FWS Student Highlights: Courtney Whitman

I started working with Dr. Joris van der Ham on his forensic entomology project in September 2015, the start of my sophomore year. In forensic entomology, the rate of decomposition of living organisms is typically determined by the certain “age” of insects found on that organism. The project I have been a part of wants to determine whether or not using the number of different insect species in their adult form is a feasible way to determine rate of decomposition.

In the summer of 2015, two pig heads were placed on campus and the insects that congregated on the heads were collected everyday over the course of a month or so. Though I was not there for the collection of the insects, I spend my time sorting, identifying, and counting the organisms found in each sample date. I also record all the data collected into online programs, which makes it possible to see the correlation between the number and types of insect species and how those numbers relate to the rate of decomposition.

Although forensic entomology isn’t directly in line with my environmental science major, the skills I have learned from this project will be tremendously beneficial to me in my future endeavors. For example, knowing the family, genus, and species of various organisms and knowing how to identify them may very well be of use to me, depending on what I decide to make my career. The critical thinking skills I’m learning that are necessary to understand the data collected and what it means when looking at the big picture of the project will also go a long way to help me become a better scientist. As a whole, I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to be a part of a research project so early in my college career and am excited to see what the end result of the research will be.

FWS Student Highlights: Victoria Nguyen

Hello! My name is Victoria Nguyen. I am a junior currently working in Dr. Monique van Hoek’s lab under the guidance of her Post-doc Dr. Gupta. For the last 6 months I have been working on testing antimicrobial peptides in EC50, MIC, and Biofilm conditions against Francisella novicida in addition to testing the resilience of the small colony variants of Burkholderia thailandensis against the antimicrobial peptide NA-CATH.

My work varies week to week. This week I am enumerating how much bacteria is present in a given sample.  Two different strains of Burkholderia thailandensis will be enumerated. The first strain is the wild type, and the second strainwas extracted post infection from the epithelial cell line A549. Once I know how much bacteria is present, I can use them to conduct EC50s. An EC50 is a standard protocol used to test the killing power of a drug at a concentration of 50 percent.

One thing I discovered this week that is no matter how sure you are about something you should always ask someone to double check your work! I did my calculations for my enumerations incorrectly, which set me back a whole week in my experiments. In order to do an EC50 you need a

concentration of at least 2x10⁶ cfu/ml. My formulas were correct, but I put them in the calculator without parentheses…oh the power of the order of operations. So I wasted a whole week re-growing bacteria when in the end I had the right concentrations to begin with.

Working in this lab gives me the experience needed to become an incredible scientist. I’m learning skills some people start learning when they enter graduate school. Here I’m learning more than your basic sterility skills and calculations. I’m learning the actual work life of someone who wants to make a living working in a lab. Most of your days will be spent reading papers trying to figure out how to design experiments, or writing grants for funding. Only some of your day will be spent in the lab running the experiment. A lot of time is put into preparing all your materials before you start your experiment as well as analyzing your data and making graphs after it’s done.

URSP Student Moonisha Rahman Creates a Complementary Textbook for Students taking BIO 213

Hello, my name is Moonisha Rahman, and I work as a Research Assistant under the OSCAR program at George Mason University! Currently I am working on a research project with Dr. Reid Schwebach and a team of other Research Assistants and Learning Assistants to help create a complementary textbook for students taking his introduction to cell biology, or BIO 213 class. I am personally in charge of the visual graphics of the book, including but not limited to, the template of the textbook and the diagrams and hands-on activities that will be found within the book.

On a weekly basis, I create sketches, animations, and visuals for the textbook, as well as aid with the textbook template design and appearance with the other assistants. It is a slower process than most other jobs, but it is definitely rewarding to see my creations come to life and know that the illustrations I make will help with students who have a difficult time understanding the information that they are being asked to learn. It is also exciting to learn new things about the topic of biology, since even though it is not the major I am aiming for, it is a subject I have much interest in.  I also really enjoy being able to work with people of all ages, and learn how to communicate ideas with them and have them aid me in developing and creating my own ideas.  

In the long term, I hope this experience can help me gain knowledge in being able to utilize my computer skills, since all the images and animations I create use software that takes time to understand and comprehend. I also hope that it can help be learn to work well with a team, especially a team that is made of people of all majors, ages, and abilities. It is amazing to see how we can all put our different skills together to make a solid, well working group who is able to work together very well.  So far, I have already gained so much knowledge on how to help support the team I work with, and also have them as a support for me as well, and it is wonderful to know that all the hard work we are putting in will create such a rewarding and long-lasting result. I hope that even after our project is complete I can use the skills I have gained from this experience in the future to help me become a more disciplined and knowledgeable individual. 

URSP Student Syed-Ali Zaidi Researches Random Electrical Stimulation in Cortical Networks on Multielectrode Arrays

I began researching in the Neural Engineering lab this past summer, from May to August. I knew going into my sophomore year that I wanted to get involved in research on campus, especially hearing from friends who were involved or who had been involved about how much of a learning experience it is. After reaching out to a lot of different labs and narrowing down my interests, I chose to do research in this lab, and pursue the topic of Random Electrical Stimulation in Cortical Networks on Multielectrode Arrays for my OSCAR URSP research.

This topic interested me for a couple of reasons, because as a university student, one rarely gets the chance to use the knowledge and fundamentals learned in class in the real world to truly understand the scope of information. After working in the lab over the summer, learning the procedures, techniques and locations of all of the lab equipment, I was able to begin determining what topic I was interested in researching. Research also provides unparalleled levels of curiosity and questioning, which I feel is necessary regardless of discipline or major.

My research involves taking recordings of the activity of cortical cell cultures from mice embryos and looking at patterns these cultures exhibit when electrical stimulation is added. The recordings involve a system of devices, including a Multi Channel Systems temperature controller, power supply system, baseplate, and stimulation generator alongside special software that transmits information about the neuronal cell culture and any electrical stimulation. This software produces real-time results that show different locations on a multielectrode array where a neuron is producing an action potential, or the means of communication for the cells in our brain.

Every week provides new discoveries, and this week I did a lot of data processing for data I had collected a few months ago. This data revealed insightful information about how electrical stimulation can increase the number of action potentials over time and helped me refine my procedure for conducting the recordings when I realized there were some mistakes or missing data.

URSP Student Sherwin Zahirieh Works with Hydrologic Modeling Software from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: HEC-HMS and HEC-GeoHMS

At the beginning of my junior year, I was struggling to see on what path concentration of Civil Engineering I wanted to follow. However, not long into my CEIE 340: Water Resources Engineering class, I realized that studying water was the right path for me. I went to the professor of that class, who is now my mentor, asking how to get involved into the work he was doing. This led to him suggesting that I apply for URSP funding.

I hope going through this experience of independent research will allow me to learn the steps and procedures for completing individual scholarly work. I am already determined to continue my education through graduate school, during which I will complete a thesis. While my thesis will be much more complicated than this project, the experience I will have gained by participating in the URSP will give me a huge advantage.

Most of my work so far involves working with hydrologic modeling software from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: HEC-HMS and HEC-GeoHMS. My current goal is to set up a current hydrologic model of the George Mason Fairfax Campus. Then, using aerial images, I will set up hydrologic models for the campus over the past thirty years. I will then analyze the changes that have occurred to the campus hydrology as a result of the rapid development that has been happening. With the consistent construction of many new buildings, such as Taylor Hall, Academic VII, and the Fenwick Expansion, our results should show an increase in runoff volume and peak flows, which ultimately leads to more flooding on campus.