Spotlights

Chung-Hao Lee

Mentor Spotlight

Department/Organization: 
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Years at OU: 
3
How did you first get interested in doing research?

We didn’t have such a undergraduate research program when I did my BS at National Taiwan University (NTU), but I fell in love with finite element modeling and structure mechanics analysis when I took graduate-level courses during my senior year at NTU. The passion of my later MS thesis adviser about his teaching and research really inspired me for pursuing the Master’s degree, and then, the 2-year MS study opened the door for me to exploring new research opportunities in structural optimal design. I didn’t make my mind to further study my PhD at the time when I graduated from NTU, and I even hesitated to take this challenging action. After 2-year military service, I was working in industry for Tai-Power company for about 6 months. That was the time I  decided to come to the US for conducting advanced, cutting-edge research, which is what I liked and am continuously enjoy doing.

Is there someone who has been a great mentor to you? What about that person made him/her an effective mentor?

Like many other successful faculty, I did not have a particular mentor, walking me through the process of being an effective mentor. Instead, I learned a lot by observing how my PhD adviser and postdoctoral supervisor manage their lab. On the one hand, my PhD adviser (Dr. Jiun-Shyan Chen now at UCSD) is very rigorous, self-disciplined, and hard-working in terms of doing research. I learned how to write technical papers to a high-quality journal as well as conducting novel and rigorous research in Numerical Methods and Computational Mechanics. However, I also observed that some of our lab members sometimes lost self-motivation because our adviser was pushing us so hard, which may not be a good model for mentoring American students. On the other hand, my postdoctoral supervisor (Dr. Michael Sacks at UT Austin) is always giving overall big picture of the research project and he is very good at inspiring his research folks. He does not push hard on students or postdocs, giving a little bit more freedom but sometimes less instructive. I learned a lot about how to run experiments in a tissue wet lab as well as working with undergraduate and graduate students. I would say I am setting up my own mentoring model at OU based on my experience and learning at these 2 labs, kind of in between these two totally different styles.

What advice do you have for undergraduates who are interested in doing research or creative scholarship in your field?

Even though I only had samples collected in my first year at OU, I have been enjoying working with many talented undergraduates from various engineering disciplines, which significantly helped quickly establish my lab in the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. The advice I would like to offer to UG students is trying to get started in UG research as early as possible, so that they could develop new skills and gain as much unique experience as possible during doing research in one single lab or in various research labs. If the students envision going to graduate school would be his/her next career goal, beginning his/her research journey would be extremely beneficial. (But at the same time, not sacrificing the GPA.)

What is your favorite part about mentoring undergraduates?

Our undergraduates are very good at hands-on projects and they are all very motivated to conduct biomechanics research in my lab. I also encourage my students to conduct good research and grab all possible opportunities to make presentations to general public and/or scientific societies. OU and the State of Oklahoma many great venues for this, such as C2C Summer and Spring Symposia, OU-OUHSC Biomedical Engineering Symposium, Undergraduate Research Day, AIAA/ASME Oklahoma Symposium and Research Day at the Capitol.

What do you find to be the most challenging part of mentoring undergraduates? Do you have any strategies that have helped you?

The most challenging part of mentoring students (not necessarily just UG’s) to me is to keep both of us on the same page and to maintain the same level of common goal(s) through effective and clear communication. The working style difference is another aspect I tried very hard to cope with. I think having regular individual meeting to discuss about his/her research progress as well as lab group meeting to implicitly provide peer pressure help to keep track of how everybody does in the group. Of course, there also comes with an issue of my own time management for having these research meetings in an effective way.

