One of the objectives of the CIS is to facilitate communication among faculty and students from different disciplines and foster integrative interactions. We are pleased to announce that summer micro-grants are again available as part of the Research Pod program. Four groups participated last year to a variety of successful outcomes. For example, the Copper Piratas have continued to meet through the academic year and the Soft and Active Matter group meeting resulted in a couple faculty collaborations, including equipment sharing and a jointly mentored summer student.
Summer 2025 Research Pods
Copper Piratas
Olson and Padilla-Benavides Labs
The intersection of crystallography and molecular biology is a fertile ground for scientific discovery and innovation. Our two labs—focused respectively on structural elucidation of macromolecules and functional analysis of biological molecules—have identified numerous synergies that can be harnessed through regular interdisciplinary interactions. Students from our groups are collaborating to crystalize a couple of transcriptional regulators that bind copper. To facilitate these interactions, we hold a series of monthly lab meetings over the summer, that will provide a structured forum for students to present their research, discuss scientific challenges, and troubleshoot experimental issues.
The Copper Piratas will meet once a month during the summer program for 90 minutes per session, dates and times TBD.
Energy Materials Research
Chen, Northrop, and Sher Labs
Researchers in the energy materials research group synthesize and study structure-property relationships of light-harvesting semiconductors. We specialize in synthesizing organic semiconductors that have promising light harvesting and charge transfer properties and in techniques that track excited carrier transport and elucidate material structural properties. We will meet and learn about the materials we are each studying and support one another based on our individual labs’ expertise. Our overarching goal is to develop collaborative projects for students.
The Energy Materials Research Group in meeting Friday, June 13, 10am in Hall-Atwater, and plans to meet once more in the summer and once a semester in the fall and spring, dates and times TBD.
Planetary Science
Gilmore, Greenwood, Herbst, Hughes, and Redfield Labs
The Planetary Science group is a long-standing interdisciplinary research group at Wesleyan. Their emphasis is the study of the origin of planetary systems, planetary geology and geochemistry and the application of remote sensing to terrestrial environmental problems. This work incorporates results from observational astronomy, planetary image analyses, and the laboratory and field studies of Earth analogues to other planets.
The Planetary Science group will meet once or twice during the summer program, date(s) and times TBD.
Robotics Researchers
Chang-Davidson Lab and the Textiles Hub
All of our research groups work with robotic machines, which creates overlap in research challenges. In the Chang-Davidson lab, the robot in question is the large 6-axis robot arm and 2-axis positioner in our wire arc additive manufacturing machine. It has its own programming language and control system, which are necessary for coordinating the arm movement and the automated welding machine. In the CoDES textiles hub, Profs. Sonia Roberts, Yuxuan Mei, and Yu Nong Khew all work on the Shima Seiki automated knitting machine, which has a proprietary control language as well as an open-source scripting language that they're trying to make accessible to people across the campus. We plan to meet and discuss progress and challenges on these two machines, as our students learn through the summer.
The Robotics Researchers group wil meet weekly during the summer program on Wednesdays at 2:00pm.
Soft and Active Matter @ Wes
McKensie-Smith, Mitchel, Roberts, Starr, and Voth Labs
Labs participating in The Soft and Active Matter @ Wes Collective are broadly interested in the emergent behaviors in systems which may be squishy, active, and/or far from equilibrium. Though our individual research focuses on diverse systems, from turbulent flows to insect swarms to migrating cells to molecular glasses, these diverse systems share the feature of exhibiting emergent properties, in which "the whole is more than the sum of its parts".
The Soft and Active Matter @ Wes Collective will hold a day-long symposium during the summer program, date and times TBD.
WEaSt
Coolon, Holmes, MacQueen and Weir Labs
The WEaSt ("Wesleyan yeast") meetings were initiated by MB&B professor Amy MacQueen in 2010 and for several years have met two to three times each summer for colleagueship and presentations by students. The meetings provide opportunities for students to present and receive feedback on their projects, gain exposure to new subjects and techniques, and become familiar with a larger community of researchers with overlapping goals and approaches.
The WEaSt group will hold three meetings during the summer program, dates and times TBD.
Wesleyan Cell/Dev
Johnson, Mitchel, and Tezak Labs
The Mitchel, Tezak, and Johnson labs are planning to have multiple meetings over the summer around their shared interests in cellular and developmental biology. We are going to focus on having our undergrads and grad students presenting their work in a different setting than usual -- we'll encourage presentations that are less polished but more focused on the question they're addressing and discussing the data in detail. In addition to sharing data and getting feedback, another goal of this collaborative meeting is to foster a stronger sense of departmental community, including getting to know who’s around, who works on what, and who the students might approach for advice about protocols, techniques, or analysis.
The Cell/Dev group plans to meet every-other-week, dates and times TBD.