ARCHAEOLOGY

Site #1

ARCHAEOLOGY IN YOUR BACKYARD: DIGGING WITH THE STATE ARCHAEOLOGIST
Mentor: Dr. Nick Bellantoni, State Archaeologist, CT Museum of Natural History, and Associate Professor, Anthropology

Please Note: Due to the hands-on nature of this site, participation will require stamina, daily fieldwork, and exposure to the elements. There will also be a lot of traveling to various sites around the state. Hours may be extended beyond those listed in your brochure.

A state archaeologist travels across the region to preserve archaeological sites that may be destroyed by economic development projects. If you choose to work with Dr. Bellantoni, the state archaeologist, your experiences will vary according to current emergency situations. Underlying all activities at this site, however, will be archaeological excavation of endangered sites, as well as laboratory analysis. You will learn about archaeological field techniques including site grid development, mapping, recovery, and recording of data, and laboratory work including artifact identification, conservation, and cataloging methods to preserve sites prior to construction activities. You will work with a team of college students, volunteers, and professional archaeologists in a practical approach to the science of archaeology. You will experience how archaeological sites are preserved in the wake of modern development projects, and in some cases, take part in rescue operations to remove significant sites prior to bulldozer activity. Your learning at this site will be valuable should you be considering a career in archaeology, history, geology, ecology, anthropology, or museum studies.

Back to Top of This Page

ARTS

Site #2

PUPPET ARTS
Mentor: Bart Roccoberton, Director, Puppet Arts, and one of the excellent Puppet Arts students (to be announced)

Are you a Dancer? Sculptor? Cartoonist? Writer? Mechanical Engineer? Musician? Actor? Painter? Theatrical Designer? Storyteller? Do you feel limited by choosing only one creative expression? Would you rather see your sculpture move, or create characters for your story or dance that the human form cannot realize, or develop a mechanism that will cause an audience to react with joy or sadness, compassion or fear? The Puppet Arts are the crossroads of all creative expression. Are you familiar with the puppets seen on Sesame Street, Avenue Q, and Spiderman II? Wonder how they were designed and made? Look no further! Many were designed and made by the alumni of the Puppet Arts program at UConn, which is directed by Bart Roccoberton. If you choose this site, you will have the opportunity to work in the puppet labs and studios to design, build, and perform with several types of puppets, which you will take home after the program is finished! The Puppet Arts program is unique—UConn is the only university in the country that offers three different degrees in the art of puppetry. Graduates of the program go on to perform in and design for theaters around the world; perform for, build for, and manage internationally recognized TV programs and film; teach children; and direct prominent schools and museums. Don't miss this exciting opportunity to explore a career in the creative and varied field of puppetry!

Back to Top of This Page

BIOLOGY

Site #3

HELP US LEARN MORE ABOUT BENEFICIAL BACTERIA!
Mentor: Dr. Joerg Graf, Assistant Professor, Molecular & Cell Biology

Please note: Background experience or coursework in biology is recommended for participation in this site.

Many people think that bacteria only cause diseases or spoil food, but most bacteria do not cause harm, and many even provide us with a benefit. These bacteria we call symbionts. We know very little about these symbiotic bacteria. In part, this is due to the difficulty in studying symbiotic relationships because they are so complex. While the digestive tract of most animals is colonized by hundreds of different bacteria, from the digestive tract of the medicinal leech we can only grow one species. This unusual simplicity allows us to investigate how the bacteria and the host interact. One way of learning more about this interaction is to look at what genes the bacteria harbor, because these genes tell us what the bacteria are capable of doing. In this project, participants will study DNA from the symbiotic bacteria that are carried on a plasmid. The participants will then learn how to grow bacteria, isolate DNA, sequence DNA, and run agarose gel, electrophoresis gels. The techniques used depend upon the progress of the project and may include constructing new plasmids, introducing DNA into bacteria, amplifying DNA using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and computer analysis. This project is designed for participants interested in biology to get some hands-on experience in a molecular biology lab and learn more about how symbiotic microorganisms interact with animals.



Site #4

BRAIN POWER: UNRAVELING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CEREBRAL CORTEX
Mentor: Dr. Joe LoTurco, Professor, Dr. Brady Maher, Research Assistant Professor, Physiology and Neurobiology, and a team of Doctoral Students

Please note: Participation in this site requires handling of live laboratory animals. Instruction in proper handling techniques will be provided.

