Research Experience: "This year, I have been working with Dr. Henry Mach, one of the department’s visiting nuclear structure physicists. During the fall semester, several other students and I attended seminar meetings with dr. Mach in order to learn the basic concepts of nuclear physics and nuclear experimentation. This semester, I have been working on analyzing the decay of 63Mn to the heavy iron isotope 63Fe. Heavy iron isotopes are very important because they are the starting nucleus for the astrophysical r-process in which nuclei heavier than iron are formed. Using data gathered at the ISOLDE facility in CERN, we have been able to determine the energy level scheme for the decay, as well as the intensities for each level. Now we are working on determining the lifetimes of these levels as well as verifying work done on the other heavy iron isotopes. Soon we hope to submit a paper detailing our results from the analysis."

Research Experience: "I am in the process of getting a grant to do research in the Caribbean and I am working with an anthropology professor to get a published review of a book about the Caribbean."

Research Experience: "I am volunteering in the Family Studies Department, learning about and interacting with the students working on the Me and My Family Project, which is currently interviewing families with the goal to help establish a more constructive manner of communication between parents and their adolescent children and between the parents themselves."

Research Experience: "My research was conducted at the University of Guam Marine Laboratory. We surveyed marine sponges for bacterial growth to determine if any new bacterial colonies provide novel pharmaceutical benefits. I was part of the early stages of the research, conducting DNA assays on the bacterium collected in order to determine if it was a new bacterial species or if it had been studied before."

Research Experience: "This past summer 2007 I participated in an anthropology expedition in India coordinated by the Himalayan Health Exchange. I traveled through the Himalayas while studying many aspects about the geographical location as well as the Indo-Tibetan populations’ culture, medicine, society, religion, and history. I conducted individual research on the birthing practices of the Tibetan community in Spiti. I studied how the birthing process for Tibetan Buddhists results in gender equality and cosmic interdependence. I presented this research at the undergraduate poster session at the annual meeting of the American Association of Anthropology. This past summer I also started working as a research assistant for Professor Richman from the institute of Latino Studies and transcribing her ethnographic data."

Research Experience: "During my research my experience with the biochemistry department, I was involved with the extraction of glycosphingolipids from acetone dried bovine BRBC. The results which at first were compared and analyzed in the lab were later sent to other labs for further research."

Research Experience: "At Notre Dame I investigated nanoparticle dispersion properties in selected solvents. The aim of the research was to optimize the efficiency of semiconductor nanoparticles in light-harvesting photochemical reactions. Current progress of research is focused on fabrication of solar cells using the nanoparticles and testing for quantitative results.

At Medical University of Ohio Toledo, OH I conducted research work involving polymerase chain reaction experiments in lung cancer susceptibility study, also worked with cell culture growth, harvesting and preparing specific experiments testing effects of different agents on certain target."

Research Experience: "Tissue hypoxia in vertebrates can result from the depletion of environmental oxygen, the impairment of oxygen uptake and delivery, or the insufficiency of oxygen uptake and delivery to meet tissue demands. While hypoxia can be detrimental to vertebrate function, a few tissues, containing oxygen-sensing chemoreceptors, are designed to initiate proper homeostatic responses when oxygen tension falls. These oxygen-sensing chemoreceptors elicit important cardiorespiratory reflexes in all vertebrates, but there has yet to be a consensus on the identification of this oxygen sensing mechanism."

Research Experience: "My psychology research experience was divided over two labs, each of which I spent a year in. In a Spatial Cognition psychology lab, I assisted with the collection of data concerning reference frames, directional terms, and human spatial understanding. In the second, a Dynamic Systems lab, I joined a professor, two graduate students, and a fellow undergrad to collect model data on participants’ responses to high-charged emotional stimuli. In this lab, we collected self survey, EMG, ECG, GSR, heart rate and blood pressure responses and modeled them over real time."

210 LaFortune Notre Dame, IN 46556 574.631.6841 574.631.3162 msps@nd.edu