We are happy to announce that our first IGERT publication has been published.
The authors are Christopher J. Graves, Elizabeth J. Makrides, Victor T. Schmidt, Anne E. Giblin, Zoe G. Cardon and David M. Rand and they publiched research covering the "Functional Responses of Salt Marsh Microbial Communities to Long-Term Nutrient Enrichment" in Applied and Environmental Microbiology,May 2016, Vol. 82, no. 9, pp 2862-2871. doi:10.1128/AEM.03990-15.
IGERT trainee John Capano visited the Paul Cuffee Charter School twice during the fall of 2015.
With the focus on highschool students John Capano assisted with the lecture on muscle function and physiology, and helped run small group experiments testing how fatigue and temperature affect muscle contraction capacity and speed.
During his second visit he presented a lecture to discuss the evolution of the vertebrate body plan, which gave a quick overview of the evolutionary history and physiologies of fish, mammals, birds, lizards, and dinosaurs. In particular, the lecture focused on the variations in the cardiovascular system and how they related to performance and metabolic rates, which was the material being covered during that week. He also brought in fixed specimens of an alligator and axolotl to show students the variations in body plans and lend a more hands on feel to the material.
Scientific Experiments demonstrating the Natural World
During the spring of 2016, IGERT trainees Bianca Brown and Joaquin Nunez participated in outreach through SACNAS Educational Outreach Program: Brown Junior Researcher Program (BJRP) with the Boys & Girls Club of Providence.
This outreach program helps students in Elementary school conduct basic scientific experiments with the goal of bringing science to the community and get elementary school children excited about the natural world. The experiments ranged from extracted DNA from a strawberry using household items; making ice-cream using liquid nitrogen to observing flies and other insects under the microscope and denoted features only observable under magnifying lenses.
IGERT trainee Joaquin Nunez gave a guest lecture in “The Mitochondrial Genome in Population Genetics.” The lectures focus was on how the study of evolution is linked to environmental science and how this knowledge is used to address questions important to our community and better understand the causes and consequences of polluted environments.
Throughout the fall 2015 and spring 2016, IGERT trainee Bianca Brown engaged in outreach at the local Hope High School in Providence.
Bianca introduced the students to her undergraduate experience as well as IGERT and her graduate school projects. She demonstrated a frog dissection and and used the opportunity to not only discuss the anatomy of the frog, but to introduce the students to the array of career paths they could take if they were interested in organismal biology. Other topics of interest were space and dinosaurs, especially the extinct species megalodon.
Subscribe via RSS feed