{"id":4123,"date":"2023-12-31T18:23:30","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T23:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/?p=4123"},"modified":"2024-01-16T21:41:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T02:41:43","slug":"presenting-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/2023\/presenting-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Presenting the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yangheng (Janice) Jizhe<\/b>\u2019s heart rate started to climb.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Case Western Reserve senior was at a national scientific conference last spring, standing beside the detailed poster she had created to explain her research. She was girding herself for the presentations to come as career researchers and graduate students entered the exhibit hall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt first I was really nervous\u2014what if the audience asked a lot of tricky questions and I didn\u2019t have an answer?\u201d recalled Jizhe (CWR \u201923). \u201cBut when I was actually presenting and talking to people, I realized that if there was a [future research problem] that I wasn\u2019t able to solve on my own, I could ask any of these people, and we could solve it together. That was a fantastic feeling.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the College of Arts and Sciences, a large and growing number of undergraduates like Jizhe are doing sophisticated hands-on research. Working with faculty mentors, they\u2019re producing original graduate-level studies that are accepted at major academic gatherings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Faculty mentors are also cultivating the future careers of undergraduates, said <\/span>Sheila Pedigo<\/b>, PhD, director of Case Western Reserve\u2019s Undergraduate Research Office. That office has helped support hundreds of student-faculty mentorships and provided funding for undergraduates to attend and present at dozens of prestigious conferences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have undergraduates who have won awards at many of these gatherings,\u201d Pedigo said. \u201cSome are even competing with graduate students for that recognition. Students gain confidence as well as confirmation about their graduate school plans by not only presenting their work but also taking part in the many informal discussions and conversations that happen.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The scholarly mentorships and conferences have involved fields as varied as quantum physics and poetry, and this past academic year was no different.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Read on to learn how presenting research to audiences of career scientists influenced four college undergraduates.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Photo

Melissa Phung-Rojas (right) joined Professor Radhika Atit\u2019s biology lab during her first year on campus and continued working on research projects until she graduated in the spring. | Photo by Matt Shiffler<\/p><\/div>\n

Studying Why Some Skulls Don\u2019t Form Properly<\/h2>\n

When <\/span>Melissa Phung-Rojas<\/b> (CWR \u201923) arrived as a first-year student, she quickly joined the lab of Department of Biology Professor <\/span>Radhika Atit<\/b>, PhD.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Atit studies birth defects that undermine craniofacial development and receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. She mentored Phung-Rojas for three years as the student studied the genetic and cellular basis for cleidocranial dysplasia. It is a disease that prevents bones in some infants\u2019 skulls from meshing together, leaving large holes on top of their heads.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Last fall, the work of Phung-Rojas and her lab mate,<\/span> Helen Molteni<\/b> (CWR \u201923), was accepted for presentation at the Society for Developmental Biology\u2019s Structural Birth Defects meeting in Washington, D.C. The pair obtained university Undergraduate Research Office travel grants to attend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of jumping headfirst into the deep end,\u201d said Phung-Rojas. \u201cBut Dr. Atit helped us practice and hone our presentation so we were ready.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Phung-Rojas and Molteni each gave 12-minute presentations at the conference podium. Each received a best- presentation award. Atit credited this success to her mentees\u2019 deep experience in the lab and her lab\u2019s interdisciplinary team approach to science.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want them to read as a scientist, to speak as a scientist, to write as a scientist,\u201d Atit said. \u201cI want them to be part of the scientific enterprise, to experience it for real.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Phung-Rojas appreciated the approach. \u201cIt puts you in a new headspace and a new way of thought,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These experiences have helped alter Phung-Rojas\u2019 plans. Instead of pursuing only a medical degree, she applied to MD\/PhD programs that allow her to combine clinical and research experiences. She\u2019s now a post-baccalaureate research scholar at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, a nonprofit affiliated with the University of Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Picture

Student Cason Willman and Timothy Wutrich, a senior instructor in classics, discussing Greek and Roman philology. | Photo by Roger Mastroianni<\/p><\/div>\n

Revisiting the Aeneid<\/i><\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n

