2008 CSL Undergraduate Summer Research Scholarships Announced
The College of Science and Letters (CSL) has announced the winners of the 2008 CSL Undergraduate Summer Research Scholarships. Eight students will receive $5,000 each to conduct 10 weeks of research with a faculty mentor this summer.
Winners represent four of CSL's six departments, and proposed research runs the gamut from a professional and technical communication project of potential interest to McDonald's to a theoretical particle physics project at Fermilab.
"We were pleased again with the number and quality of proposals," said Professor Ishaque Khan, associate dean of CSL. "They showcased the high quality of research in CSL and our faculty's eagerness to offer research experience to undergraduates, which is a priority for CSL. Such experience allows our students to explore their interests and prepare for their professional career. The ability to focus on research during the summer allows them to catalyze their productivity and often make significant contributions to CSL research teams."
Scholarship recipients will write a report about their work at the end of the summer and be evaluated by their faculty mentor. Most students will present their work at conferences/symposia and/or publish it in scholarly journals.
CSL's board of overseers and alumni contributed money toward the scholarships, which were launched last year.
Students who will receive a scholarship to do research this summer are as follows:
- Kok Ann Gan (third-year biology) will work with Biology Assistant Professor Chunbo Zhang to better understand the mechanisms of gene regulation and the signaling pathways of connexin genes, especially Connexin 43. Connexins are gap junction-forming proteins. They are important in many physiological processes, and problems in them may cause abnormalities, including cancer. The work is important in cancer prevention.
- Scott Justus (fourth-year biochemistry) will help Biology Assistant Professor Joseph Orgel with research on fibrillar collagen structure and its role in cancer metastasis, arthritis, and normal growth and development. Among other things, Scott will make purified peptide fragments of collagen that will then be crystallized and used at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) to study aspects of collagen structure at high resolution.
- Susan Mallgrave (third-year professional and technical communication) will do linguistics research with Kathryn Riley, English professor and Humanities chair, and Linguistics Assistant Professor Matthew Bauer. Susan will investigate the effect of attitudes about regional, social, and ethnic varieties of English on speech perception. Immediate applications may include a potential IPRO in Fall 2008 with McDonald's, focusing on improving communication at drive-thru windows.
- Christos Mitillos (fourth-year applied mathematics) and Hemanshu Kaul, Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics, will work on some open problems in graph theory - specifically in fall chromatic numbers of graphs - and fields that draw on it, particularly computer science.
- Emily Mick (third-year chemistry) will work with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Joy Chong on development of targeted cancer drugs for use in various therapeutic and diagnostic techniques such as radioimmunotherapy (RIT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), iron depletion therapy (IDT), and positron emission technology (PET). Emily will focus on synthesis of a potential fluorescent iron-depleting antitumor agent for dual therapy and imaging of cancer.
- Yacin Nadji (third-year computer science) will focus on bioinformatics research in the lab of Biology Professor Doug Cork, whose cross-disciplinary team focuses on complex applied bioinformatic problems including the sequencing and aligning of prokaryotic DNA. Yacin will specifically look at W-curve distances in Euclidean space and their significance in molecular structure and function.
- Angela Pak (third-year molecular biochemistry and biophysics) will assist Biology Associate Professor Nick Menhart with his research on dystrophin - the protein whose defect underlies Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). She will help to determine the role and clinical relevance of parts of the dystrophin rod known as "exon skipped motifs." Ultimately, the work on dystrophin should help to improve the precision of gene therapy for DMD.
- Yaofu Zhou (first-year physics) will work with Physics Professor Dan Kaplan on a project to use hydrogen to prove the feasibility of measuring, for the first time ever, the gravitational acceleration of antimatter - specifically, antihydrogen. This will be used to propose to Fermilab the more difficult measurement using antimatter, for which the researchers will first have to manufacture the needed antihydrogen atom by atom (using techniques worked out at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world's largest particle physics laboratory).
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