Have you ever wondered how the most sophisticated computing device on earth, the brain, is assembled? Or how a small, simply organized group of cells in the developing embryo grows and develops into the billions of cells that make up the complex circuits of the human brain? If you select this mentorship site, you will become part of a team of UConn undergraduate and graduate students working on experiments aimed at defining the signals that direct the formation of a major part of the mammalian brain, the cerebral cortex. As part of this team, you will participate in ongoing experiments that use techniques of modern neurobiological research, including recombinant DNA technologies, electrophysiology, histology, and cell culture. If you are interested in a career in biology or the life sciences, you shouldn't miss this opportunity!



Site #5

THE GENETIC PUZZLE OF EVOLUTION
Mentor: Dr. Rachel O'Neill, Associate Professor, Molecular & Cell Biology, and her team of Doctoral Students

Please note: Background experience or coursework in biology is recommended for participation in this site.

Have you ever wondered how there can be so many different species of mammals on the planet? Are you curious to know how new species form? Are you interested in learning some of the modern molecular techniques in gene discovery? As the human genome project has been expanded to capture 1000 genomes, we are beginning to realize how much information is coded in our DNA and how that information is processed. Scientists have realized the genome is a fluid matrix capable of restructuring in order to create new species. In this lab, we are working to gain a better understanding of how a genome maintains its genetic identity. Our work focuses on hybrids from a variety of species crosses, including European mice, North American mice, and kangaroo species from Australia. Through the use of modern molecular and cytogenetic techniques, we are able to gain insight into genomic stability and structure. In this lab, you will join a team of undergraduate and graduate students and use gene cloning, sequencing, gel electrophoresis, PCR, and many other techniques to answer questions about a particular hybrid genome. If you are interested in genetics, recombinant DNA technologies, and evolution, and want to learn more about the field of molecular biology, this is the site for you!



Site #6

COMPARATIVE GENOMICS: GENE TRANSFER BETWEEN BACTRIA
Mentor: Dr. J. Peter Gogarten, Professor, Molecular & Cell Biology, and his Research Team

Please note: Background experience or coursework in biology and computer programming is recommended for participation in this site.

In recent years our understanding of microbial evolution has undergone a major revision. Genomes are no longer seen as slowly changing information repositories, but have been revealed to be changing rapidly through gene duplications, deletions, rearrangements, and the acquisition of genes from unrelated organisms. Over 750 completely sequenced bacterial genomes are publicly available, and many more are being sequenced at accelerating speed thanks to recent progress in sequencing technology. Comparison of genomes from closely related organisms allows us to detect recently acquired genes; data bank searches often allow us to determine the likely donors of these genes; and compositional statistics and inspection of the genes' neighborhood may provide clues regarding the transfer mechanism. Participants in this site will learn how to compare and analyze genomes with the aim of detecting transferred genes. This work will use analytical tools that are already established and available as web-based applications, and simple scripts and programs to analyze genomes and gene families.

Back to Top of This Page

CHEMISTRY

Site #7

A CHEMICAL EQUATION FOR CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Mentor: Dr. C. Vijaya Kumar, Professor of Chemistry, and Lisa Stafford, Graduate Assistant

At this site you will receive state-of-the-art training in Nanoscience and Nanomaterials. We will provide you with hands-on experience preparing nanomaterials in our advanced research laboratory. One goal of our research is to design and synthesize enzyme-based nanomaterials. Enzymes accelerate a wide variety of biochemical reactions to high velocities and we take advantage of this property of enzymes to accelerate chemical reactions in the laboratory. In one project, we are using enzymes to find effective treatments for terrible diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and diabetes. In another project, we are developing catalysts to trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to combat against global warming. Our research team will train you in the synthesis and characterization of these nanocatalysts, and you will be working on projects at the cutting-edge of nanoscience. If you love chemistry and are curious to learn more about these projects, we invite you to spend three weeks in our high-tech laboratories assisting our research team in nanoscience discoveries.



Site #8

CHEMISTRY WITH A FLASH
Mentor: Dr. Shawn C. Burdette, Professor, and H. M. Bandara, Doctoral Student, Chemistry

Our group is interested in metal ions like zinc, copper, and iron and how living organisms use their unique chemistry to facilitate vital biological functions. We are also interested in the possible adverse consequences these species have if they are not properly regulated, such as potential to cause neurological disorders. To investigate these ideas, we have designed a research program that centers on making chemical tools that bind metals and harness light to change their properties. During the 3-week program, you will participate in the synthesis and characterization of caged complexes for zinc. Caged complexes are organic molecules that tightly bind metals until exposed to a flash of light. The light flash initiates a chemical reaction that converts the caged complex into a molecule that binds the metal very weakly. This change in binding strength causes the metal to be liberated from the cage, which allows us to study the chemistry and biology of free metals in a controlled manner. If you are interested in science at the interface of chemistry and biology, particularly making new molecules with unique properties, then our laboratory is a good fit for you.



