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:
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).