Summer Showcase 2022

This summer, I worked with Ignite Afterschool, an intermediary organization with a statewide network of partners who work together to increase funding for and access to high quality out-of-school time programs in Minnesota.

My main project was creating a new and improved online advocacy toolkit for Ignite’s network. Having had prior experience with advocacy, I really enjoyed exploring and reflecting on all avenues of effective advocacy, and then working to create tools for the ones that fit the needs of the afterschool community. One of the highlights of this project for me was designing and facilitating a comprehensive and interactive brainstorming session with Ignite Afterschool’s Policy Coordinating Council. I had the opportunity to hear and learn from experienced leaders in the afterschool network about their visions for afterschool advocacy in Minnesota and how they believed existing needs around advocacy could be addressed in a toolkit.

I also worked on a mapping project to assist Ignite in determining how to distribute funds from a federal grant they received to increase access to STEM career pathways in Minnesota.

My fellowship gave me insight into a whole new world of nonprofits that I didn’t know existed. The behind-the-scenes work that intermediary organizations do is so important, and I hope to use the knowledge I’ve gained from this experience to further explore what a career in the nonprofit sector might look like.

Student Role: Policy Strategist

Project funded by: Charles Green Fund for Democratic Engagement

The purpose of doing this research was to redesign a teaching lab and generate a list of primers to use in the introductory Genetics lab to target loci associated with various physical features of dogs, such as coat texture and color, ear morphology, and size. Throughout the summer, Professor Mary Montgomery and I were able to generate a list of loci with variations identified and published by the latest papers on canid genomics. We searched the literature for published PCR primers and designed new primers if published ones were not listed in the papers or if they did not amplify target DNA regions adequately. The primers were individually incorporated into PCR reactions with control (water) and experimental groups (our furry volunteers’ DNA), and further analyzed using gel electrophoresis and Sanger sequencing. Ten genes were successfully amplified using PCR and the genotype results matched the physical traits of the dogs we tested. The new project was designed in order to give students the opportunity to hone lab skills such as purifying DNA, running PCR reactions, and analyzing results from gel electrophoresis and DNA sequencing, and—if all goes right—the opportunity to interpret clear and accurate results.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: Beltmann Summer Research Natural Science Stipends

Each year, the University of Minnesota offers a Global Medicine course tailored to physicians who wish to take the Tropical Medicine Exam. As an intern, I first shadowed classes in person and interacted with the physicians enrolled in order to understand their goals, backgrounds, and interests. Using this information, I assisted with modifying the course's online component for efficacy. One of my main projects was to design a course module about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). After extensively reviewing the literature as well as first-hand sources, I created an interactive module that will be reviewed by experts and then incorporated into the curriculum. My goal was to not only include the basic information needed for the exam but to also center the voices of people who have undergone the procedure and highlight its human impact. Overall, this experience was a great way to learn more about global medicine, education, and healthcare as a whole.

Student Role: Intern

Project funded by: Beltmann Physical/Natural Sciences Summer Research Fund, OlinRice Hub

I worked in the Cao Lab which focuses on organic materials synthesis. My project was started completely from scratch this summer, following the same thread and as previous projects in the Cao Lab. I worked on synthesizing new molecules that have unique electronic properties. Theoretically, they will be able to accept and donate electrons very well which could make them a great candidate to be part of a phone screen like the OLED phone screens we use now. I was able to successfully synthesize some new molecules and analyze some of their electron mobility. This project will hopefully be continued in the future in the Cao Lab.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: Beltmann Summer Research Chemisry Stipends

This summer I worked as an undergraduate researcher in the Schroeder Lab in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The Schroeder Lab studies metastatic breast cancer and the role of receptor tyrosine kinases such as the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) in cancer progression. In a healthy breast epithelial cell EGFR is endocytosed and degraded or recycled after ligand binding. In a tumor cell, EGFR undergoes retrograde trafficking to the nucleus where it acts as a co-transcriptional regulator for many oncogenes. The Schroeder Lab developed a peptide therapeutic which works by inhibiting this retrograde trafficking of EGFR. The aim of my project was to determine whether this peptide is causing cell death as previously suspected, or whether it is driving some tumor cells into quiescence (a temporary non-dividing cell state). To investigate this possibility, I tested the effects of the therapeutic and the ability of cells to recover from treatment. I learned many techniques including tissue culture, sterile technique, media preparation, MTT and EdU assay, and western blotting.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: Beltmann Summer Research Natural Sciences Stipends, OlinRice Hub

