"This term, I have been using computer-aided design (CAD) software such as Fusion 360 to design the multi-component devices that my lab studies.

This is an image of a new design I am analyzing in Fusion 360. I will be designing it for a bone fixation device that I have been 3D printing, fabricating and assessing during my time as a Knight Campus Undergraduate Scholar."

"I research the biological processes of meiosis and reproduction in the Libuda Lab. Specifically, the differences in the development of sperm versus eggs.

This is a photo of heat-shocked C. elegan worms that shows nuclei within the germline. The green spots mark DNA damage and allow me to quantify the amount of damage when the sample is subjected to elevated temperatures. The blue circles are staining DNA, and the red spots indicate stain Lamin, a nuclear membrane protein. 

I am interested in studying why exposure to heat stress causes infertility in males. Images like these can be compared to those without heat stress conditions to understand why we see higher rates of DNA damage in sperm development than in egg development under similar conditions.

After graduation, I hope to attend medical school and become an Orthopedic Surgeon focusing on sports medicine."

"This image shows some data I have compiled from one of my experiments as a Knight Campus Undergraduate Scholar. The data show the relationship between SpdE-dependent Aeromonas motility and environmental amino acids.

We developed a new technique we call the “exploration assay” to measure differences in motility between strains or conditions. Using the exploration assay, we compared the motility of wild type and spdE knockout strains in different amino acid environments. From our results, we found that the wild type strain is more motile in the presence of these amino acids. However, even in the absence of an amino acid signal, the spdE knockout is more motile than the wild type strains.

My focus as a Knight Campus Undergraduate Scholar is to create a model for how SpdE regulates motility in response to amino acids to offers novel insights into Aeromonas biology and the mechanisms of host colonization through my thesis project."

"This term, I have been preparing raw data for statistical analysis and visual plotting. This image is a histogram showing stop-signal reaction time occurrences. Stop-signal reaction times are neurocognitive tasks that provide a sensitive measure of the time taken by the brain to inhibit or suppress motor responses. 

I will be using the stop-signal reaction time data and other data yet to be collected to determine the variance of planned versus unplanned signal reaction times and go signal versus stop-signal reaction times."

"This is an image of a cyclic voltammetry experiment with two different catalysts we've made for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which is rate-determining in water splitting. For the red trace, we used an iridium precursor to deposit an ultra-thin layer of iridium (the state-of-the-art catalyst or OER) on antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) as a conductive support. The black trace is the same catalyst with an additional layer of TiO2. These novel catalysts decrease the loading of iridium needed to run this reaction efficiently, making water splitting more economically feasible for clean energy storage. This plot is showing that the TiO2 enhances the performance of the catalyst, which can be seen by the curve going up at a lower overpotential and reaching higher activity levels.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been going through the literature in my field to examine ways to move this project forward. I've also played a role in editing and drafting figures for a perspective paper our lab is planning to publish."