Students working on summer research

Cornell has a tradition of involving students in research over the summer, both on campus and off. Here is a look at some of the research students are performing this year.

Two Cornell College geology majors have been awarded summer Research Experience for Undergraduates fellowships by the National Science Foundation, the first time two Cornell geology students have won that honor in the same year.

• James Ostrander will be at the University of Minnesota working with with Katsumi Matsumoto, a professor of geology at the University of Minnesota who conducts research on carbon cycles and climate change.
• Ellen Shank will be at the Carnegie Institute working at the Geophysics Undergraduate Research Program through NASA, and will study the optical properties of minerals and how they can be used to interpret the cooling history of planets and asteroids.
• Andrew Roers will participate in a research internship with the IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering department at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
• Lizzie Greaves will be the Rogers Fellow through Cornell Fellows program at the University of South Carolina Marine Lab and will be studying sediment deposition in coastal wetlands.  The fellowship was coordinated by John Mark Dean ’58, former head of the South Carolina marine lab.
• Biology professor Barbara Christie-Pope, together with Cornell student Federica Otalora-Roselli, will spend two months this summer studying how a protein called TRPM7 is involved in differentiation of dopamine-producing neurons.
• Sean McKenna was one of a dozen students selected for the Space Astronomy Summer Program at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The Space Telescope Science Institute is the scientific operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope and for the future James Webb Space Telescope.
• Suzannah Wood will intern with Joyce Guzik ’82 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory through the  Cornell Fellows Program.
• Andy Roth who is working with Marty Condon this summer, and in June will present a poster about his research at the annual Evolution Meetings, held in Norman, Okla. Roth will be presenting his poster in the company of seasoned researchers, including graduate  students, post doctoral researchers and professors).
• Lauren Dingle is doing research in Suriname with Condon, supported by Condon’s NSF grant.
• Kara Middleton is carrying out research on sunflower flies in collaboration with Andrew Forbes (University of Iowa) and Condon. Middleton research is funded by the University of Iowa. Our research builds on work done by Heather Axen ’06.

Professors are also working with students to do research. Professors doing student-assisted research this summer include Craig Tepper (biology), Brian Nowak-Thompson (biology and chemistry), Charley Liberko (chemistry), Marty Condon (biology), Emily Walsh (geology), Andy McCollum (biology), Kara Beauchamp (physics), Craig Teague (chemistry) Melinda Green (psychology), Derin Sherman (physics), David Yamanishi (politics), and Rhawn Denniston (geology).