Two students were selected for the 2019 REU program. Both were from Phoenix College, one of the 10 schools within the Maricopa Community Colleges system. They worked on projects in two of the research centers within the NCI-SW.
One studied epitopes of two 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. The other worked on a project related to microplastics, which are becoming increasingly prevalent as environmental pollutants. This involved using a variety of analytical methods to evaluate the impact of chemical additives in oxo-biodegradable plastics on the formation of microplastics. Both students collected valuable data to provide some preliminary conclusions, which they presented at the NNCI REU Convocation at Cornell University, NY