This summer, I conducted research on a genus of mite harvester known as Rakaia. Mite Harvesters are an order of Arachnid and a sub-order of Opilliones. A common opillionid many people in the United States are familiar with is the daddy long-legs. Opillionids are the subject of many types of population genetics research. The research I have begun on Rakaia examines the population structure and distribution of the genus. The only known species of Rakaia occur in New Zealand, which makes in depth genetic research on entire populations relatively easy. The main findings that I have thus far are a phylogenetic tree showing the population structure of the genus and maps showing the distribution of the Rakaia along with habitat suitability. I created the phylogenetic tree using Ultra Conserved Element data, which is a method that uses loci on the genome that are highly conserved across species from a broad scope on the tree of life - think all arthropods and how they share certain characteristics. The genes coding for an exoskeleton would be conserved across all arthropods, for example. As I continue this research, I hope to explain the distributions of the genus through geological and ecological context.

Student Role: Research Assistant

Project funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF)

This past summer, I worked as a software developer for a startup called SayKid based in Minneapolis, MN. As their mission statement says, "SayKid is transforming how kids learn - and it doesn't involve screens!" Effectively, they build voice-interactive games to help kids learn in safe, natural, and engaging way! In my role as an intern, my summer project was to design and implement a voice-interactive counting game, with tangible play, to help kids acquire early numeracy and cognitive skills. The design process involved using a voice design tool, one called Voiceflow, to write and test code various blocks of the game and later link the different blocks into a single flow for smooth execution. In essence, I built the game as one of Amazon's Alexa skillsets such that once its tested and approved in the near future, it can be uploaded on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and made available on their server. Additionally, the final product is to be incorporated in one of SayKids' screen-less, play-based learning platform called a toybot, which you can see me holding in the picture.

Student Role: Software Developer

Project funded by: MacNest Summer Internship Program

This summer we studied the Army Corps’ public engagement process specifically in response to the disposition study of Lock and Dam # 1, Lower Saint Anthony Falls Lock and Dam, and Upper Saint Anthony Falls Lock and Dam. To gauge the public’s opinion on the potential removal of the locks and dams, we hosted focus groups that toured the structures, interacted with the river, and taught about the history of the river. We reaffirmed our understanding of the importance of public engagement and stressed this importance in our final report to the Army Corps of Engineers. This report provided information from our 233 surveys collected and suggestions for the Army Corps as they continue this process. We found that many more studies are needed in order to make an educated decision on the removal and maintenance of the Locks and Dams.

Student Role: Research Assistant

Project funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF)

This summer, I worked with Professor Jim Doyle in the Macalester Physics Department as a research assistant. One of the main problems facing the world today is how to transition away from fossil fuels and to renewable energy, with finding ways to store the energy created by renewables for later use as one of the main issues. One of the most promising ways is using hydrogen, which is created via electrolysis of water. However, the most effective catalyst for that reaction is Platinum, which is both rare and expensive. In this research, we looked at various different more abundant metals that could potentially replace platinum. Initially, we were looking at Nickel, however the results weren't remotely close to the performance of Platinum. As such, we switched to Molybdenum and other Molybdenum-based compounds (like Molybdenum Disulfide) and found results much closer to the performance of Platinum.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: Beltmann Summer Research Natural Sciences Stipends

In Professor Susan Fox’s Robotics lab, our team worked to get our Turtlebot, Cutie, to navigate independently inside the second floor of the Olin Rice science building. We focused on the problem of localization, the process through which Cutie is able to know its location based on image inputs. I wrote Python programs to help automate data collection and was able to collect a dataset of 100,000 sequential images of the second floor of Olin Rice. I used Tensorflow and Keras to train Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) that take an image from Cutie to predict Cutie’s cell location on a map of Olin Rice and the direction the robot is heading. I wrote test code to evaluate and record the performance of our neural networks which had a validation accuracy of 95% for networks that predict cell location and 97% for networks that predict heading orientation. Towards the end of our research, we began developing new Transformer neural networks that use sequences of images to predict Cutie’s location.

