Campus & Community

Herchel Smith Research Fellows to begin this summer

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The Herchel Smith Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship provides financial support to Harvard undergraduates engaged in scientific research at established research centers and laboratories in the United States or abroad. Additionally, the fellowship seeks to prepare recipients for competitive postgraduate fellowships and/or postgraduate study toward a Ph.D. or the equivalent in computer science, mathematics, the natural sciences, and the physical sciences. Now in its fifth year, the fellowship has supported 130 undergraduates in summer science research pursuits at leading laboratories and facilities around the world.

This year’s Herchel Smith Fellowship recipients, including their proposals and research advisers, are as follows:

Sarah Anoke ’09 (chemistry), the effects of mechanical stress on human embryonic stem cell differentiation, using an anisotropic collagen matrix scaffold; Debra Auguste, Department of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering

Leslie Beh ’11 (molecular and cellular biology), characterization of the SUMO E2 conjugating activity of the polycomb protein suppressor of Zeste 12; Nicole Francis, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Megan Blewett ’11 (chemistry), an investigation of organic chemical reactions in multiple sclerosis; Angela Koehler, Simon Willis, Kevin O’Connor, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

Sophie Ca ’11 (chemical and physical biology), the efficacy of microsphere-mediated neurotrophic factor delivery in preventing retinal ganglion cell death in glaucoma; Michael Young, Schepens Eye Research Institute

Yi Cai ’11 (molecular and cellular biology), GIPC1 silencing in mammary tumor neovascularization, tumorigenesis, and metastasis; Tom Chittenden and John Quackenbush, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Malcolm Campbell ’10 (chemistry and physics), the vital camera project: a novel application of circular dichroism; Adam Cohen, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Andrew Chen ’11 (organismic and evolutionary biology), invasive species ecology of the Ngaio tree (Myoporum laetum); Martin Ruane, Naval Base Ventura County Environmental Division

Yun-ke Chin-Lee ’10 (economics), data analysis and theoretical modeling of online auctions for advertising; Susan Athey, Department of Economics

Alissa D’Gama ’11 (neurobiology or molecular and cellular biology), the effect of site-specific mutations on enzymatic and biological activity in SAD-A and SAD-B kinases; Joshua Sanes, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology/Center for Brain Science

Kyle Gibler ’09 (economics), the effects of slow-wave sleep on semantic memory; Daniel Schacter, Department of Psychology

Kenneth Gottlieb ’10 (physics), development of magnetic oxides and their applications to spin electrons; Igor Shvets, Trinity College, Ireland

Bing Han ’11 (chemistry), the mechanisms of colon cancer anti-angiogenic treatment resistance; Daniel Chung, Massachusetts General Hospital

Elliot Hawkes ’11 (mechanical engineering), design and fabrication of micro- and nanoscale swimming robots; Brad Nelson, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland

Michael Henderson ’11 (human evolutionary biology), tracking the cell lineage descendants of neural regeneration in Xenopus tropicalis; Juan Larrain, Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile

Timothy Hsieh ’10 (physics and mathematics), applications of the BCFW relations to calculating scattering amplitudes and supergravity; Freddy Cachazo, Perimeter Institute, Canada

Johnny Hu ’11 (chemical and physical biology), structural and biochemical characterization of the Bacillus cereus minichromosome maintenance protein complex in relation to DNA replication; David Jeruzalmi, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

John Kearney ’10 (physics), development of a nondestructive laser tomography device for high-power ion beams; Juergen Pozimski, Imperial College London

Minjae Kim ’10 (engineering sciences), construction of telepresence system to be used in medical emergency; Hee Chan Kim, Medical Electronics Laboratory, Seoul National University

Phoebe Kuo ’11 (biology), the role of the Wnt signaling pathway in regulating pericyte differentiation into osteoblasts; Peter Hauschka, Children’s Hospital Boston

Jennifer Lee ’10 (neurobiology), the role of positively charged residues in presenilin for amyloid-beta precursor protein proteolysis; Omar Quintero-Morizon and Michael Wolfe, Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School (HMS)

Menyoung Lee ’10 (physics), the use of hyperpolarized silicon nanoparticles in magnetic imaging; Charles Marcus, Department of Physics, Harvard University

Adam Letvin ’10 (chemical and physical biology), the biogenesis of the outer cell membrane; Daniel Kahne, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Jack Li ’11 (molecular and cellular biology), membrane localization, function, and protein interaction of sonic hedgehog protein receptors Cdo, Boc, and Gas; Benjamin Allen and Andrew McMahon, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Charles Liu ’11 (chemical and physical biology), investigating periplasmic transit of lipopolysaccharide during bacterial outer membrane biogenesis; Daniel Kahne, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Victoria Liu ’11 (molecular and cellular biology), the roles of C. elegans FCI-1 gene in early embryonic DNA damage response; Matthew Michael, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Jennifer Lo ’10 (molecular and cellular biology), studying neurogenesis and the balance between cell division and differentiation in the early embryo; Anna Philpott, University of Cambridge, England