Site #9

ACCURATE ATOMISTIC SIMULATIONS OF PROTEINS AND ENZYMES
Mentor: Dr. Jose Gascon, Assistant Professor, Physical and Computational Chemistry

We are interested in understanding how proteins and enzymes work from an atomic level. For that, we use quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) hybrid methods to investigate structure-function relations and biochemical reactivity. Quantum Mechanics is a theory used to describe the structure and dynamics of atoms and molecules. Since proteins and enzymes are a collection of molecules called amino acids, an accurate description of their function requires quantum detail. On the other hand, proteins are too big to be treated, as a whole, quantum mechanically. This would require an unimaginable computer power. The solution to this problem is to use hybrid methods (QM/MM) which treat a reduced region of the protein quantum mechanically and the rest of the protein using a simpler level of theory—Molecular mechanics. One of the possible applications of these methods lies in a computer-aided design of new drugs with medicinal purposes. If you choose to participate in this site, you will learn the essentials of computational chemistry applied to biological systems, from simple molecular mechanics calculations to QM/MM calculations. If you are interested in chemistry and computation, this experience will challenge you and broaden your understanding of the necessity of performing computational modeling in today's scientific endeavor.

Back to Top of This Page

EDUCATION

Site #10

ADVENTURES IN TEACHING
Mentor: Aja LaDuke, Doctoral Candidate and Certified Teacher, Neag School of Education

This mentorship at the UConn/Windham Summer School will provide would-be teachers as well as those interested in child psychology with opportunities to create learning activities and work with children with diverse cultural, language, and learning backgrounds. The Windham Professional Development Center, a cooperative venture between the UConn's Neag School of Education and Windham Public Schools, provides the setting for summer school. Between 100-200 Windham students in grades K-3 attend summer school from 8:00-11:00 AM. Many of the students are bilingual and have a wide variety of learning needs. You will work with teachers and other school professionals to design and implement engaging and culturally relevant lessons. You will be involved in team-teaching these lessons and then reflecting on your practice and student learning outcomes. Upon returning from the school site, you will meet with your mentor to discuss that morning’s activities in a seminar-like atmosphere. You will read intriguing texts presenting both the history and the current status of K-12 public education in the U.S. Reading, discussing, and journaling about these texts will help you to contextualize the experiences of the students with whom you are working, as well as your own school experiences. For your final project, you will choose a perceived problem in education today that is of particular interest to you. Your research project will challenge you to look at this problem from a variety of perspectives, and may involve interviewing peers, students, teachers, and other school personnel. Your experiences in this site will demonstrate how teachers can affect the future through empowering students and working toward social change.



Site #11

KINESIOLOGY—CONNECTING WITH KIDS
Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Bruening, Associate Professor, Kinesiology, Leah Ward, and the Husky Sport Staff

Please note: Observations are in Hartford, CT and will be twice a week in the late afternoons.

The Department of Kinesiology is part of the Neag School of Education and offers three areas of study: athletic training, exercise science, and sport management programs. Have you considered a career that would allow you to combine sports and working with kids? Do you like to teach and mentor others? Are you interested in broadening your cultural awareness? Husky Sport is a program that runs out of the Department of Kinesiology (the study of movement) and focuses on mentoring youth in Hartford, CT. College students go into Hartford throughout the school year to mentor kids between the ages of 8-13 on healthy nutrition, a variety of physical activities, and positive life skills. This opportunity will invite you to experience what the college students experience by developing lesson plans that address each of the three components and by implementing hands-on activities with the kids in Hartford! We will work with you to learn the skills to develop age appropriate lessons, learn the differences and pleasures between mentoring and being mentored, and experience personal growth on social justice.



Site #12

TEACH ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE!
Lead Mentor: Jeannie Slayton, Instructor, UConn American English Language Institute

Have you considered a career in teaching English as a Second Language? Are you fascinated by the language-learning process? Do you think you would enjoy working with people from other countries and cultures? Would you like to travel to other countries to teach English? UConn's American English Language Institute (UCAELI) offers intensive English classes to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students from all over the world. As a participant in this site, you will assist as an instructor in classes like American Culture, English through the Media, Listening and Speaking, and more. Take on a creative approach to teaching English while you become part of a "global family" and get to know people from Korea, Venezuela, Turkey, Brazil, France, Japan, and many other countries around the globe. Learn how to develop innovative lesson plans to assist students in conversation, listening skills, reading, and writing. You will also have an opportunity to become a "Conversation Partner," which will allow you to carry on informal conversations with students from other countries. Informal conversation with fluent English speakers is an important aspect of learning the language, and you will work with a small group of students who will have some questions or conversation strategies to practice. Learning more about English as a Second Language can open the door to careers as bilingual teachers, ESL teachers both in the U.S. and abroad, interpreters, and translators!