Student Role: Research Assistant

Project funded by: Keck Foundation Summer Research Fund

Amphibians have been disappearing at an alarming rate worldwide. As such, it is necessary to understand associations between their traits and the environment in order to contribute to conservation efforts. While the vertebrate eye has been heavily studied, potential associations between eye size and ecology in amphibians remain unclear. Thomas et al. 2020 found that eye size of frogs and toads was significantly correlated with habitat, mating habitat, and activity period (nocturnal vs diurnal). My project replicated their methodology with salamanders. I measured the eye diameter, corneal diameter, body size, and mass of 154 species from all 10 extant (existing) families. Some initial patterns I observed include the climbing salamanders having comparatively larger eyes and eye size increasing with body size and weight. We are excited to soon see the results of our statistical models matched to a phylogenetic tree. In addition to gaining the experience of working on an independent research project, it was equally important to me to be able to share my work with the public in an accessible way. Engaging children in the research I was doing through an activity with museum specimens was my favorite part of the summer.

Student Role: Visual Ecology Researcher

Project funded by: California Academy of Sciences, Professor Jan Serie Fund for Student-Faculty Research

This summer my team and I at Cooperation Cannon River facilitated Movement School, an eight-week program for young organizers to incubate projects that build political and economic power among the working class of the Twin Cities. Using popular education models, we helped participants deepen their root cause analysis of problems facing our communities and identify points in our shared movement ecosystem where they are well positioned to build capacity. We supported participants as they launched their own projects related to labor organizing, housing coops, community defense, and youth political education. We strived to create an environment where participants could make tangible plans towards a lifestyle that centers movement work and is sustainable in the long haul. Facilitating this program, which was made up of participants my age and experience level, was a valuable experience in co-constructing a learning space. We intentionally blurred the lines between teacher and learner to maximize the knowledge shared and gained by all, and invited elders from the community to teach us about our local movement context. I plan to apply lessons from this experience in community-based political education in future classrooms I’m part of.

Student Role: Educational Programming Intern

Project funded by: Macalester Summer Internship Grant (MSIG)

This summer my work in the Lee Lab at the University of Arizona focused on cell signaling and a particular protein's role in pancreatic cancer. Based on previous discoveries by the Lee Lab, there were various projects surrounding this one protein that I worked on. I learned various important techniques to biomedical research including cell culture, western blotting, and basic lab techniques such as sample storage and pipetting. I started by shadowing my mentor and picking up these techniques and progressed to running my own assays and quantifying the results. Throughout the summer I met several graduate students and researchers from whom I learned a lot about the higher education process in the biochemical research field. I may even be able to have my name on a published paper! Overall, this summer was a wonderful opportunity to learn various techniques, network and meet people, and contribute strongly to pancreatic cancer and biomedical research fields.

Student Role: Research Intern

Project funded by: Beltmann OREL Endowment

Since Spain’s transition to a democratic government and entrance into the European Union, the country– through a combination of public and private efforts– has shown a renewed interest in preserving its Jewish history. This summer I researched how Spanish entities— private and public— engage in Jewish heritage and memory work in several different cities across Spain. I explored many of Spain’s primary Jewish historical and cultural sites including Synagogues, mikvah baths, cemeteries, Inquisition landmarks, and Jewish museums in Seville, Cordoba, Madrid, Granada, Toledo, Segovia, and Valencia. My research in Spain will serve as the foundation for my Honors thesis, in which I will explore topics such as heritage tourism, reparations, and the modern European nation-state using Jewish heritage work in democratic Spain as a case study.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: Roetzel Family Summer Fellowship in Religious Studies

Hepatoblastoma is the most common childhood hepatic tumor and has the fastest rising incidence of any childhood cancer globally. Despite this, it is a very rare form of cancer and a lot is still unknown about the causes of hepatoblastoma.
Previous studies have found the incidence of hepatoblastoma to be lower in Black individuals and higher in Hispanic individuals when compared to Whites, however, these studies have categorized cases using self-identified race and ethnicity. This method of classification is often limited to the boxes someone can check on a form which can be very restrictive when describing one’s racial and ethnic identity, especially because we know that genomic ancestry is often much more complex than a one-word answer.
Over the course of the summer, I worked alongside Dr. Erin Marcotte at the University of Minnesota Department of Pediatrics in the Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Research to explore the association between genomic ancestry and risk of Hepatoblastoma, specifically looking to find evidence of the increased incidence of Hepatoblastoma in Hispanic individuals by analyzing genomic ancestry proportions in a population-based case-control study.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: University of Minnesota Department of Pediatrics

