Summer Program 2024

Named Fellowships

2024 Siegel Fellow: Haig Murgio
2024 Sonnenblick Fellows: Aiden Parente, Anand Parikh

Summer Science Symposium

The 2024 Summer Science Symposium was held Friday, July 26, 2024.

Oral Presentations 9:30am-10:45am, Shanklin 107
- Lois Amponsah (Taylor), Gaile Ng (Northrop), Patrick Schechtman-Taylor (Northrop, Jimenez-Hoyos), Hudson Wang (Feng), Max Levin (Redfield), Owen Dunton (Starr)
Prize Presentations and Keynote Address 12pm-1:30pm, Exley 150
- The Twists and Turns of Investigating DNA, Proteins and other molecules: Lessons learned along the way,Ishita Mukerji, Fisk Professor of Natural Sciences
Poster Session 1:30pm-3:15pm, Exley Lobby
- 155 posters were presented as part of our annual poster session

Scientific Imaging Prize

Judges Phil Arevalo, Amy MacQueen, Renee Sher

1st Place, Sofia Rinaldi

This image depicts the distribution of stars at four consecutive snapshots (i.e. points in the evolution, moving left to right with time) of one of the four simulated galaxies I used in my project. The star particles are weighted by their "dispersion probability," which corresponds to how messy/randomly-oriented (red) or how organized/coherently-rotational (blue) their movement within the galaxy is. The top row depicts all the stars in the galaxy, while the bottom shows only the youngest stars (age < 200 Myr).

This image is interesting within the scope of my project because we expect galaxies to become more rotation-dominated (i.e more blue than red in these images) as the galaxy evolves, especially within the youngest stars – a trend that we do see in the first three snapshots. However, between the third and fourth snapshot, there appears to be a spontaneous event (such as a merger) which disturbs the established ordered motion, leaving behind a very disorganized (red) galaxy once again.

Images were created using FIREStudio (Gurvich, A. B. 2022).

2nd Place, Lizzy Brandt

This image was captured on a fluorescent microscope during the collision of two cell monolayers. Each monolayer expresses a different fluorescent nuclear protein, which is then captured through channels on the microscope. The channels are layered on top of each other in order to generate this image.

This image is important to my project because it demonstrates the significance of high concentration EDTA treatment. The bright white edges of the cells indicate cell junction disruption due to the EDTA. The green, control cells, were significantly more affected by the treatment than magenta, rab cells. This image also displays a rare mixing of monolayers, most likely because of the large decrease in collective cell behavior and migration.

2nd Place, Casey Gao

This image represents a 1080 particle crystal of Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) with its energy to reduce the contribution of thermal vibrations. The crystal was generated using a machine-learned potential that was simulated with the LAMMPS package and visualized in OVITO.

GST is a phase change material, with many applications in computer memory applications due to its rapid phase transitions and distinct electrical properties. Through performing numerous simulations, we find these spontaneously generated crystals form a wide variety of thermodynamic properties, namely density. To answer this, we examined the defects that form in the crystal.

We performed a 3D Voronoi tessellation on the energy minimized configurations, which creates a cell around each atom and classifies neighbours based on atoms that share cell faces. In our configurations, we found that each volume of cell corresponds to a type of defect (atoms with missing neighbours).

To gain a better understanding of this classification, we visualized these cells by creating these cells in OVITO and colour coding them based on its volume. We can see the large cell volume forms a cavity (the red cells), and by looking at individual cells, we are able to see the particles that cause each defect. Through using this visualization, we are able to create a system to classify each defect by the Voronoi cell volume.

Using this classification, we found a volume to classify the larger cavities, which is correlated to the density of each crystal. This provides the basis for future work that examines how defects facilitate the rearrangement of atoms in the crystal to allow for phase transitions and how it impacts the dielectric properties.

Maureen Snow Poster Prize

for excellence in Science Communication
Judges Stef Dineen, Mary Readinger, Shana Sperry

1st Place, Macy Thompson

2nd Place, Venus Morroquin

3rd Place, Felix Berliner

Runners-up, Ethan Chu and Niko Ramirez

Honorable Mentions
Sam Aronow	Catherine Auerbach
Lizzy Brandt	Jasmine Fridman
Iris Jiang	Amara Leazer
Caroline Mancini	Gaile Ng
Zoe Todd	Francisca Wijaya

Scenes from the Poster Session

Richik Acharya '27, Kottos lab, Phsyics

Leigh Allen '25, Shusterman lab, Psychology

Melissa Arenas '25, Coolon lab, Biology

Zainab Aweda '25, Melón lab, Neuroscience & Behavior

Yenta Bick '26, Van Abel group, Math

Antonio Cabrera '26, Singer lab, Biology

Francesca Carnovale '27, Redfield lab, Astronomy, with Seth Redfield

Dominck Dadak '26, Zimmeck lab, Computer Science

Kolby Durocher '25, Quintman group, QAC

Raya Goulding '26, Kurtz lab, Psychology

Veronica Hearne '25, Kim lab, Psychology

Junior Fellows Sam Higgins (Middletown High School) and JP Lechoiwitz (Xavier High School), Thayer lab, College of Integrative Sciences, with Kelly Thayer