Every year the Center for Biomedical Engineering and Rehabilitation Sciences (CBERS) at Louisiana Tech recognizes outstanding undergraduate and graduate students who are participating in research. This year 5 members of the Newman Lab were recognized with this honor. Haley Barnett and Joseph Straub were awarded 2 of the Graduate Student awards and India Pursell, Hannah Logan, and Avery Bryan were awarded 3 of the undergraduate awards. This is a cash award that each student receives either as part of their graduate stipend or in the form of tuition support for the remainder of the spring quarter. A well deserved recognition for these 5 students!
On Saturday, March 10, 14 students from the lab got up early and drove down to LSU-Alexandria to present at the annual Louisiana Academy of Sciences meeting. Students and faculty from across the state come together every year to share their on-going research and visit with one another for the one day conference. This year a number of students from the lab presented with some of the newer students getting to go and just experience their first scientific conference. Impressively, all of the students from the lab, including one digital painting student I mentored for a medical illustration project, were recognized with a first place win and $100 cash prize for their outstanding oral or poster presentation in the graduate or undergraduate categories in the Divisions of Microbiology and Molecular and Biomedical Biology!! I could not be prouder of my students who made the lab look so professional at this conference that I was not able to attend. Louisiana Tech University has also recognized the accomplishment of these students and others from the School of Biological Sciences who attended and won in their respective divisions with this recent press release.
Congratulations to all students who attended the 92nd annual LAS Meeting!!
Undergraduate, Jacob Cambre, is passionate about helping people and this could not be more clear than in his creation of Planners for Progress. Jacob is founder and President of the organization that provides planners and mentoring to middle school students in the region. Today Jacob and his colleagues have reached out to more than 500 students with 50 active members helping him achieve the goals of the program. An article about Planners for Progress and Jacob's success was published in today's issue of the Louisiana Tech paper (pg 5). I am proud to have Jacob be a member of the Newman Lab and look forward to watching him succeed in all that he does!
This past weekend was the annual Louisiana Biomedical Research Meeting. This year the meeting was held in Shreveport, so pretty close for us, allowing more of the lab to attend. Since LBRN has been funding our lab for the past 3 years, I gave an oral presentation that was very well received by the audience and external advisory council who recognized the efforts of everyone in the lab. The LBRN meeting is always an opportunity for me to thank my students in a public setting and the fact that they all showed up, dressed professionally, and were early to the meeting made that easy to do and as they sat in a row supporting me and one another. The success of the lab and hard work of the students presenting was further recognized at the end of the night when they gave awards to the top 3 undergraduate poster presentations, top 3 graduate poster presentations, and best faculty oral presentation. I could not be prouder of what all of my students have achieved! Dr. Jamie Newman - Best oral presentation (right) Joseph Straub - 1st place graduate poster presentation (lower right) India Pursell - 1st place undergraduate poster presentation (lower left) Matt Busby - 2nd place undergraduate poster presentation (lower center) Last week minigrants were awarded through the College of Applied and Natural Sciences. These are grants to support student research. Students write a 2 page proposal describing their research project and justifying the need for specific reagents and supplies, 8 students wrote minigrants this year and all were awarded the full budget they requested. This totals almost $3,000 in support for the various projects going on in the lab. These students all worked very hard putting together their proposals. I am proud of all of them! Many thanks to the College for their continued support of students conducting research! Minigrant Recipients:
I'm a few weeks behind, but wanted to make sure to acknowledge the passing of exams by the PhD students in the lab. Just before the quarter break, Joseph Straub and Haley Barnett passed their PhD Qualifying Written Exams for the Molecular Sciences and Nanotechnology program. Yesterday, Sree Venigalla passed the PhD Qualifying Oral Exam after presenting and defending her dissertation proposal. These students have all worked hard and I am very proud of their accomplishments!!!
Rachel Eddy, an undergraduate in the lab, took the Mural Painting course offered through the art department this past fall quarter. Every year the Mural Painting class paints a mural on campus or in town. This year the class did the Rock Island Greenway Mural which will be along the bike path that the city of Ruston is building to encourage walking and biking riding across town. The class is 10 weeks and during that time the students prep the wall, outline the design, and paint the mural. There was a community paint day one Saturday morning where the Mayor of Ruston invited residents to come out and paint some of the mural. I'm so glad that our science students explore their passions outside of biology!!
Friday and Saturday some members of the Newman lab, along with members of Dr. Mary Caldorera-Moore's lab and Dr. Gergana Nestorova's lab went down to Baton Rouge to present on their work funding through the Louisiana Space Grant (LaSPACE). The work presented at the meeting ranged from understanding atmosphere composition on Venus to recording and studying the recent solar eclipse. Our work on biomaterial-cell interaction and tissue engineering was well received and everyone did a great job! An especially big congratulations to Haley Barnett who gave her first conference oral presentation!!!! On Friday night, to celebrate the end of the Fall Quarter and our presentations, we went out for dinner and to walk around Perkins Row in Baton Rouge. LaSPACE coordinator, Colleen Fava joined us for a fun evening. Saturday morning started out with a jog around the lake outside of the hotel, before heading back to the conference for more presentations and the student poster session. Saturday had more presentations and the poster session where students gave a short "elevator pitch" and shared their research with other students and researchers. Everyone did a great job and learned a lot about different areas of space-related research.
This month students in the lab attended two different conferences where some of them were able to present their research and learn about new areas in biomedical research. Chris Miller and Joseph Straub, PhD students in the lab, took a trip to West Virginia to present at the Regional IDeA Conference. I didn't go with them so this was their first opportunity to practice their networking skills. I am proud of them for making the trip and representing the lab. Joseph was selected to present a poster on his project investigating the role of MED31 in human mesenchymal stem cells and was able to have some good conversations about his research with other scientists attending the conference. This past Friday a few students from the lab traveled to Shreveport for Industry Day, a joint conference between Louisiana Tech and LSU Health in Shreveport. This is a busy time of year as we start to near the end of the quarter so I appreciate that these students took the time to go learn and share their research with members of our more local research community. Rachel Eddy, India Pursell, both undergraduates, and Haley Barnett, a PhD student presented on their tissue engineering project, and Jacob Cambre, another undergraduate represented the group investigating Notch signaling in adipose stem cells.
|
Dr. Jamie NewmanAssociate Professor of Biological Sciences Archives
May 2021
Categories
All
|