Jessica Ames

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Chemical Biosciences
Research Mentor: 
Christina Bourne
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

During my junior and senior years at OU, I worked in Dr. Christina Bourne’s Chemistry/Biochemistry lab. Dr. Bourne’s lab studies toxin-antitoxin systems. TA systems, as they are often called, are made of proteins and/or RNA and are non-secreted; they stay within the cell. TA systems offer cells a mechanism of regulation in stressful environments. These stressors – such as extreme temperature, nutrient starvation, or antibiotic tolerance – allow the toxin to become free from its partner antitoxin. The toxin can then disrupt important cellular processes such as transcription, translation, and replication.My role in this project focused on further characterizing one such toxin. I determined the binding kinetics between the toxin and its antitoxin and further studied its role in inhibiting DNA Gyrase – an enzyme crucial for DNA replication. Additionally, I was able to investigate a new function of this toxin after the lab discovered it was capable of cleaving DNA. Investigating this nuclease function involved identifying key residues thought to be involved in the function and mutating them to another, non-reactive residue. The further characterization of this toxin was crucial for better understating how these TA systems function in bacteria, and it raised questions regarding the current annotations of TA systems

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

Undergraduate research has taught me more lessons than I could have ever imagined (inside of the lab and out!), and I’m really excited about the doors it has opened for me. If I had to distill what I’ve learned to a few key points, they’d be as follows:1. Good mentors are key.Find a mentor who not only is doing research that you are interested in, but one who is also interested in your growth and development as a scientist. Just as important as research interests aligning is personalities meshing. Find a supervisor who you get along with! With this being said, it’s important to do your homework on this matter. Talk to other students who have worked with a research supervisor to see if the lab would be a good fit for you.2. Be engaged and take ownership of your project.In your first research project, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed really quickly. Every day, you’ll be learning new words, skills, and techniques. Ask questions when you don’t understand things or when you get stuck, talk to more experienced lab members, and make an effort to be involved in lab related activities (presenting at group meetings or even a conference!). It is important to note, though, that managing classwork and labwork can be a challenge (trust me, I learned the hard way). Be mindful of the time management skills that will be necessary when balancing the two.3. Be okay with failure.Failing is a part of research. Get used to that now. In fact, failure means you took a risk, and great things can happen when you take risks! Don’t be afraid to present a poster at a conference. Don’t be afraid to make a suggestion to your supervisor. Don’t be afraid to try something that hasn’t been done before. I guess I should say that it’s okay to be afraid to do those things, but do them anyway! You cannot grow if you never leave your comfort zone.

Awards and/or presentations:
Awards:
• Fellowship for the Viral and Bacterial Adhesin Network Training (ViBrANT), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action, to conduct doctoral studies at the Pasteur Institute (09/2018)
• Extending Bioengineering and Structural Biology from U. of Oklahoma to Exeter - A National Science Foundation supplementary grant to OK-LSAMP enabling the student to conduct research at the University of Exeter in Exeter, UK (05/2017)
• Undergraduate Research Scholarship in X-Ray-based Structural Biology (04/2017)
 
Presentations:
• Curiosity to Creativity Symposium (07/2018) – University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK, US), Not Quite Par for the Course: How the AtParE4 Toxin is Challenging the Par-type Annotation (poster)
o Best visual impact
o Most Effectively Communicated
• Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Structural Biology Symposium (06/2018) – University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK, US), Investigation of the Novel Functions of the Bacterial Toxin AtParE4 (poster)
o Best Undergraduate Poster Presentation
• Senior Thesis and Four-Year Research Experience Poster Session (05/2018) – University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK, US), Investigation of the Novel Functions of the Bacterial Toxin AtParE4 (poster)
• Curiosity to Creativity Symposium (04/2018) – University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK, US), Investigation of the Novel Functions of the Bacterial Toxin AtParE4 (poster)
o Most Effectively Communicated
• National Conference on Undergraduate Research (04/2018) – University of Central Oklahoma (Edmond, OK, US), Investigation of the Novel Functions of the Bacterial Toxin AtParE4 (poster)
• Great Plains Infectious Disease Meeting (11/2017) – University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS, US), Structure-Function Studies of a Bacterial Toxin (poster)
• Louis Stokes Midwestern Center for Excellence (10/2017) – (Indianapolis, IN, US), A Sweet Vaccine-It Just Clicks! (poster)
• OK-LSAMP Annual Research Symposium (09/2017) – Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, OK, US)
• A Sweet Vaccine-It Just Clicks! (oral presentation), Optimization of an Engineered Polysaccharide Pathway for Click Chemistry (poster)
• PhD and PostDoc Internal Seminar Series (07/2017) – University of Exeter (Exeter, Devon, UK), A Sweet Vaccine-It Just Clicks! (oral presentation)
• Frontiers in Life in Environmental Sciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences Conference (06/2017) – University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK, Optimization of an Engineered Polysaccharide Pathway for Click Chemistry (Poster)
• Curiosity to Creativity Symposium (04/2017) – University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK, US), Mapping the DNA Gyrase:ParE Toxin Interface Using Chemical Crosslinking (Poster)
• West Coast Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Symposium (04/2017) – Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, CA, US), Mapping the DNA Gyrase:ParE Toxin Interface Using Chemical Crosslinking (oral presentation)
o 3rd Place Biochemistry Oral Presentation
• American Chemical Society Wabash Valley Local Section Undergraduate Research Conference (10/2016) – Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, IN, US), Mapping the DNA Gyrase:ParE Toxin Interface Using Chemical Crosslinking (Oral presentation)
• NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates in Structural Biology Poster Session (07/2016) – University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK, US), Mapping the DNA Gyrase:ParE Toxin Interface Using Chemical Crosslinking (poster)

