|
|
| Table of Contents | Slamming Through the Universe? | A World Without Waste | Tubular Technology! |
Undergraduate researchers create the futureMichigan Tech's faculty are both teachers and mentors as they engage students in the essence of higher education-ideas, inquiry, and innovation. As part of this endeavor, faculty routinely collaborate with undergraduate students in research. "I get to work with creative, hardworking students," says Assistant Professor Yoke Khin Yap of the physics department. "They help us create an active and stimulating campus." These undergraduates are not window dressing. Assistant Professor Susan Amato-Henderson characterizes the work of her student, Melanie Mullins, on a research initiative involving local schools. "The importance of her work is enormous. She coordinated data collection, data entry, and data analysis." Mullins was so adept that she ended up training other research assistants. Assistant Professor Tammy Haut Donahue describes Tara Hansen as "truly one of the most dedicated and talented undergraduate students I have worked with." It is Haut Donahue's quest to eradicate osteoarthritis, an effort that involves both mechanical engineering and biology. Hansen, says the professor, "was solely responsible for the biology side" of last summer's investigations. For years, Senior Design has given undergraduates the opportunity for research. Linda Phillips, lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, initiated International Senior Design in 2001. So far, more than a hundred students have participated. Last summer, students traveled to Bolivia to work with indigenous people on a project that involved both science and sociology. Says Phillips, "It's more than a Senior Design project. It's a class on life." Biological Sciences: Down to the BonesTara Hansen, 20, a junior in biological sciences, is described by one faculty member as a standout student who "thinks very clearly and logically." Hansen casts an equally sure eye at her future. A native of Swartz Creek, Michigan, she aspires to be a pediatrician. At Tech, Hansen is on the varsity track and cross-country teams. Both sports stress the knees, and Hansen has a better appreciation of that than most people because she conducts undergraduate research on the meniscus—the small but heavy-duty buffer between the bones in the knee that can tear during sports injuries or from wear and tear with age. This typically leads to the painful, degenerative joint disease osteoarthritis. Last summer, Hansen worked with Assistant Professor Tammy Haut Donahue of the mechanical engineering department on the meniscus project. The two are trying to lay the groundwork for tissue engineering so that the meniscus can be repaired or replaced following damage. Contributing to this research, Haut Donahue and Hansen have pieced together the size and makeup of the transition zone between the meniscus and the tibia, where the tissue changes from ligament to cartilage and actually inserts itself into the bone—a bond not unlike the body of a mermaid in its seamless transition. Measuring and understanding that transition zone will help scientists replicate the function and structure of the meniscus. Their findings were submitted to the Bioengineering Conference of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, as well as the Journal of Anatomy. This faculty-student duo actually received financial support for their project from the Michigan Space Grant Consortium because they related their work to space flight. The meniscus needs routine compression to stay healthy, just like bones do. Without gravity, Hansen says, people in space are just like bedridden people. "When there's no stress on the skeleton and supporting structures such as the meniscus," she says, "they get weak because our body thinks you don't need them." Along that line, next summer, Hansen will continue to work with Haut Donahue on another research project. They will take explants of a pig's meniscus, take away all compression and stress, and see if and how it degenerates and if it can build itself back up. Hansen, a self-assured but modest young woman, maintains a 3.98 GPA and has academic credentials as long as her arm. Besides athletics, she is treasurer of the Pre-Health Association, a student group devoted to community service, such as raising money to provide a wheelchair for a local hospice and for people in nursing homes to go out to lunch. Physics: Exploring the Nano WorldMatt Davenport is a well-grounded young man. "I don't have any high aspirations," he says. "I'd just like to be a decent physicist and a good teacher someday." Davenport, 21, of Clarkston, Michigan, is a senior in physics. He's glad he came to Tech. He likes the small classes and the accessible faculty, some of whom he describes as "simply phenomenal." Most importantly, he loves doing undergraduate research in the unfathomable, tiny world of nanotechnology and nanoscience, a realm that is built on the atomic scale. With his advisor, Assistant Professor Yoke Khin Yap, he works with carbon nanotubes, which are miniscule structures with immense possibilities. They are so small, he says, that light does not go though the gaps between them. The nano world has occupied him for two summers and has exceeded his expectations. When he was invited to do undergraduate research, he figured he'd "be making everyone's coffee." Instead, they let him choose his project, and he's still amazed by that. "The work is exciting, it's important, and here they let an undergraduate work on it." Davenport is compelled by what he calls "a desire to know why things do what they do." "There's a whole world down there," he says of nanoscience. He accesses it with electronic microscopes. "I feel kind of bad," he says, indulging a flight of fancy. "I think—what if there's little nano people living in there and we're putting them in a vacuum and shooting them with electrons. It's wild. It's kind of mind-blowing—thinking about how small it is." Is that world as expansive as the heavens? "That's actually why I got into this," he says. "You have a feeling there should be that kind of parallel—if you can go out ad infinitum, why can't you go down as far? That's exactly one of the things that drew me into the field." The inquiry is in its infancy. "The neat thing about this field is that it's really new. There have been astronomers since before people started writing stuff down. There's been great advances in technology—telescopes and all that—that have let scientists make those significant leaps and discoveries. And we're just now getting the technology and the tools to get down to that smaller resolution. It's an excellent opportunity—a playground, so to speak." Davenport is a past president and now secretary of the Society of Physics Students. The group visits local schools to give demonstrations and spark interest among the young—an interest Davenport knows about firsthand. "I've learned so much," he says, "and there's so much more I want to learn." Undergraduate Research Contacts
|
|
|
© Michigan Technological University, Research 2006 |
Michigan Technological University | Research 2006 | http://www.mtu.edu/research/ |