For <\/span>Cason Willman<\/b>, a project that started as a class paper ended in a featured presentation at the 100th anniversary of the Ohio Classical Conference (OCC) when he was a sophomore\u2014an experience that left him feeling ecstatic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a chance for me to be a rhetorician, you might say, taking my cue from [the ancient Roman orator] Cicero,\u201d the classics major said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Willman had already spent years immersed in classics. But it wasn\u2019t until a class on Vergil, the famed Roman poet, that he considered submitting his paper on a character in the <\/span>Aeneid<\/span><\/i> to an academic conference.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCason came back with a beautiful and incredibly well- written paper on Juno, queen of the gods\u2014a character study coupled with an analysis of the role of fate in the poem,\u201d said <\/span>Timothy Wutrich<\/b>, PhD, a senior instructor in classics, who became Willman\u2019s faculty mentor. \u201cIt was extraordinary work, so I encouraged him to send it in.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Willman was one of only four undergraduates selected to present their work; the Department of Classics helped pay his expenses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an incredible experience,\u201d Willman said. \u201cIt instilled in me a sense of confidence that perhaps I can move forward in the field and put my mark on the undergraduate scholastic community.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The presentation is also shaping his thoughts on the future. Willman plans to become a physician and is pondering the lessons his research can bring to that career.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a theme in classical works of being drawn toward a higher ideal, or toward the greater good,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a philosophy shared by the field of medicine as a whole. One area of study enriches the other and vice versa.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Photo

Weeks before his spring graduation, Nihal Manjila met with his mentor, history professor Jonathan Sadowsky, at Kelvin Smith Library. | Photo by Roger Mastroianni<\/p><\/div>\n

Tracing the History of Serotonin<\/h2>\n

As a dual-degree undergraduate in history and biology, <\/span>Nihal Manjila<\/b> (CWR \u201923) was eager to take on research that bridged both interests. After a conversation with his faculty mentor, <\/span>Jonathan Sadowsky<\/b>, PhD, chair of the Department of History and the Theodore J. Castele Professor, he found an amazing topic right here in Cleveland.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Sadowsky mentioned to me that serotonin [a molecule that allows neurons to send signals to one another], was discovered at Cleveland Clinic,\u201d Manjila said. \u201cThat was really fascinating, so I got in touch with the clinic\u2019s archivist to see if I could do research there.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Their email exchange led to an entire summer in Cleveland Clinic\u2019s archives. The research eventually became the basis for his honors thesis, which received a prize from the Phi Alpha Theta national history honor society. Manjila also turned the work into a poster presentation he did in January at the American Historical Association conference in Philadelphia\u2014a rich opportunity to engage with historians. He also received a travel grant from the university.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI attended tons of panels and was able to talk to two to three of the panelists after each one,\u201d Manjila said. \u201cThey gave me really valuable advice about general research techniques, narrowing down paper ideas. … What I learned made it so much easier for me to refine my own work.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He recently began working as a research technician at Harvard Medical School and plans to apply to MD\/PhD programs in medicine and history.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Picture

In the spring, physics professor Guiseppe Strangi and then-senior Yangheng (Janice) Jizhe reviewed a meta-lens model she developed on a computer prior to 3D printing. | Photo by Roger Mastroianni<\/p><\/div>\n

3D-Printing Ultra-thin Lenses<\/h2>\n

Starting in her sophomore year, <\/span>Yangheng (Janice) Jizhe<\/b> became immersed in a campus lab, working with a highly advanced and sophisticated \u201ctwo photon polarization\u201d 3D printer. Such devices, known to be incredibly temperamental, can create structures only a few nanometers wide\u2014a size too small to even see.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Under the mentorship of Department of Physics Professor <\/span>Giuseppe Strangi<\/b>, PhD, Jizhe spent three years working with graduate students to print meta-lenses\u2014super-thin materials that have tiny patterns of blocks or pillars covering their surface.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Depending on the shape and size of those structures, they can bend light in different ways, doing the job of traditional lenses, like those found in endoscopes or smartphone cameras, in a fraction of the space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By Jizhe\u2019s senior year, Strangi encouraged her to apply to do a poster presentation about her work at an American Physical Society conference in Las Vegas. Jizhe received funding from both the Undergraduate Research Office and the Department of Physics to attend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her presentation\u2014and her experience in Strangi\u2019s lab\u2014have since turbocharged her passion for photonics research. In the spring, she co-authored a paper with Strangi in the journal <\/span>Nanophotonics<\/span><\/i>, and she\u2019s started a PhD program in nanoscience at Harvard University.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe experience was really valuable,\u201d she said. \u201cIt taught me that the skill of communicating science is just as important as doing it in the lab.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yangheng (Janice) Jizhe<\/b>\u2019s heart rate started to climb.\u00a0
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