Qinxin Liao

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Research Mentor: 
Ulrich H.E. Hansmann
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

Alzheimer’s disease(AD) is well-known as a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by extracellular senile plaques in brain. The fibrillar aggregation of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides plays an essential role in the pathology of AD. Previous experimental work points out that fatty acids such as lauric acid could induce oligomerization of Aβ42. We use docking methods to predict the target binding sites of the lauric acid for a certain model of Aβ42 oligomers. Then we study the interaction between Aβ peptides and lauric acid with atomistic molecular dynamics(MD) simulation and try to reveal the influence of ligands for Aβ42 oligomers and the corresponding molecular mechanism. The reasonable binding sites suggest the negative-charged ligands might influence the Lysine residues on Aβ42 oligomers. Meanwhile, the stability of Aβ42 oligomers is increased significantly when the ratio of Aβ42 peptide to lauric acid is 1:1.

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

Basal knowledge of biochemistry and the technology of programming and know how to use software such as VMD and gromacs.

Published Work:

n/a

Emily Gutierrez

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Microbiology-Biotechnology
Research Mentor: 
Dr. Brad Stevenson, Emily Junkins
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

Current drug therapy approaches include identifying natural products produced by plants and microorganisms due to their therapeutic effects against pathogens. One source of metabolic diversity and putative natural products is in the microbial communities of roadkill mammals as these microbiomes represent phylogenetically diverse taxa and, by extension, potential for novel antimicrobial natural products. The rationale behind this resource resides in host specificity; namely, that if a non-human mammal can tolerate a certain microbial compound then humans may also be able to tolerate that compound with limited cytotoxicity. Using high-throughput, assay guided screening, and a co-cultivation approach, we identified one species, Streptomyces sp. SPB74, to be inhibitive of human pathogen Enterococcus faecium. Crude compound extracts were obtained via ethyl acetate extraction and are being identified via LCMS. Overall, the cultivation approach and screening pipeline isolated bioactive organisms from road kill mammals, proving the mammalian microbiome to be a viable sampling choice.

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

Although I had taken laboratory classes required for my major, nothing could have prepared me for the arduous, yet rewarding process of undergraduate research. I learned critical skills and molecular tools that will serve to help me in my career as a researcher. One important concept that I quickly learned was that not everyday would be a success; failing was okay. Some days would be spent correcting reoccurring issues, making the days where we would see a breakthrough in our research much more meaningful.

Awards and/or presentations:

Emily Gutierrez, Dr. Brad Stevenson, and Emily Junkins. “Roadkill Mammals as a Source for Antibiotic Producing Microorganisms". Poster Presentation. Curiosity to Creativity Symposium. Norman, OK.

