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Showing posts from July, 2019

Development of a New HIV Treatment

Yu Zhang is a Senior double majoring in Biology and Chemistry. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. In NCUR conference, I presented my research on the development of a new HIV treatment. I was very happy to talk with many scholars who were also dedicated in natural science research. According to the previous report, over 170 million people infected worldwide, the hepatitis C virus (HCV) represents a significant public health burden. The primary mode of transmission for HCV is via exposure to infected blood, including transfusions from infected donors, and through intravenous use of illicit drugs. Although a minority of all HCV infections will spontaneously resolve without any clinical outcome, an estimated 80% of cases will progress into chronic hepatitis. The need for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV), has provided considerable impetus for the development of new classes of antiviral drug

What I Learned Conducting and Presenting Linguistic Research

Seaira Lett is a Sophomore pursuing a joint major in Spanish and Linguistics. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Last semester (Fall 2018), students in Linguistics 485: Field Methods were given the amazing opportunity to conduct linguistic interviews with a speaker of the Bantu language Lulogooli, an understudied language. We learned about IRB procedures and requirements, expectations for research involving human subjects, and how to use elicitation sessions to study the syntax and morphology of a language that you aren’t familiar with. 

Bringing Color to the White Terror

 Ramsey Baden  is a senior majoring in English and Creative  Writing . He was awarded a Spring 2019 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on the Taiwanese White Terror under Dr. Joonna Trapp.  There are few experiences as isolating as being separated from your home. When I started college, I began realizing just how much I missed my home in Taiwan. I began devoting massive amounts of energy to my new quest: I was to find out what it meant to be Taiwanese-American. It was a scheme that became daunting when I realized I had started just a moment too late, and that I was already physically removed from the island that in many ways feels more like home than anywhere else on this planet.

Don’t be Afraid to Ask

Ryan  McCann  is a junior who majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He was awarded a Spring 2019 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on experimental mouse tissue under Dr. David Weinshenker. When reading through literature on PubMed, you rarely see a research paper that has no acknowledgments. Most projects need multiple people putting their time and energy into producing the best results possible. Thus, there are often many names included in the acknowledgements, because the main authors needed assistance. I recently ran into some difficulties with my own project and realized just how important it is to work with other members of the research community. For the past two years, I have been fortunate to be a research assistant in the  Weinshenker Laboratory ( http://genetics.emory.edu/research/weinshenker/ ). Working with Dr. Weinshenker has been an amazing experience. I have been assigned to multiple projects, and exposed to different types of expe