Meet Sarah,
She is an Interdisciplinary Studies major, an URA Scholar and a Linehan Scholar. Her future pursuits would include working alongside anthropologists as they complete research and photograph their work to be included in ethnographies, articles, and other publications as a means of providing a more concrete way for the reader to connect to the material they are reading about. She also thinks that photography coupled with anthropology -or any form of research- can also benefit the public because photographs can often speak to a wider demographic range than can scientific writing.

Her research will assist in documenting the ecological disaster that occurred on November 5th, 2015 in Mariana, Brazil. She photographed the effects of this disaster on the communities of the Rio Doce Valley (in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais). She is currently editing the photos as well as transcribing and translating interviews with her partner Andrés Camacho '15. She is also collaborating with Dr. Bryan McCann, a Professor at Georgetown University who is gathering an international group of scholars to study the historical background of the area and the disaster’s current environmental and social repercussions on the Rio Doce valley. This November, both Sarah and Andrés will be presenting their work at a conference (Dr.McCann & others) are organizing at Georgetown titled "Brazil’s Rio Doce Disaster: the History and Consequences of a Man-made Environmental Disaster".

Read more about her research project here...

Meet Nick,
He is a Biochemistry major and a URA Scholar. He is a real proponent in developing future researchers. He advises, "If you are really interested in the work you are doing and want the project to succeed, then observing and looking into work that others have done in your field is a truly great thing to do. It will give you great insight not only on your own project, but also on the general knowledge associated with the field in which you are working." Nicholas would ultimately like to become a biomedical researcher to assist on developing cures and vaccines for infectious diseases. 

His research will explore the microscopic world of Nanoscience. Electrochemical aptamer-based (E-AB) sensors can be utilized to detect a multitude of different target molecules in a sample. Current methods, however, are limited to ensemble measurements of a large number of target molecules. Conversely, specific single molecule sensing at low detection limits represents a highly sensitive method of detection of analytes in a sample. In this project, I aim to detect Immunoglobulin E (IgE), a protein that is involved with the immune response in the human body, with specific single molecule sensitivity. 

Read more about his research project here...