Hughes Travel Grants send academic stars into the public sphere

Like a sports team taking its game on the road, Bates’ best and brightest academic stars take their research into the public sphere each year. To support this academic barnstorming, Bates provides various forms of funding, such as the annual Hughes Student Travel Grants.

Funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the awards give students the chance to attend regional, national and international scholarly meetings in the natural sciences, mathematics, health, psychology, or science and mathematics education.

At these gatherings, Bates students present and defend their research while meeting and learning from top scholars in their fields.

For a budding scholar, developing an articulate public voice is nothing short of a requirement. If you can’t present your research, whether to fellow scholars or your roommate, “then your work is simply less valuable,” says Professor of Biology Will Ambrose.

Winners of 2008-09 Hughes Student Travel Grants

Amod Basnet ’11 and Justin HoShue ’09 attended the October 2008 Symposium on Undergraduate Research in Rochester, N.Y., to present their poster on “Low Frequency Fluctuation in the Multi-mode Regime of Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser with Optical Feedback.” Faculty mentor: Professor of Physics Hong Lin.

Thomas Broge ’09 will attend, April 18-22, 2009, the American Physiological Society’s Experimental Biology meeting in New Orleans, La., to present his research poster entitled “Moderate Hyperoxia Inhibits Glomus Cell Proliferation in the Carotid Body of Neonatal Rats.” Faculty adviser: Assistant Professor of Biology Ryan Bavis.

Cora Chisholm ’10 and Ngoc Pham ’10 will attend, July 12-15, 2009, the 21st International Symposium on Chirality in Breckenridge, Colo., to present the poster entitled “Calix[4]resorcinarenes and Cationic Cyclodextrins as Water-Soluble Enantioselective NMR Shift Reagents.” Faculty adviser: Charles A. Dana Professor of Chemistry Thomas Wenzel.

Miranda Gallo ’09 attended the February 2009 Molluscan Neuroscience Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to present her poster on “Characterization of a Novel GluR5/6/7-immunoreactive Cell Group in the Buccal Ganglia of the Pond Snail, Helisoma trivolvis.” Faculty adviser: Associate Professor of Biology Nancy Kleckner.

Owen Harris ’08 attended the November 2008 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C., to present his senior research in a poster entitled “The CB1 Antagonist Rimonabant is Mono-and Adjunctively Therapeutic in an Animal Model of Parkinson’s Disease without Producing or Enhancing Dyskinesia.” Faculty adviser: Professor of Psychology John Kelsey.

Benjamin Levin ’09 attended the March 2009 37th Annual Benthic Ecology Meeting in Corpus Christi, Texas, to present his research poster, “Geographic Variation in Growth of Greenland Smoothcockle.” Faculty adviser: Professor of Biology William Ambrose.

Gillian Leibach ’09 will attend, April 22-25, 2009, the Society of Behavioral Medicine Annual Conference in Montreal, Canada, to present her senior thesis poster, “Body Esteem and Disordered Eating Among Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus: Pump versus Injection Users.” Faculty mentors: Psychology lecturer Susan Langdon and Professor of Psychology Kathryn Low.

Caitlin McMahon ’09 attended the March 2009 37th Annual Benthic Ecology Meeting in Corpus Christi, Texas, to present her poster entitled “Long- and Short-Term Effects of Baitworm Digging on the Feeding Behavior of Ring-Billed Gulls on Mudflats in Maine.” Faculty adviser: Professor of Biology William Ambrose.

Kristen Meyers ’09 and Kristen Young ’09 will attend, April 18-22, 2009, the American Physiological Society’s Experimental Biology meeting to present her research in a poster entitled “Exercise Performance in Moderate Hypoxia in Rats with Impaired Carotid Bodies.” Faculty adviser: Assistant Professor of Biology Ryan Bavis.

Jeremy Muench ’10 attended the January 2009 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, D.C., to present his poster, “Partitions-in-a Box.” Faculty adviser: Assistant Professor of Mathematics Pallavi Jayawant.

Dana Oster ’09 attended the March 2009 Geological Society of America’s Northeastern Section Meeting in Portland, Maine, and the April 2009 Geological Society of Maine’s spring meeting at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, to present her research poster, “Mapping Short-Term Barrier Beach Processes to Model Transgressional Shore Lines in 2100 from Sea Level Rise.” Last fall, Oster won the $500 first prize at the University of Maine’s October 2008 Climate Change 21 Forum. Faculty adviser: Professor of Geology Michael Retelle.

Elizabeth Rogers ’09 will attend, June 24-28, 2009, the 89th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to present her research on “Black-legged Ticks (Ixodes scapulan’s) Occurrence, Burdens of Small Mammals, and Infection Rates by Borrilia burgdorferi in Southwestern Maine.” Faculty adviser: Visiting Professor of Biology Ronald Barry.

Stuart Ryan ’09 attended the March 2009 37th Annual Benthic Ecology Meeting in Corpus Christi, Texas, to present his poster, “Effect of the Polar Front on Growth Rates of the Hairy Cockle Clinocardium ciliatum.” Faculty adviser: Professor of Biology William Ambrose.

Gregory Sousa ’09 attended November 2008 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C., to present his senior thesis research poster, “Distribution and Impact of Neuropeptide F (NPF) within the Buccal Feeding Circuitry of the Pond Snail, Helisoma trivolvis.” Faculty adviser: Associate Professor of Biology Nancy Kleckner.

Madeline White ’09 attended the January 2009 Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., to give a presentation on her senior thesis research entitled “Construction of a Computational Stellar Model.” Faculty adviser: Professor of Physics Eric Wollman.

Kristen Young ’09 will attend, April 18-22, 2009. the American Physiological Society’s Experimental Biology meeting to give present her poster, “Chronic Hyperoxia Alters the Early and Late Phases of the Hypoxic Ventilatory Responses in Neonatal Rates.” Faculty adviser: Assistant Professor of Biology Ryan Bavis.

-H. Jay Burns, Office of Communications and Media Relations