomes. With the use of supercomputers, we will compare the genomes of many monkey flower genome samples to a reference genome to identify variation that suggests adaptation. Our work will define the role of TEs more clearly, as many are associated with mutations and only arise during specific conditions, which suggests a form of adaptation.

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 […]

Xiaozhou Zhang

The perception of a stimulus is strongly influenced by the background surrounding it. In mammals, this figure-ground perception to identify stimuli from the environment is crucial for survival, such as detecting predators. My project aims to explore the neural mechanisms behind figure-ground perception, especially focusing on the role of vasointestinal peptide positive (VIP) and somatostatin (SOM) interneurons in the primary visual cortex (V1). To explore the mechanism, I will first develop a novel mice behavioral task that can accurately quantify figure-ground modulation. Then, I will use optogenetics to activate or […]

Luyang Zhang

The phyllosphere, the microbiome of the leaf surface, is a highly tractable model system, and is particularly adept for empirical studies on microbial ecological and evolutionary dynamics. One open question is how prior local adaptation on a plant host influences the efficacy of microbial biological control agents. Using an experimental evolution approach, in which changes in populations are measured over multiple passaging events, a naturally occurring, defensive phyllosphere bacteria, Pantoea dispersa, was evolved on tomato seedlings. Preliminary assays found that this bacterium has evolved increasingly negative effects on seedling health, […]

Emily Zhao

  Understanding the genetic basis of organ regeneration remains a central challenge in the field of developmental biology. Teeth are a classic model for organogenesis, since many homologous ectodermal organs (e.g., teeth and hair) follow similar patterns of development and regeneration. Threespine stickleback fish are a powerful model organism for studying tooth regeneration in vertebrates because they possess the ancestral dental phenotype of polyphyodonty, in which teeth are continuously replaced throughout adult life. Past research has shown that Foxc1 regulates Bmp6, a gene important for viability, growth, and tooth patterning […]

Daniel Rostamloo

Algebraic geometry is a rich area of mathematics that investigates the properties of geometric objects (like a variety the solution set of a system of polynomial equations) using their underlying algebraic structure. The closely related field of homological algebra studies how mappings between algebraic spaces (e.g., collections of polynomials) can be understood in terms of more concrete representations with tools from topology and algebra combined to understand the geometric structure of varieties. One homological invariant is a table of numbers called the Betti table, which captures nuanced geometric information about […]

Alexander Toller

Suppose that we have a (finite or infinite) series of independent, identically distributed real-valued random variables (increments of time). From this series, we can form a random walk. We can consider the partial sums of this series and analyze the average value of the walk the partial sum divided by the number of increments up to that point at each of its time increments. This project is focused on studying the distribution of the maximum average value of a random walk through a variety of computational algorithms. While there already […]