off-campus presentation

Pictured above (from left to right): Matthew Johnson ’19, Olivia Contakes ’18, Rebecca Thomson ’19, Sidney Rhyne ‘1(9

On September 30th, a group of students from the Camino de Santiago May term travelled to the College of William and Mary to present at the 2016 Annual Symposium for Pilgrimage Studies. The presentation was focused on the connections the students made while walking the Camino de Santiago, an ancient and modernized pilgrimage route from St. Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The group consisted of Olivia Contakes, Kendall (Sidney) Rhyne, Rebecca Thompson, Matthew Johnson, and their professor Dr. Talbot. Olivia and Sidney were able to talk about their experience walking the Camino and their presentation at William and Mary.
Sidney noted the May term was a very different way of learning.

“We were walking a pilgrimage and stopping at churches, and other important places to learn about along our journey. We learned about history, architecture and Spanish culture along the way.”

Sidney’s presentation at William and Mary focused on the graffiti along the Camino. Olivia focused on her experience making friends with other pilgrims on the trail.
Both Olivia and Sidney enjoyed their time presenting what they learned abroad.

Olivia: “The narrow focus of Pilgrimage at the conference ensured that my classmates and I were surrounded with like-minded scholars who could learn from our talks, as well as we could learn from their presentations. After our panel spoke, the audience eagerly participated in the open-floor question period. We were then able to speak to our collective experience as a group. During the reception, my peers and I spoke with a group of students from Christopher Newport University who had walked the Camino with their professor. We spent about 45 minutes gleefully comparing our perspectives of the Way”.
Sidney: “It was nice to sit in on other people’s sessions and hear what they had to talk about, and most of the people there were experts in the field of pilgrimage. I thought it was pretty cool that we were some of the youngest presenters at this symposium”.

Olivia and Sidney encourage any student to take advantage of the research opportunities at Roanoke

Olivia: “Volunteering to work with Dr. Talbot and to speak at the conference has been so fulfilling. I’d encourage anyone with even a slight passion for a topic they’re studying to take any opportunity for research with RC”.
Sidney: “It is a great experience and you learn a lot in the process.”

Six Roanoke College students traveled to San Diego, CA to present at the American Chemistry Society in March. Two of those students were Thane Jones and Morgan Claybrook. Thane is a junior majoring in Chemistry who worked with Dr. Hollis for their research project. Morgan is a junior majoring in Biology and Chemistry who worked with Dr. Sarisky.

Thane’s research project was titled “Synthesis and Diels-Alder Reactivity of 1-(furanmethoxy)nonafluorobiphenyl and 4,4′-bis(furanmethoxy)octafluorobiphenyl”, in which he focused on Thermal Self-Heating Polymers. Morgan’s project focuses on cloning the gene DesIV from a specific type of soil bacteria, Streptomyces griseus.

Both Thane and Morgan enjoyed working with their professors while completing their research project.

Thane: “Dr. Hollis and I have been working one and one for the entire project, and I had daily meetings with him over the summer. Working closely with him really helped me to get into the mindset of a researcher. It taught me the types of questions I should be asking and the steps I should take to complete my goals.”
Morgan: “I’ve really enjoyed working for a professor while conducting research as I’ve been able to work independently but I also have someone with a great deal of knowledge on my topic whose advice I can seek out whenever necessary.”

Thane’s favorite part of the conference was during the beginning.

“Chemical supply companies all set up displays and examples of their products. I got to walk around and see the cutting-edge instrumentation, glassware, and apparatuses that are currently used in the field. We also got free T-shirts and such from the representatives.”

Morgan enjoyed seeing and hearing other’s research projects.

“I felt like I was getting to experience what the science community outside of what I get to be a part of at Roanoke College is really like.”

Both Thane and Morgan highly recommended doing research.

Thane: “Research gives you experience that goes beyond the typical course work and labs that you take during the year. Personally, my research has trained me to be a better chemist, and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to perform research here at Roanoke College.”
Morgan: “It is a very intellectually rewarding process that helps you to learn valuable skills, like troubleshooting and critically evaluating problems, that will be beneficial for a future career.”

Lavender and Lydiah

Lydiah Mpyisi, ’16, and Lavender Micalo, ’18, are both students who were both brought up in Nairobi, Kenya where they witnessed first-hand many issues large cities can have such as overpopulation, insecurity and unemployment. Their experiences there helped motivate them into their current project. Lydiah and Lavender’s project was also inspired from Dr. Okeef and Dr. Bucher’s classes. Their project is titled “Greening Urban Slums and Promoting Community Health through Secondary Healthcare Interventions”.

