Students gain valuable benefits by conducting summer research on campus

Science Symposium

Seventy Holy Cross students traded in beach towels for beakers this summer as they spent nine weeks on campus conducting scientific research. During their 40 hour work weeks, students worked closely with faculty on a variety of research projects.

On Sept. 7 in the Hogan Ballroom, student researchers presented the results of their work to the Holy Cross community in the 14th annual Summer Research Poster Symposium.

“Research experience gives students greater maturity as scientists,” says Richard Herrick, professor of chemistry and science coordinator. “They are able to solve problems better than they were before, which helps build self-confidence. Students who have not had this experience are less accomplished in the lab.”

Departments with research projects include biology, chemistry, economics, mathematics, physics, and psychology. Project findings often result in publication in a research journal or invitations to participate at scientific meetings held across the country.

Herrick says that the program has doubled in the last four years, and few liberal arts colleges have a program as extensive as Holy Cross.

Students get to work with highly accomplished faculty members at the College. This past summer, four students worked with Ken Mills, associate professor of chemistry, as part of a five-year $795,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development program that he received in 2005.

As part of the project, biology majors Adam Kerrigan ’09, Melissa McGill ’08 and Jen Winslow ’09 and chemistry major Annie Schufreider ’09 studied protein slicing. As mechanistic enzymologists, they studied how a unique type of protein, called an intein, facilitates its own cleavage from flanking proteins, says Mills. They were interested in the chemistry behind this biological process, but also in discovering if there is a biological role for these novel proteins in regulation.

Mills’ students participated in a weekly journal club over lunch with students from other research groups in the biology department. They also attended a one-day conference at the MIT Center for Cancer Research on Systems Biology. The students, along with Mills, also attended the annual Protein Society Symposium in Boston at the end of July, and McGill presented a poster on her work at this national meeting.

Research in other areas of science abounded on campus this summer.

Rob Bellin, assistant professor of biology, worked with three students — math major Marshall McKenna ’08, biology major Elizabeth Morse ’09, and English major Shruti Sreepathi ’08 — on two different biochemistry/cancer biology-related research projects.

“Our first project was focused on understanding the process by which individual cells form protein complexes that allow them to attach to surfaces,” says Bellin. “Our second project relates to exploring the role that specific transmembrane proteins play in preventing the disease neurofibromatosis type-2.”

Alison Casserly ’08, a biology major with a premedical and biochemistry concentration, worked with Cara Constance, assistant professor of biology, on a project titled “Characterization of clock gene expression in the brain of Xenopus tropicalis.” They investigated the expression of genes that are involved in the biological clock in the brain of the frog, Xenopus. The goal was to determine whether there are changes in expression of these genes at different developmental stages (tadpole vs. frog) in order to address whether differences in neuronal gene expression translate into differences in behavior in Xenopus.

Gil Gomez ’08, a chemistry major, worked alongside Joshua Farrell, Thomas D’Ambra assistant professor of chemistry. They looked at a series of polyelectrochromic (materials whose color changes as one applies differing voltages) polymers that they made in the lab. The materials have diverse applications in areas like smart windows (change the color of shading depending on the solar conditions) or dynamic camouflage.

Sarah Petty, assistant professor of chemistry, worked with three students — chemistry majors Alexie Andrew ’08 and Kelly Lyons ’10 and biology major Amy Trojanowski ’09 — studying the structure of disease-related proteins. Andrew and Lyons were working on the protein associated with Huntington’s disease and Trojanowski was working on one of the proteins associated with Cataracts. “We used molecular biology to express the proteins of interest and then a combination of physical chemical techniques to analyze the structures,” says Petty.

Bianca R. Sculimbrene, assistant professor of chemistry, received a Batchelor (Ford) Foundation grant and, along with three chemistry majors — Amy Cianci ’08, Patrick Brady ’08, Jen Beaudoin ’09 — worked on the development of chemical tools in organic synthesis. The projects involved new methods in non-natural amino acid synthesis, phosphorylation and peptide-isostere synthesis.

This year, Herrick worked with three chemistry majors — Laura Rose Condon ’08, William Cupelo ’09, and Joseph Lopez ’09 — trying to find new compounds for diagnostic imaging agents for nuclear medicine. The goal is to more quickly diagnose cancer and heart disease.

“I personally have never had a student who didn’t enjoy summer research and I’ve been doing this for 24 years now,” Herrick said.

Related Information:

• Read Alexie Andrew’s summer ’07 blog where she wrote about her summer research • Read a current blog by Eric Yoon who is continuing research on campus he started this summer • Professor works with four students on three science projects during summer • Integrated Science Complex