Student Researchers You May Know

October 21, 2015

Name: Anmol Singh ’17

Hometown: New Delhi, India

Major: Computer Science and Engineering; Management for Engineers
Field of research: National debt
How you got involved: Being a Presidential Fellow, I was looking for a different field of research from Computer Science when my CS professor went on sabbatical for a semester. That’s when I got reunited with my MGMT 200 (Intro to Accounting) professor, Curtis Nicholls, and decided to pursue this project that he had been hoping to do for some time.
Most fascinating thing you have learned: The United States is spending about six percent (approximately $230 billion) of its total federal budget, just to pay interest on its national debt!
Name: Christopher Schwake ’16
Hometown: Middletown, N.J.
Major: Cell biology/ biochemistry
Field of research: Molecular Virology
 
How you got involved: As a sophomore I took the class Phage Hunters, which introduced me to virology research. I became very interested in research on viruses and inquired with Dr. Pizzorno, one of the Phage Hunters professors, about researching in her lab. Her lab studies a honey bee virus called the deformed wing virus. Fortunately, she agreed and I’ve been working with her for almost two years now.
Most fascinating thing you have learned: There’s this technique called Cryo-Electron Microscopy that resolves structures at cryogenic temperatures and uses a computer algorithm to combine the hundreds of different pictures taken of the virus to compose a detailed structure. We currently have a picture in our lab of the deformed wing virus that is resolved to about seven angstroms, or 0.7 billionths of a meter!
Name: Alyssa Benjamin ’17
Hometown: Dunedin, Fla.
Major: Biology 
Field of research: Mechanical Properties of Heart Tissues
 
How you got involved: Through the Presidential Fellow Scholarship Program
 
Most fascinating thing you have learned: A lot of my research is trial and error while developing confocal imaging techniques for E.D. 12.5 mouse hearts. I have learned that you may not succeed at first. With research the end goal is not always the most important thing, it is what you learn along the way.
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