Published Work:

n/a

Eric Budder

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Civil Engineering
Research Mentor: 
Dr. Floyd
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

Bridges often need to be repaired at their joints, where two sections of concrete are connected. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) wants to know the feasibility of using ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) to replace old bridge joints in Oklahoma. This is an effort to reduce costs and extend the time interval between bridge repairs. UHPC could make this possible due to its impressive tensile and compressive strengths, high durability, and low permeability when compared to Normal Strength Concrete (NSC). This project specifically analyses behavior of the UHPC/NSC interface during cyclical loading. I essentially "glued" (my words) two NSC slabs together with UHPC to make a model bridge connection. This was constructed with materials imitating what we can reasonably expect to find in an actual Oklahoma bridge with methods designed with field work in mind, for greater understanding of real world implementation. In the near future this project will see the model bridge connection cyclically loaded by a hydraulic press with loads just beneath and just above the expected cracking load.This project is ongoing at the time of writing, but results will include the cracking load and failure load of the model bridge connection as well as a better understanding of interface properties such as bond strength. I expect the UHPC repair to the model bridge joint will enhance the flexural strength of the entire structure and that the UHPC/NSC interface will have a bond strength greater than the NSC medium adjacent to it.

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

When I first started my research I only had experiences with chemistry laboratories from college classes. My research was done in Fears Engineering Lab on OU's research campus, and the tolerances of experimental design are much greater in this setting which initially surprised me. But when drilling holes in concrete or setting rebar on a hot day, small discrepancies are expected. This contrasted with, say, pipetting just the proper amount of liquid in a few experiments from my old gen chem labs.I also learned, unsurprisingly, that keeping a notebook to maintain a timeline and record observations and thoughts is a great way to stay organized and effective. Organization is key.

Awards and/or presentations:

Broadest Impact, Curiosity to Creativity Summer Symposium 2018

Published Work:

n/a

Kevin Robb

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Computer Science / Engineering Physics
Research Mentor: 
Dr. Dean Hougen
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

Traditional reinforcement learning (RL) populations evolve risk-aversion. Recently, the concept of nurturing has added another layer of complexity and possibility to artificial neural networks. Ideally, an RL population would evolve risk-aversion on its own, and when augmented with a safe-exploration nurturing period, would instead evolve risk-neutrality. My experiment specifically shows that in an environment with two risky options and one safe option, an asymmetric reward distribution causes nurtured agents to learn to take risks and distinguish between the different risky options, taking over the niche and pushing the non-nurtured population out or to extinction. This has applications in classifying environments based on whether they will support risky or non-risky populations, based solely on the setup parameters. This model can be used to evolve risk evaluation software for AI or to predict future trends in a biological population based on the current "riskiness" of its agents.

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

When I first started this project, I learned that computer science is not as finite a field as I had before assumed. When designing simulations, there is inevitably variability and randomness, but this randomness can be grouped into trends, forming order out of chaos. I also learned that although words like “machine learning” and “neural network” sound like advanced technical jargon, getting into computer science research is not nearly as hard as I expected. I was in my first semester at OU when I applied for the HERE program in Dr. Hougen’s REAL Lab, and after working in his lab for two semesters now I can say that I understand all the theory well enough to make it work with code, and I’m on the path to truly grasping the theory as well. Working on my projects in short bursts while pondering my next steps in between has proven a great strategy for not wasting my energy on future problems I may have already unwittingly solved.

Awards and/or presentations:

Presented at Summer 2018 Curiosity 2 Creativity Symposium

Published Work:

n/a

Maya Henderson

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Environmental Sustainability
Research Mentor: 
Dr. Angela Person and Dr. Randy Peppler
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

This summer I was able to chose my own research topic which was based around the question, How are green cities defined and socially constructed? I began with a literature review of the definitions on green cities. I read books, articles, and journals all defining green cities. When discovering social constructions I used discourse analysis on media articles for three case study green cities and the United States overall. From that analysis and the consensus I found from the literature review on the definitions, I wrote on the social constructions of green cities. Each town that I analyzed had their own construction and I connected them together with the US in order to answer my research question.

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

Getting started you should know that it will take more time than you most likely anticipate. The researching and collecting of data were the easiest part, although I thought the opposite coming into the project. Staying organized and on a set schedule that allows maximum efficiency is difficult but well worth the effort.

Published Work:

Green City: Buzzword to Implementation https://envlab.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/green-city-buzzword-to-implement...

Video or other content: 

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=ae6e45c8ad534f95962...

