NCI-SW continued its summer tradition of offering undergraduate students the opportunity to perform research at ASU. Two students, Samantha Faltermeier and Amanda Morrison, were selected for the 2019 Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Both are from Phoenix College, one of the 10 schools within the Maricopa Community Colleges system. Both students had the opportunity to work in 2 of the research centers within the NCI-SW, under the direction of a faculty member and mentored by a graduate student.

 

Samantha’s project was to study epitopes of 2 tropical infectious diseases, using data obtained from high-throughput peptide microarrays. This work aims to improve disease detection and the eventual development of preventive vaccines. Amanda worked on a project related to microplastics, which are becoming increasingly prevalent as environmental pollutants. This research involved using a variety of analytical methods to evaluate the impact of chemical additives in oxo-biodegradable plastics on the formation of microplastics.

Both projects collected valuable data to provide some preliminary conclusions, the details of which were presented by Amanda and Samantha at the NNCI REU Convocation at Cornell University.

See more about Research Experiences at ASU https://ncisouthwest.org/index.php/education/research-experiences/