Undergraduates Do Research

"We want to provide students the kinds of opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't get," he says. Ahern gets to do so, as the director of OSU's Summer Undergraduate Research Program, which has had 278 students participate in over the past eight years. Of the 36 this year, their interests included chicken-egg hatchability, various aspects of cancer, knee injuries, e coli, and sexual behavior of sheep.

The overall Principal Investigator on the grant, Dan Arp, just got word of "another four years" of funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

This past summer, eleven of the participants had additional Research Office URISC funding for their 11-week experiences. Most were OSU students, yet Ahern likes to note that "two students came to us from Stanford." At least one participant was the first in the family to attend college, and inspired by this experience, "he will likely go on to graduate school," Ahern says.

While the focus is on biological sciences, Ahern says one student was "a mechanical engineering major, of all things." Ashley Swander studied knee injuries in young women, who are more prone to ACL tears that are men. "Her hypothesis was that boys and girls before puberty land from falls differently. It appears she's found that the mechanics — how you turn, where you make contact — is gender-specific. Fascinating."

Gautam Mankaney and Tari Tan were selected as the grand prize winners of this year’s Undergraduate Research symposium. Video-streamed presentations of the participating students as well as their PowerPoint slides are available on the 2006 symposium website at http://oregonstate.edu/dept/biochem/hhmi/undergradresearch/2006/index.html .

Tari Tan described her two experiences in HHMRI with enthusiasm: “It's definitely the best summer job for an undergraduate - I worked independently, and could do research full time! I got so much better understanding than when you try to do work between classes. It's a great platform to get so much experience, while on campus and staying in my apartment, and not having to worry about another job to support myself. I was fortunate enough to be in the HHMI program two summers in a row, for different projects, the first one with funding was from URISC. I'm pre-med and had been thinking of pediatrics, but working in Fred Stormshak's lab, I loved surgery! So now I'm thinking of going into ob/gyn, where I can still work with mothers and babies and yet do some surgery. I'm applying for an internship at a hospital in South India for this summer.”