MENTORING
As an undergraduate, I worked with professors and graduate students who gave their time and energy to help me develop research questions and carry out independent research projects. Now that I am in a position where I can mentor students, I involve as many undergraduate students as possible in my research projects. Students work with me as research apprentices, helping out with standard laboratory and greenhouse experiments, or take on their own research projects related to my research. The following are a few undergraduate students I have had the pleasure of working with:
Kyla Montgomery
Kyla applied for the University of Vermont’s Office of Undergraduate Research Summer Research Award in the spring of 2014. The OUR Summer Research Award is a highly-competitive award open to all students in the College of Arts and Sciences that offers up to $5,000 to help students conduct independent research projects. Kyla wrote a proposal to study whether a keystone species, the mosquito larva Wyeomyia smithii, buffers against regime shifts in the Sarracenia purpurea microecosystem. She was one of 16 students awarded out of over 100 applicants. Kyla successfully carried out her experiment and presented her findings at the UVM Student Research Conference in April 2015.
Jéssica Duarte-Sousa
Jéssica, a biochemistry major from Brazil, studied abroad at Saint Michael’s college. I served as her undergraduate research advisor. Jéssice used SDS-PAGE to screen for proteins that change in expression as the S. purpurea microecosystem changes from an oxic state to a hypoxic state. The proteins she isolated were identified using tandem mass spectrometry and densitometry analysis to determine semi-quantitative changes in their expression. These proteins may serve as biomarkers for impending regime shifts in the S. purpurea microecosystem. Jéssica went on to complete her master’s degree at the Universidade Federal de São João Del Rei and plans to pursue a PhD in biochemistry.
Vanessa Avalone
Vanessa enrolled in UVM’s undergraduate course and I served as her research advisor. Vanessa’s project investigated the dynamic relationship between organic matter concentration and dissolved oxygen in the S. purpurea microecosystem. With her help, we were able to determine that there is a hysteric relationship between these variables and that the direction of hysteresis is dependent on the concentration of organic matter loading. Vanessa graduated and won a Fulbright scholarship to teach english to students in Malaysia. While there, she and her fellow scholars organized a 3 day summit on women’s leadership and and raised over $7,000 to fund student travel to Kuala Lumpur for the workshop. Vanessa plans to go to medical school after her travels.
Noelani Rupp
Noelani worked with me as a junior in high school to design and carry out a VT STEM science fair project on the capacity of ligninolytic fungi to degrade hydrocarbons in motor oil. Noelani was inspired by an interest in environmentalism and wanted to explore mycoremediation – or environmental cleanup using fungi – using commonly available fungi known to degrade lignocellulose substrates. She learned to culture fungi, do spectrophotometric analysis, and had first-hand experience with designing new methods. Noelani was invited to present her work at the international Genius Olympiad science fair at SUNY Oswego in New York. She is currently finishing her senior year and interning for a local paper to get experience with journalism.
Amanda Northrop 