Back to Top of This Page

ENGINEERING

Site #13

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING: SECURING A MORE ENERGY-EFFICIENT FUTURE
Mentor: Dr. Richard S. Parnas, Associate Professor, Institute of Materials Science and Department of Chemical Engineering

Virtually all of the 100 billion kg/yr of currently used polymers and plastics are derived from petroleum and do not biodegrade. Plant proteins are a potential alternative to these materials, and a number of products such as medical devices and food packaging films are now entering markets. Our goal is to develop material for the commodity plastics market that can be used in high enough volume to have a significant positive environmental impact, and that means developing a very inexpensive protein-based polymer. A team of graduate and undergraduate students is working with wheat protein, the highest molecular weight naturally occurring polymer, and we have succeeded in producing material with strength and stiffness better than high grade epoxies. Major challenges remain, however, in engineering the material microstructure to resist water absorption and to control the rate of biodegradation. In pursuit of these goals, we design and synthesize molecular additives to modify the protein structure, and analyze the materials with various methods of chemical and mechanical testing. A second research project to consider is the production of biodiesel for use in transportation and heating applications. Biodiesel burns much more cleanly than petro-diesel, has almost no net greenhouse gas emissions, and yields 3 times as much energy as is required to produce it. In contrast, the most well known biofuel, ethanol, requires nearly as much energy to produce as is contained in the fuel, and produces more greenhouse gas emissions than biodiesel. Our educational laboratory includes a team of graduate and undergraduate students who process waste vegetable oil from UConn dining services. The biodiesel produced in the lab is given to the UConn motor pool for use in diesel powered shuttle buses and to UConn Farm Services for use in tractors. Choose this site, and you will get an intensive, hands-on experience in chemical engineering and problem solving.



Site #14

NANOBIOTECHNOLOGY: THE FUTURE OF DETECTION AND TREATMENT OF DISEASE
Mentor: Dr. Yong Wang, Assistant Professor, Chemical Materials & Biomolecular Engineering, Jing Zhou and Boonchoy Soontornworajit, Graduate Students, and Matthew Snipes, Undergraduate Research Assistant

My research group focuses on biomolecular nanoengineering, which is the practice of engineering on the nanoscale. The nanoscale derives its name from the nanometer, a unit of measurement equaling one billionth of a meter. Simply speaking, we use biomolecules to engineer nanostructures. The goal is to design novel nanomedicines for therapy, nanomaterials for regenerative medicine, and nanoprobes for clinical testing. Many proteins manufactured in pharmceutical companies today can be used as therapeutics. However, natural proteins like antibodies may not play their therapeutic roles well for many reasons. We hope to construct artificial proteins with nucleic acids as the raw materials! We seek to use modified nucleic acids to assemble novel nanostructures to mimic proteins. The nanostructure has two major components. One is used as "radar" to search for an undesirable object such as a tumor, and the other is used as a "missile" to attach the object. The biomimetic proteins will be used in the delivery of cancer-fighting drugs, or as nanoprobes capable of moving through tissue and blood to sense underlying health problems even before symptoms emerge. Choose this site and you will learn state-of-the-art nanobiotechnology to assist us as we develop and characterize biomimetic proteins.



