Findings and Future Directions: Notes From Summer Science MAP Students
Mentored Advanced Projects (MAPs) give 黑料百科ians the opportunity to delve deeply into research or creative projects that integrate the knowledge and skills they檝e gained as an undergraduate. In the science division, work done by MAP students directly contributes to ongoing scholarly research. The experience often results in presentations, publications, and other opportunities, all while preparing students for research at the graduate-level.
While some students conduct MAPs for academic credit during the semester, many opt to apply for a summer MAP living in 黑料百科 and conducting research full-time. (Any student who spends a summer here will tell you that there nothing quite like the community and tranquility of 黑料百科 in the summertime.)
Weeks after they concluded their summer science MAPs, we met up with five students to ask them about their research, the process of scientific inquiry, and what the MAP experience has taught them.
Malina Cantemir 24: Getting familiar very familiar with frogs
淚 always enjoy learning new things, says Malina Cantemir 24, 渁nd doing a MAP forces you to learn new things very quickly. Malina spent this summer in the laboratory of Joshua Sandquist, associate professor of biology, learning many new things about the embryonic cells of the African clawed frog. She overexpressed a protein, tricellulin, in the embryonic cells, and then observed the effect of that overexpression on how the cells prepared for division. It was a laborious process. A lot of time, effort, and luck went into identifying cells that met all the criteria for her dataset.
Initially, Malina struggled with a sense that she wasn檛 doing well enough or accomplishing enough. It took several weeks and many conversations with friends, labmates, and her advisor to overcome that worry. 淭he thing that kept me going is that I could see myself improving, she says. Malina learned that, sometimes, research simply moves slowly and it not a reflection of her competence or potential. 淣ow, I檝e gotten to a point where I檓 perfectly happy in the laboratory, working alone, sometimes even making mistakes, she says. 淚檝e found that I genuinely like existing in lab.
Jiayi Chen 23: An economist applying computer science to psychology
嬧赌嬧赌嬧赌
Jiayi Chen 23 is an economics major, but that didn檛 stop her from joining the research team of Fernanda Eliott, assistant professor of computer science. Why do a computer science MAP as an economics major? 淚 think that economics today involves a lot of data analysis," Jiayi explains, "and I see data visualization as storytelling. If you make data visual, people can truly access what is going on. Doing this MAP I got to improve my ability to do that.
This summer, Jiayi worked in a team of students on a project called, 淢eaning of Meaning, which blended computer science with neuroscience and psychology. They worked to identify clues of moral intuition, semantic meaning, and common sense in different images, in hopes of understanding how human visual reasoning can be mirrored in computational approaches and in artificial intelligence. Jiayi was tasked with developing an interactive web app that presents the group findings, work she continued as a MAP this fall. Over the summer, her research team also got to attend the 2022 Conference of the International Society for Research on Emotion at USC. There, Jiayi was amazed by the application of all sorts of research to real-world problems. 淢y experience at that conference confirmed for me that I really want to go to graduate school and do research, she says. 淚t was so inspiring to see people research something they love and then share that work with others.
Dolch茅 Sanders 23: Trying her hand at drug development
Dolch茅 spent this summer in the laboratory of Erick Leggans, associate professor of chemistry, synthesizing an antibiotic molecule called teixobactin. Teixobactin is produced naturally by a bacterium found deep in subsoil layers, Dolch茅 explains, but it difficult to isolate the molecule in quantities large enough to harness its antibacterial properties. Instead, her MAP aimed to reconstruct the molecule, building it piece by piece one organic reaction at a time.
Dolch茅 is a fourth-year biological chemistry major who took most of her lab-intensive biology and chemistry courses online during the pandemic. The summer MAP was her first hands-on laboratory experience so doing research, Dolch茅 says, was an experiment in and of itself. For the past few years, she had her sights set on becoming a physician assistant (PA), but she also been curious about whether she檇 enjoy a career in clinical research. Conducting a summer MAP gave her the opportunity to explore the life of full-time research. For now, Dolch茅 plans to stick with PA school and not a research career. 淏ut now I can make that as an informed decision, she says, 渉aving done research for a while and had a really great experience.
Ella Kim 24: Conducting research that will simplify research
This summer, Ella conducted a MAP with Priscilla Jimenez Pazmino, assistant professor of computer science. In a team of students, she worked to develop a virtual dashboard that will simplify how researchers navigate databases to expand their research. 淓specially when exploring a new research topic or field, it can be overwhelming to understand and access trends, Ella says. The dashboard she worked on will address this problem, distilling search results down to a visual array of the leading papers or topics in a field.
Part of Ella project involved integrating files written in two different programming languages. "These two languages communicate with each other differently," Ella explains, 渟o I had to be a sort of translator and figure out how they interact. As a computer science major with a strong linguistics background, she found herself uniquely suited for this unexpected translatory challenge and she loved it.
Shrey Agrawal 24: Developing new skills and a new appreciation for website design
Everyone needs statistics. That the idea behind Dataspace, a web app being developed by Shonda Kuiper, professor of statistics, and her research students. Through games and interactive 渄ata stories drawing from real-life datasets, Dataspace guides users through principles of statistical analysis. This summer, Shrey joined the Kuiper laboratory to help with the development of the Dataspace website. He spent the first couple weeks of the summer analyzing data and building machine learning models based on a survey of people who had played the statistics games on the website. "The goal was essentially to determine whether using games to teach statistical concepts is a good idea or not, and the answer was, yes it is!" Shrey then moved on to design work that will help make the website as effective and engaging an instructional resource as possible.
Shrey is a computer science major and a statistics concentrator, and prior to this summer he had almost no experience in website design especially not in front-end design. (淔ront-end refers to anything that users see when they interact with a software or a website.) Doing front-end design, Shrey says, meant putting himself in the user shoes. 淏efore this MAP, I didn檛 realize how much time and work goes into the slightest detail, into the tiniest thing that a user might interact with, Shrey says. He learned that tackling a computer science project requires flexibility with your skills and understanding 淣o matter how prepared you feel you are or aren檛, you learn new skills on the job," he says. "You don檛 say, 業 can檛 do this because I檝e never done it. Instead, you learn to say, 業 haven檛 done this but I檝e done similar things.櫇