Below are some sample lab descriptions from 2024:
Favuzzi Lab | Neuroscience
Prerequisites: No skills are required but curiosity, motivation, and a strong work ethic (responsible attitude) are needed. Coding ability in any language (especially R) is a plus.
General Lab Description: Our brain and immune system “talk” to each other (think about illnesses like COVID-19, where some patients experience brain-related issues). Our brain is like a city with neighborhoods (regions) and residents (cells) and our team wants to understand which residents are “reading” these messages from the immune system, how, and the “city-wide impact”.
Project Description: In this project, the student will start working with a condition that affects the digestive tract (colitis). Our early work has given us a lead: certain “residents” in the brain ‘light up’ and respond when the colon is upset. The student will (1) watch these brain “residents” closely, using special imaging techniques, to see how they react during colitis, (2) use computers to create a “map” of how these brain parts interact when the immune system sends messages (like plotting the busiest streets during rush hour), and (3) investigate if and how these “residents” change their connections and “conversations” when they receive these messages. This will allow us to understand why we get sick after being stressed, how being sick can affect our feelings and thoughts, or even lead to new treatments for conditions like the “brain fog” experienced in diseases like COVID-19.
Day-to-day Activities: Performing histological experiments (brain sectioning, immunohistochemistry, microscope imaging), and potentially doing some mouse work (breeding, genotyping). These experiments will be followed by analysis of images and data.
Mayer Lab | Chemistry
Prerequisites: Prior science coursework (preferably chemistry, but not required)
General Lab Description: Research in the Mayer group spans the fields of inorganic, materials, bioinorganic, organometallic, and physical organic chemistry. Our primary focus is on redox reactions (addition or removal of electrons) that involve chemical bond formation and bond cleavage (breaking), in particular the coupled transfers of protons and electrons.
Project Description: How do reactions happen at the surface of materials on the nanoscale? What atoms/electrons are involved and where do they go? These are the questions our lab examines and will closely relate to the student project. The project will examine the conversion of molecules with different nanomaterials and observe how different additives modulate the reactivity (how quickly does it react, what bonds are being broken, etc.). The results of this project will lay a foundation for fundamental reactions at nanomaterial surfaces which could inform the development of future materials relevant for renewable energy applications or electronics.
Day-to-day Activities: Common inorganic techniques including photolysis (addition of electrons by high energy light) of colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) and observation of the reduced species by UV-visible spectroscopy, or the change in color or intensity of the NPs. For example, the NPs change from colorless to dark blue when adding electrons and protons to the material. The number of added electrons can be quantified by the “blueness” of the sample. The student will perform serial dilutions of the NP solutions and titrate them with various molecules to monitor reactivity. For example, student(s) will correlate the change in the NP color with the reactivity of different molecules. Given enough time, student(s) will be given the opportunity to have hands-on experience using stopped flow spectroscopy for reactions that occur too quickly to observe by eye (less than one second).