FWS Student Highlights: Nafisa Afrin

The primary goal of my research has been to look at alcohol laws of multiple states as well as counties to see how they vary. Dry states have more stringent alcohol policy than wet states, thus greatly affecting the overall health of that population. As the number of on premise alcohol outlet increases, so does the number of people acquiring STDs, teen pregnancy, fetal alcohol syndrome, road injuries and many more. Thus the health outcome has an enormous impact on that state’s as well as the nation’s healthcare policies and budget. My mentor, associate professor of the Global and Community Health department Dr. Matthew Rossheim, has published research article based on the findings of Texas’ alcohol policy and health outcome data which we are using as a prototype for other states. A lot of the time my project requires me to clean up the data we found on states’ ABC websites so that the data is more effective and relatable to our research. Before doing anything else, however, I have to choose a state and look for the times local option elections took place where a dry county voted to become wet and vice versa. Annual ABC reports regarding alcohol sale, licensing, and election results are great resources that I have to look for from time to time. ABC boards with insufficient funding have less resources available to the public, making our research more challenging. I have weekly meetings with my mentor where we go over newly acquired findings and the possibilities they present. As a junior who’s majoring in biology and want to be a Physician Assistant, this opportunity has provided me a great deal of insight into community health, making me more knowledgeable and responsible. The practicality of these research findings are making me more conscious and aware of United States’ health policy. Our goal is to compile and present irrefutable data to federal government in a hope that policymakers will use these data in order to improve the lives of people.

FWS Student Highlights: Rachel Stocker

I have been working on a forensic entomology project with Dr. Joris van der Ham, from the environmental sciences department, since last April, though the first few months were for credit rather than through OSCAR. Historically, the time between a death and the discovery of a body (post-mortem interval, or PMI) has been determined using insect larvae. We’ve been working to see if the adults, which are easier to identify, can be used instead.

In the beginning, we put out beaver and pig carcasses and collected the insects that fell or flew into the traps around them. (And boy, did that smell good.) We collected the insects from mid-April to the beginning of August. Now we are working on identifying the insects.

On a weekly basis, I generally spill insects out into a Petri dish and look for characteristics to tell me what those insects are. For example, four wings mean that the insect is a wasp or bee; two wings mean the insect is a fly; and a hard shell behind the head means that it is a beetle. Once that has been determined, we narrow it down to family, genus, or species using dichotomous keys. The insects go into vials marked with their names and then into jars marked with the date they were collected, the collection site, and the kind of trap they were found in.

Slowly but surely, the number of insects in my vial marked ‘???’ goes down as I learn more families. Last week, I found a beetle that I couldn’t identify, and I spent almost two hours trying to figure out what the family was - but that paid off, because in the week since, I’ve found seventeen of those little jerks scattered across the samples, and I don’t have to look up what they are.

The biggest difference between now and when we started identifying last summer is that we’re no longer collecting. We’ve also found keys that use pictures instead of illustrations, which makes us more accurate in our identifications, and have begun putting data into spreadsheets.

I got into this project because I was interested in forensic entomology and wanted to have some experience with it before going to grad school to be certified as a forensic entomologist. It’s been an amazing experience.

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.