This year marked another year of success for undergraduate research in our department. Although Professor Grace Muna was one of the conference organizers, Gretchen Anderson moderated a set of oral presentations, and several faculty served as judges, it was our hardworking students who made it a success last Friday morning.
Biochemistry majors Hala Sirhan and Nigel Guerra [both above left] presented a poster on the "Extraction of Steroid Hormones from Saint Joseph River Water for Analysis" detailing their contributions to Muna's extensive work on the subject. Ashley Compton [above right], another biochemistry major, posted her summer 2013 work titled "Investigating the Mechanism of Aldehyde-Deformylating Oxygenase for Hydrocarbon Production" completed at Penn State as part of an REU.
Also presenting posters were several students under the guidance of Anderson who focused themselves for many weeks on an original problem as part of their biochemistry laboratory class. Biochemistry major Jac Miller [above left] went solo on a project for the "Recovery of Mutant IDH1 Activity through Synthetic Antigen Binders" while the multidisciplinary team of Preston Rose (biochemistry), Rachel Warrell (chemistry), and Amanda Warren (biology) [all above right] presented their collaboration on "Comparative Analysis of Cell Lysis Methods: Ultrasonification versus Chemical Detergents".
Congratulations to all the students for their hard work. Thank you for representing our department at this year's URC.
