Recipients of summer research support, 2012-2013

Each summer, undergraduate students stick around to do intensive research with their faculty mentors. Some of those students receive financial support from department and college scholarships and awards.

Read about the Summer scholarship recipients' research.

Matt Wallace (Gabriele Lab)

The thing that Matt Wallace most likes about doing research in Dr Mark Gabriele’s lab is the experience outside of class. “I feel like I am at the forefront, which is really cool,” he says. “We just got back from a National conference and all the scientists I talked to were really surprised that undergrads were doing this kind of work. Not many schools have that kind of opportunity.” More ...

Allison Scire (Griscom Lab)

When Allison Scire came to JMU as a freshman, she was already thinking about doing research.  She knew she wanted to do something with biomedical research at college, and one of the reasons she chose JMU was because she knew she would have more opportunity to do research than if she went to a larger institution. More ...

Kelsey Wilson-Henjum (Seifert Lab)

Kelsey Wilson-Henjum has lost count of how many compounds she has tested in the last two years, but she does know that she’s looked at more than 20 for her honors thesis project alone.

Kelsey is working on an antimicrobial project with Dr Kyle Seifert and two chemistry professors who synthesize antimicrobial compounds called amphiphiles. More ...

Miranda Sowder (Bechtel Lab)

Miranda Sowder has spent some long hours in the lab, doing two- or three-day long time series analyses of cell cultures, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

She has spent four semesters and one summer working in Dr Marta Bechtel’s lab on a project trying to artificially engineer a cornea (the clear covering on the front of the eye). More ...

Sarah Kavianpour (Gabriele Lab)

Sarah has spent four years in Dr Gabriele's lab working on the establishment of neural patterns in the brain that are associated with hearing in mice and rats. This reasearch can be used to better understand and treat developmental hearing disorders in humans. More ...

Maureen Filak (Halsell Lab)

Maureen Filak's honors thesis won the Phi Kappa Phi Honors Thesis Award in 2010. Her research focused on the role of a protein called RhoA in neural development in fruitfly embryos. The protein and the developmental processes, which are conserved in humans, are relevant to diseases like spina bifida. More ...

Devon Flaherty (Griscom Lab)

Devon Flaherty has spent three years up to his ears in research. As well as working on two projects with Dr Heather Griscom in the Biology Department, he has also worked on a collaborative project with Dr Kevin Minbiole (Chemistry) and Dr Reid Harris (Biology). More ...

Sarah Fargis (Bannigan Lab)

Sarah Fargis got involved in undergraduate research in her freshman year. She uses the confocal laser scanning microscope to study cell division in living plants. More ...

Jill Myers (Harris Lab)

Jill Myers' dream scenario is to do collaborative research with scholars from different disciplines to solve disease-based conservation problems.  She is working an a project that combines mathematical modeling and a fungal pathogen that has decimated amphibian populations worldwide. More ...