10 winners at IBB Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Vyshnavi Gade presents her winning poster at the IBB Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Posters by 10 summer interns were chosen as the best at this year’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium at the BioScience Research Collaborative Aug. 6. A total of 69 undergraduate students showcased 66 posters inspired by their summer projects, representing 10 bio-related Rice summer undergraduate research programs.

The winners by program:

Ruth Adaimoabasi Udo, left, discusses her work with Marcia O’Malley, Rice’s Thomas Michael Panos Family Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science, at the IBB Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium. Udo won the Outstanding Poster Award for the Engineering and Medicine REU program. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REU) in Multi-Scale Biomolecular Networks: Dru Myerscough for “Using directed evolution to improve the halide specificity of a methyl halide transferase reporter” (faculty mentor: Joff Silberg), and Vyshnavi Gade for “Characterizing Enterococci Pathogenesis and Host Innate Defenses in Agar and Liquid-Based Caenorhabditis elegans Infection Models” (faculty mentor: Natasha Kirienko).

NSF REU in Biology with X-ray Free Electron Lasers: Elijah Gonzalez for “Solving the Phase Problem in Protein Crystallography Using an Ab Initio Hybrid Input-Output Algorithm” (faculty mentor: George Phillips).

BUILDing Scholars Undergraduate Scholarship Program: Tanya Cruz for “Simultaneous Measurements of Sharp Wave Ripple and Cortex-Wide Neural Activity” (faculty mentor: Lan Luan).

American Heart Association Summer Cardiovascular Research Internship Program: Nahom Zewde for “Dantrolene as a Pharmacological Target of Calcific Aortic Valve Disease” (faculty mentor: Jane Grande-Allen).

NSF REU in Planetary Habitability Over Space and Time: Kayla Russo for “Effect of Mixing on Silica Concentrations in Almirante Bay” (faculty mentor: Mark Torres).

REU in Engineering and Medicine: Ruth Adaimoabasi Udo for “Low Volume ELISA for Rapid Quantification of Plasmodium falciparum Histidine-Rich Protein 2” (faculty mentor: Peter Lillehoj).

NSF Expeditions REU in Computing Collaborative Research: Xavier Ibarrola for “Optimization of a Miniature Fluorimeter for Resource-Limited Settings” (faculty mentor: Rebecca Richards-Kortum).

Department of BioSciences Summer Research Institute: Jim Zhang for “Expression and Purification of Virus-like Particles from a Double-stranded RNA Virus with Filamentous Capsid Morphology” (faculty mentor: Yizhi Jane Tao).

BIOS 310 – Independent Research for Undergraduates: Anne Gao for “Combined Menin-MLL and LSD1 Inhibition Reduces Cell Proliferation in DNMT3A-mutant Acute Myeloid Leukemia.” (faculty mentor: Rachel Rau, Baylor College of Medicine).