Shawn Low ’11 (chemical and physical biology), temperature compensation in the three-protein cyanobacterial circadian clock; Erin O’Shea, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Joseph Mandelbaum ’11 (biology), tracking stem cell-like characteristics of cancer cells expressing CD133; Jeffrey Settleman, HMS and Massachusetts General Hospital

Samuel Michel ’10 (molecular and cellular biology), interactions between rotavirus viral proteins and cellular transcription factors; Susana Lopez, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Shira Mitchell ’09 (mathematics and computer science), robust local testability of tensor products of LDPC codes; Irit Dinur, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Duncan Moore ’11 (molecular and cellular biology), creating and evaluating a tetracycline regulatable oncolytic recombinant herpes simplex virus; Feng Yao, Brigham & Women’s Hospital

Huy Nguyen ’10 (chemical and physical biology), characterizing the newly discovered Bundi Bugyo strain of Ebola via cathepsin dependency; James Cunningham, HMS

Iris Odstrcil ’10 (molecular and cellular biology), the role of genes in the synaptic choices of retinal neurons; Jeremy Kay and Joshua Sanes, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Maxwell Parsons ’10 (physics), the production of a cold beam of polar molecules; Gerard Meijer, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max Planck Gesellschaft, Germany

Michael Qian ’11 (biology), investigation of the transcriptional regulation of the HIF cancer gene; Ed Harlow and John Doench, HMS

Sophie Rengarajan ’10 (neurobiology), the behavioral and neural mechanisms of zebrafish habituation; Florian Engert, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Peyton Shieh ’10 (chemistry), the total synthesis of Phorbol; David Evans, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Anna Shneidman ’09 (chemistry and physics), probing the glass transition using confocal microscopy; David Weitz, Department of Physics and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS)

Alexandra Strom ’10 (chemistry), reactivity and synthesis of a bimetallic iron complex; Tobias Ritter, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Carol Suh ’11 (molecular and cellular biology), induced pluripotent stem cell-derived MSCs for Osteogenesis Imperfecta; David Scadden, Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital

Nike Sun ’09 (statistics), adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms; Joseph Blitzstein, Department of Statistics

Shoshana Tell ’10 (history of science), metabolic genetic disorders prevalent in the Amish and Mennonite communities of Lancaster County, Penn.; Holmes Marton, the Clinic for Special Children

Mark Terrelonge ’10 (neurobiology), neuronal mechanism of withholding impulsive behavior in the medial prefrontal cortex of the rat; Zach Mainen, Instituto Gulbenkian Ciencia, Portugal

Katherine Thurber ’11 (neurobiology or psychology), studying the neuroprotective effects of new drugs on retinal ganglion cells; Leonard Levin, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Gerald Tiu ’10 (chemical and physical biology), development of a novel, selective drug-polymer conjugate system for prostate cancer treatment; Robert Langer, MIT

Voranaddha Vacharathit ’10 (molecular and cellular biology), the optimization of in vitro angiogenesis in differentially isolated endothelial progenitor cells with RGD concentration on an alginate scaffold; David Mooney (Harvard University) and Joyce Bischoff (Children’s Hospital Boston)

Michael Viscardi ’10 (mathematics), the construction of hermitian metrics on holomorphic vector bundles; Shing-Tung Yau, Department of Mathematics, Harvard University/Morningside Center of Mathematics, Beijing

Helen Yang ’11 (molecular and cellular biology), identification and characterization of sumoylation site of neuronal activity-regulated protein MeCP2; Michael Greenberg, Children’s Hospital Boston, HMS

Qi Yu ’11 (human evolutionary biology), the effects of estrogen on a specific biochemical pathway in the vascular endothelium; Thomas Michel, Brigham & Women’s Hospital and HMS

Chelsea Zhang ’10 (computer science), will create software to merge and visualize real-time data from the CitySense wireless sensor network in Cambridge, Mass.; Matt Welsh, Department of Computer Science, SEAS

May Zhang ’10 (neurobiology), the effects of PPaR8 overexpression in alleviating the symptoms in the disease model for multiple sclerosis; Zhigang He, Children’s Hospital Boston

Joseph Zimmerman ’10 (computer science), automated techniques for proving properties of computer programs; Greg Morrisett, Department of Computer Science, SEAS