The College of Science has chosen six students to receive this year’s CoS undergraduate summer research stipends. The selected students, nominated by Illinois Tech faculty, will each earn $5,000 for 10 weeks of research with Illinois Tech faculty members this summer. The stipends are funded primarily by the college’s board and alumni.
Robert Ellis, associate dean for the College of Science, said “This stipend provides highly motivated students a valuable opportunity to pursue a research project with their research mentors, preparing them for a future graduate program or scientific work in industry or government.”
Andrew Adams (COM 3rd year) and Matthew Shapiro, associate professor of political science, will identify intentional and unintentional biases against the public’s access to science and assess the extent to which science content is politicized in the media.
Idris Ayantoye (MBB 5th year) and Rong Wang, professor of chemistry, will study the expression of the protein collagen in pelvic floor connective tissues in diabetic and non-diabetic patients.
Sana Basheer (BIOL 3rd year) and Jialing Xiang, professor of biology, will map the presence and location of the BaxΔ2 gene, which produces a protein causing cell death, in the connective tissue of various organs to better understand the body’s inherent defenses against cancer.
Noah Grudowski (AMAT 4th year) and Fred Hickernell, professor of applied mathematics, will explore the effectiveness of automatic Monte Carlo algorithms for an important class of statistical inference problems.
Paolo Alejandro Ratti Tamayo (CS 4th year) and Boris Glavic, assistant professor of computer science, will work on altering existing relational data models that encode data uncertainty to provide more detailed uncertainty information.
Zachary Sierzega (PHYS 3rd year) and Jeff Wereszczynski, assistant professor of physics, will perform a computational study of how ion concentrations affect the supercoiling of DNA to better understand DNA compacting, transcription, and gene expression in varying environments.