Daniella Rodriguz

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Environmental Sustainability
Research Mentor: 
Dr. Randy Peppler, Dr. Angela Person
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

For my undergraduate research project, I worked on studying how strategic sustainability performance plans and executive orders are implemented in federal agencies across the United States.

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

Getting started you should know that I just recently became as ES major. Initially, I was an astronomy major and after come complications with a subject I decided to change my major and start fresh as an ES major spring of my sophomore year. Because this is my first research project I have ever conducted by myself, I have learned that dedication and creativity are important. Good things take time and if one is not willing to put in hard work, then he or she will not receive a good outcome.

Published Work:

https://wordpress.com/post/envlab.wordpress.com/920

Video or other content: 

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=f46efb94717d44ffbe9...

Katherine Avery

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Computer Science
Research Mentor: 
Dr. Amy McGovern
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are an effective tool for automatically locating bird roosts using radar. NEXt generation weather RADars (NEXRAD) are designed to collect data on weather, but they also pick up information on moving, airborne objects, including birds. NEXRAD helps ecologists to detect bird roost location, but this data is tedious to process manually. Therefore, ANNs detected the roosts automatically from a NEXRAD image dataset of purple martin and tree swallow roosts in the eastern U.S. Four types of radar field images, including reflectivity, velocity, Rho HV, and Zdr, were useful for finding roosts. The ANN achieved an accuracy, true positive rate, and true negative rate of around 80 percent each, showing that this method has potential as a tool for roost detection. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a type of ANN, were found to perform better than the traditional ANNs, achieving an accuracy, true positive rate, and true negative rate of over 90 percent each.

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

Even if you’re intimidated by reaching out to people, do it anyway because they often surprise you. I sent Dr. McGovern a cold email during first semester of my freshman year and asked if I could join her lab. I hadn’t met her before, but I saw her on the computer science faculty page, and I thought that her work looked interesting. Unexpectedly, she said yes, and I started doing research with her right away.

Awards and/or presentations:

Awards: Goldwater Scholarship Honorable Mention; National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Collegiate Award Honorable Mention;

Conferences: 98th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society; Austin, TX; 7-11 January 2018; funded by the University of Oklahoma; National Conference of Undergraduate Research; Edmond, OK; 4-7 April 2018; funded by NSF (through LSAMP) Undergraduate Research Day; Norman, OK; 7 April 2018; Curiosity to Creativity Symposium; Norman, OK; 25 April 2018.

Published Work:

Avery, K., 2018: Automated Detection of Bird Roosts Using NEXRAD Radar Data and Artificial Neural Networks. Honor’s thesis, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK.

Chilson, C., K. Avery, A. McGovern, E. Bridge, D. Sheldon, and J. Kelly, 2018: Automated Detection of Bird Roosts Using NEXRAD Radar Data and Convolutional Neural Networks. Remote Sensing and Ecology and Conservation, submitted.

Emily Hays

Undergraduate Spotlight

OU Major: 
Architecture
Research Mentor: 
Dr. Angela Person
Describe your undergraduate research or creative project:

McMansions are the embodiment of capitalism's limitless consumption. These, in a maze of suburban streets, came to represent the "American Dream." This ideal has serious implications in US societies, on environments, and on individual health. Social and economic divides were established or reinforced by suburbanization. This lack of diversity has led to unfair stigmas applied to groups of people which has increased racism and xenophobia. With no regulations at the start of suburbanization and not enough in place now, homes are built using chemicals and compounds which poison the occupants. While lead and asbestos are now banned, many chemicals are still in use which are proven to or show a strong correlation to the degradation of human health. This is not to mention the sourcing of these materials and the damage it does to the environment and the people of that region. The building sector is one of the largest consumers and polluters in the US.

Explain what you learned or give advice to fellow students:

With any major project, research or otherwise, the best thing you can do is start early. I always set weekly goals, but you should work with whatever schedule suits you best. If you can work on something a little bit all the time, you will accomplish your goal with no huge stress at the end. This will also allow you to have periodic checks by professors and peers to ensure quality and clarity.

Awards and/or presentations:

Hays, Emily. "McMansions & Urban Sprawl." Curiosity to Creativity Spring Symposium, 25 April 2018, Oklahoma Memorial Union, Norman, OK.

Published Work:

n/a

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