I worked with Ross Ferguson to explore possible Higgs field additions to the Standard Model of particle physics- in particular those that might produce stable dark matter candidates. Our methodology was greatly inspired from a paper that had proposed additional Higgs fields for the well known Trinification symmetry, which would then break into the familiar Standard Model symmetry (Vector Boson Dark Matter From Trinification, Babu et. al, Jan 4 2022).
Such work is largely mathematical, and as such we were instructed on Quantum Field Theory calculations, Feynman diagrams, group theory, and spontaneous symmetry breaking to give us the necessary background knowledge.
Our role was to explore certain ways of breaking the Trinification symmetry with Higgs fields. The Trinification symmetry is a group structure that unites the strong and weak nuclear, and electromagnetic forces. This involved writing Python programs to expand the Standard Model Lagrangian (in short, a function describing the energy state of a system) with new terms due to our introduced Higgs fields. Once we had the fully expanded Lagrangian terms, we were able to test which Higgs fields properly broke the Trinification symmetry, which we did through what are called bi-adjoint Higgs fields. The latter part of our project was devoted to examining the properties of the Higgs fields (such as electromagnetic charge) to help pick out possible dark matter and establish parameters for their insertion to the Standard Model Lagrangian. Our future project will be to isolate the potential stable dark matter candidates it produced and eventually we will need to check them against current day measurements of dark matter abundance in the universe (see Chloe Zheng's research).

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: Minnesota Space Grant Consortium

I developed 2R app that connects garbage collectors to households/companies. While working at MacStartups, I developed my programming, presentation, networks, and business/finance skills. I hope 2R can help provide a stable income for garbage collectors, increase the recycling efficiency, and help citizens improve their understanding of recycling activities.

Student Role: Project Manager

Project funded by: MacStartups

Peptides, or very short proteins, provide an opportunity to mimic the catalytic activity of enzymes for various organic reactions. Applications of peptide catalysts range from synthesizing pharmaceutical medicines to the degradation of polyesters that pollute the environment. The efficacy of peptide catalysts depends on their amino acid sequence and/or their conformation in solution, known as their secondary structure. The Witus lab has been particularly interested in studying peptides that adopt a β-hairpin conformation, as this type of secondary structure has been widely used to increase catalytic activity. This summer I worked on a project investigating β-hairpin peptide catalysts for ester hydrolysis reactions.

To create the catalytic peptide, we utilized a tryptophan zipper scaffold, known as TrpZip4, which is an established β-hairpin peptide. The sequence was mutated at the β-turn amino acids to either induce or eliminate a β-hairpin to create pairs of peptides for comparison. Additional scaffold modifications changed different positions to histidine to enhance catalysis. Reaction kinetics were tracked using UV/Vis spectroscopy which revealed that the modified peptide pairs performed with the same catalytic activity despite predictions that a β-hairpin would perform better. We then studied the solution conformation of the peptides using Two-Dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (2D NMR), and our analysis indicated that the expected “β-hairpin” peptide did not adopt that conformation. This explained the observed identical levels of catalysis between the hairpin and non-hairpin sequences. Therefore, our future work will use a different scaffold sequences that will be more likely to adopt a β-hairpin conformations after modification.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: National Institute of Health, Cottrell Scholar Award

This summer I worked with Professor Jim Doyle in continuing research that we started last summer. Our work has focused on the models of neuron action potentials first developed by Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley that outline the behavior of these signals and how they change in time and space. Last summer we focused on the temporal portion of these non-linear, simultaneous differential equations which we solved using the Runge-Kutta method programmed in MATLAB. This year we focused on solving the equations with respect to both time and space. We continued using MATLAB using a finite differences method to model the signal at a fixed time as a function of distance from the origin of stimulus. We found that the action potential propagation speed was proportional to the square root of the effective voltage diffusion coefficient, and overall the model shows aspects of both linear and non-linear behavior. The next steps in this research are to introduce stochasticity into the ion channel equations that are coupled to the voltage transport equation.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: Beltmann Summer Research Natural Sciences Stipends

For my summer research program, I used computer programming (Python) to create a model of the evolution of all the isotopic abundances in the universe. Instead of creating it from scratch, I modified existing abundance results by adding classical novae contributions(previously ignored due to the paucity of data). I went through published astronomical papers about classical novae in order to find the best, up to date, 3-D classical novae models and their abundances for each isotope. I select the proper novae model with parameters that resemble our Sun, then I calibrate the model in order to convert the model into the existing codes. Finally, I used the modified code to create abundance versus time graphs for isotopes.

Student Role: Researcher

Project funded by: Beltmann Summer Research Natural Sciences Stipends