After starting their project, Lydiah and Lavender attended the 7th Annual Millennial Campus Network Conference at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City in August 2015. At the conference, the two learned about the Wege Prize 2016 Competition, a yearly competition where undergraduate students design and propose a product, service, business/non-profit organization, or other solution to solve a problem that can help us transition from a linear economic model to a circular economic model.

Afterwards, Lydiah and Lavender formed Team KYCE (Kenyan Youths for Circular Economy) with students from three other colleges and entered the Wege Prize 2016 competition. Their plan for the project is to use already existing independent projects and integrate them in way that will create a self-sustaining system that will create employment, improve sanitation and hygiene, enhance the aesthetic value of the urban slums, and improve the overall health of the slum communities.

Team KYCE integrates four projects: The Community Cooker, Peepoo, Community Gardens, and Bio digesters. The Community Cooker uses trash, collected by local youth for income, to power a neighborhood cooking facility. Peepoo is a personal toilet that is used to convert human waste into organic fertilizer. Community gardens are pieces of land gardened by a group of people and are used to produce fruits, vegetables, and/or ornamentals. And lastly, Bio-digesters are structures in which organic matter is digested through anaerobic fermentation with the production of a burnable biogas and a nutrient-rich slurry.

“KYCE will work with the locals to set up waste collection and sorting sites. The waste will be sorted out into categories: biodegradable, recyclable, reusable, and combustible. The biodegradable waste will be used a raw material for a bio-digester that will be set up to generate liquid ethanol and biogas that can be used as a source of electricity to the roadside business owners during night hours to curb insecurity. The recyclable wastes will be sold to recycling companies and converted into useful materials that can be resold. The money obtained from the recycling companies will be used to pay the worker at the waste collection site. Wastes that can be re-used will be donated to orphanages or to other members of the slum communities who may be in need of those items. The combustible waste will be sold to the Community Cooker management crew to be used as a source of fuel for the Community Cooker. The payment from this transaction can be used to fuel the trucks used to transport the wastes to the collection sites. With this approach of waste management, we envision that we will be able to re-duce trash and dumpsites that are found in public places in most urban slums in developing countries. Additionally, we plan to work together with the locals to establish urban and/or community gardens to replace the dump sites. The garden will be used to grow food crops, which will not only provide food but will also provide a source of income to those who will be involved in planting and selling the food. To enhance the growth of food, KYCE will partner with Peepoople to obtain the organic fertilizer that Peepoo makes from human waste. Continued use of Peepoo will help to minimize the use of ‘flying toilets’ and defecating in public places. As a result, there will be improved sanitation in the urban slums.”

KYCE was named one of the five finalists in the Wege Prize competition and students will be travelling to Michigan in May to present their project to a panel of judges for the chance to win.

“Our hope is that our project will be chosen as the best. We are currently working on refining the details of the project and the presentation slides. We are happy that we got this opportunity to represent the good work that Roanoke College students, like us, are doing to impact communities in a positive way.”

Angela Montalvo, a senior majoring in Biology at Roanoke College, presented her research at the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology in Portland, Oregon this January. She worked with Dr. Jorgensen in the Biology department for her project. Angela first decided to do research during her freshmen year. She became interested working with crabs and lobsters by watching fellow lab partners work with them on underwater treadmills. She then became inspired to do her own research after seeing a recent alumni’s research on the project.
Angela studies the immune response of the American lobsters to an acute bacterial challenge.

“I inject lobsters with a bioengineered bacteria (it is resistant to two antibiotics and expresses green fluorescent protein) and trace where the bacteria lands in their body. I work to better understand how lobsters respond to a bacterial infection and try to determine which organs are best for clearing the bacteria from their hemolymph (blood).”

Angela really enjoyed working with Dr. Jorgensen.

“He pushed me to better myself in class, in the research lab, and as a person. I appreciated having someone I could bounce ideas off of and problem solve.”

One of Angela’s favorite parts about presenting was the questions she’s been asked about her project.

“My favorite one by far is “So, do you still eat lobster?”… the answer is a simple “yes!”. The questions that some ask generate discussion about things that could be done in the lab that would help us better understand what exactly is going on in the lobster. There is not much written about the immune response, which makes this data difficult to interpret at times. New projects have been started because of conversations held at my poster!”

Angela highly recommends students to get involved in research.

“Find an area that you are interested in and talk to a professor about it; there could be an opening in a lab that does similar research or start your own project as an independent study. Doing research taught me how to think through a difficult problem and learn from my mistakes.”

