Paige is a second-year PhD student of the Reynolds lab studying the impacts of epigenetics and food insecurity on human health.

Marcela is a fourth year PhD candidate studying anthropology.

I am a biochemistry graduate student in the Shaw Lab focusing on RNA and RNA modifications. Additionally, I focus on making the chemistry lab and science materials more accessible to the blind and visually impaired. I work with people with blindness or low vision and help them to feel more confident in scientific careers. 

Mayte is a third year graduate student in the Shaw Lab studying various metalloproteins and how the metals affect the protein. Specifically, I look at a protein involved in a neurodegenerative disease, ALS, and the formation of its aggregates into amyloid.

Chloë is a third-year Chemistry PhD student in the the Kane Laboratory. Her research is focused on developing localized drug delivery systems.

Nick is a 5th year PhD student with the Planetary Research Group studying the planetary geophysics. He studies the inside of Mars using gravity and topography measurements along with modeling techniques. This data analysis and modeling work can help figure out what is happening inside the red planet and what it means for how the planet has evolved over the last 4 billion years.

Kayla is a second-year Ph.D. student in Dr. Joseph Taube’s Lab studying breast cancer. Breast cancer is known to affect 1 in every 8 women. Being a woman herself, she became motivated to understand the mechanisms by which metastasis arises. Through the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, the cells undergo a dramatic change in structure, motility, and protein expression. She is interested in understanding how the cell can modify the DNA, without modifying the genomic sequence. Understanding epigenetic regulation provides insight as to what proteins interact with the DNA, what part of the DNA is considered a ‘hot spot’ for protein binding, and how chromatin accessibility controls the entire process.

Lacy is a second year PhD student in the Biology department. Her research focuses on Limnology (the study of inland waters) with emphasis on small water bodies such as ponds as well as environmental DNA collection from water bodies.

Roughly 100 years ago, Einstein came up with a new theory of gravity that succeeded all the previous ones. Apart from explaining everything with more accuracy it also had some remarkable predictions. One of them is the existence of Black holes. Despite all the criticism, we observed these exotic objects with the help of Gravitational waves in 2015. Recently we were also able to take a picture of a Black hole that is a million times heavier than our sun. Although our understanding of these objects has grown by leaps and bounds in these 100 years, we do not have a clear understanding of what happens inside a black hole. It is believed that we need a theory of quantum gravity to understand these regions. Although unfortunately, we do not have such a theory, scientists have been using semi-classical methods to study the interior of a black hole. My research is focused on these aspects