Nicholas Wright, a senior at Roanoke College, presented at the Experimental Biology conference in Boston in March of 2015. Nick’s project focused on understanding the amino acids responsible for binding interactions occurring between two subunits of a protein complex in the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. The project was a collaboration between the Roanoke College Chemistry department and the Department of Integrated Science and Technology at James Madison University. He decided to do research at Roanoke as soon as he found a research project he was interested in.
Nick really appreciated the ability to work with a professor while conducting research.

“Working with my advisor, Dr. Tim Johann, is a great experience. I always feel welcome to talk about an experiment, preparations in lab, techniques, etc. Having worked in labs elsewhere, this is something that is unique and special at Roanoke. In many labs you may rarely see the faculty principle investigator.”

Nick found that presenting can be one of the most challenging components of conducting research.

“You always have to know your audience and remember that the audience does not have the same level of understanding of the project as you do. Communicating science is the most important part of doing research, so it is critical that you prepare for presentations of your work.”

Despite the challenges, Nick still encourages getting involved as soon as possible.

“Research isn’t for everyone, but if you are interested in research and it turns out that you enjoy it, the earlier to start the better. Graduate programs value experience and competency very highly.”

Nick spent the Summer of 2015 doing research at the Scripps Institute, Florida and will be interviewing for graduate programs this spring.

Over the summer of 2015, Maya Shende, a senior at Roanoke College, decided to do a Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) at UC Davis in Davis, California. She worked in Justin Siegel’s lab in the Genome and Biomedical Sciences Center along with eight other undergraduates.

Maya participated in a ten week program that involved time in North Carolina, California, and Washington. During her first week, Maya went to Raleigh, North Carolina to learn about the Rosetta codebase, a molecular biology/chemistry codebase. Most of her time in the program, however, was spent at UC Davis working on her research project.

“My project involved protein-protein and protein-small molecule interfaces. I was looking at the contacts made between two docked proteins or a protein docked with a small molecule, to see if there was a way to quantify the number of contacts in order to further understanding of protein-protein and protein-small molecule interactions. All of this work was done computationally and all of the docking simulations were run using the Rosetta code.”

For the last week of the REU, Maya went to Seattle, Washington, where she and eight other undergraduates presented their research. One of Maya’s favorite parts of the summer was the conference in Seattle.

“RosettaCon was one of the coolest conferences I have ever been to. First, I was essentially surrounded by celebrities in the world of computational molecular biology and computational chemistry. I spent a week having intellectual conversations with some of the forerunners of the field and learning so much every day. Second, presenting my work to such esteemed scholars in the field was a great experience. Not only did I get an opportunity to better my presentation skills, but I also got great feedback about different routes I could take with my research.”

Maya’s advice to anyone interested in research is to start early.

“The more research you do as an undergraduate, the more you learn and more competitive you will be after graduating. Research is also a great way to learn things that you can’t learn in a classroom environment. It is a way to explore topics that are interesting to you, and apply what you learn in your classes to coming up with solutions to real problems!”

In April 2015, Lydia Delamatta, a recent Roanoke College graduate went to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Cheney, Washington. Lydia worked with the Public Affairs department on her project titled “Discrimination Stops Here: How Education Affects Gender Political Equality Across Democratic Nations”. Lydia became involved in research after meeting Dr. O’Keef at a professional development panel organized by the Public Affairs Society. The two then worked together on their project.
Lydia enjoyed her time working with Dr. O’Keef:

“Working one on one with a professor is honestly the best way to learn, and when working with Dr. O’Keef, you feel like your research matters. Working one on one, I was able to ask all the questions I needed to as well as develop a professional relationship. Dr. O’Keef, along with all of the Public Affairs professors, truly bend over backwards to help us cultivate our skills and thoughts, and to perfect our projects, and independent study projects help you recognize their dedication.”

When we asked what Lydia’s favorite part of the conference was she had a hard time choosing one but ultimately decided that presentation day was the best:

“Overall, in the span of only a few hours, I had made two professional connections, both because of the work I had put in with Dr. O’Keef in developing this quantitative research project. I was able to represent myself and Roanoke College at this conference, and I would like to think that on that day I honored both.”

To anyone who hasn’t done research or is thinking about it, Lydia says:

“Definitely get involved in the Undergraduate Research program at Roanoke College and Summer Scholars, and get involved with a professor you would like to work with and ask for their mentorship with a research project. If you have a great work ethic and you ask one of your professors about an undergraduate research project they will help you, either by mentoring you, or finding you the best professor for your topic. Seriously they really will.”