Site #15

CALLING ALL YOUNG INVENTORS!
Mentor: Dr. Zbigniew M. Bzymek, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Engineering design is a problem solving process that requires personal talent, imagination, and knowledge of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering sciences. This site will give you some tools to solve elementary design contradictions, formulate concepts clearly, and present them to others. It will also teach you how to pursue an idea through general shape design of objects by using the software systems, "Invention Machine" and "Inventor." Inventor is a Silicon Graphic system equipped with the best graphics hardware available. Solving problems means solving contradictions, and this will be an important part of your work at this site. An example of a design contradiction follows: a space shuttle should have heavy mass to keep its speed and direction, and it should also have a small weight to overcome gravity forces easily. So it should be heavy AND light. Solving contradictions will aid you on your way to seeing your designs through. You will work in UConn's CAD/CAM Laboratory, spending your three weeks studying conceptual designs of engineering objects such as machines, boats, cars, airplanes, space crafts, etc. An example of a design problem you might expect to tackle follows: the number of cars in Connecticut is growing quickly, so in the future it will force us to seek other routes for cars such as air highways and water highways. You may be asked to design multi-purpose vehicles that will be used on highways on land, air highways (up to 500 miles above the ground), and water highways along the coasts, both on the ocean's surface and underneath the water surface. You may be asked to use the new material developed using nanotechnology that is 30 times stronger than steel. By learning and implementing some basic rules of engineering design and combining them with requirements of the future society, you will be on the right track towards a career in mechanical or another, similar field of engineering. It takes a village to host and educate Mentor Connection students in Mechanical Engineering. Thank you to Assistant Dean Marty Wood, Kim Duby, and Sharon McDermott. Thank you to George L. Assard II, the Help Desk, and Jim Macione. Finally, thank you Emily Jerome, Laurie Hockla, Jacqueline Veronese, and Tom Mecly.



Site #16

ELECTRONICS: OPTICAL AUDIO LINK
Mentor: Dr. Ali Gokirmak, Assistant Professor, and Dr. Helena Silva, Assistant Professor, Nanoelectronics Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electronics are everywhere. From lighting to energy generation, distribution and storage, to transportation, communications, medical devices, and computing. It is difficult to imagine our lives today without electronics. In this laboratory, you will design and build an optical audio link, a fun electronic system that allows the transmission of an audio signal through an optical signal. This principle is used to make advanced spy microphones. These devices allow us to listen to conversations taking place in a room while sitting outside unnoticed, at a distance. The conversations taking place inside the room cause vibration of the windows. A laser beam is directed to the window and the reflected signal is captured using a photodiode. You will design and implement an electronic circuit which will reconstruct the speech inside the room from the reflected laser light and convert it back to sound by a speaker. At this site, you will learn about sound, mechanical, optical and electrical signals and get hands-on experience on different aspects of electronics including an electrical circuit, a semiconductor laser, a photodetector and a speaker.



Site #17

FUEL CELLS AND CHALLENGES TO BE SOLVED
Mentor: Dr. Alevtina Smirnova, Assistant Research Professor, Connecticut Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation

Sustainable energy production is a huge challenge in our world. Fuel cells and fuel cell systems play a critical role in changing our society by providing a vital energy supply. However, much is yet to be done for the fuel cells to be an essential part of our world serving manufacturing plants, various utilities, cars, laptop computers, cell phones and many other important engineering devices. The fuel cell is an electrochemical cell in which the energy of a chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxident is converted directly into electricity. Depending on the kind of fuel and operating temperature, fuel cells could be very different. In general, they are divided into two large groups: low and high temperature fuel cells. Fuel cells operating at room temperature can be based on organic microorganisms or enzymes and are called Biofuel cells. These cells are managed by biochemical reactions involving chemical mediators, biological catalysts such as hydrogenase, and different fuels, e.g. sugar. Low temperature fuel cells can also be based on various polymers, and in this case they are called Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells (PEMFC's) and are related to organic chemistry of polymers and polymer composed materials. High temperature fuel cells, or Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC's), can operate at temperatures ranging from 500 to 800 degrees Celsius. These cells are made of molten salts or ceramic materials that are explored by solid state chemistry. Do you want to know more about fuel cells and how to make and test them? Join us at the Connecticut Global Fuel Center which aims to combine science, engineering, and society to make fuel cells a feasible energy conversion technology for a "sustainable civilization."

Back to Top of This Page

HUMANITIES

Site #18

CREATIVE WRITING
Mentor: Karen J. Renner, Doctoral Candidate, English

Have you always had dreams of being a writer but didn't know how to get started? This site will immerse you in the life of writing for three weeks and help you develop writing skills and habits you can take home with you. You will work with a mentor from the UCONN English Department who will provide guided writing assignments designed to inspire poems, short stories, and creative essays. Your mentor and your peers will read your work and give you feedback that will help you revise your writing so that it can reach a wider audience. Your mentor will also point you to authors who could be muses and models for your own writing. Finally, you will talk to professional writers about their lives and explore potential outlets for your own writing. This is an excellent opportunity for you to explore writing as a professional opportunity and not just a creative hobby.



Site #19

YOUTH IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, FILM, TELEVISION, & POPULAR CULTURE
Mentor: Barbara J. Campbell, Doctoral Candidate, English

television, and popular culture, while casting a critical eye towards these depictions. Given that the bulk of American media is about or targeted toward teenagers, today’s young people occupy the best position from which to critique it. Unfortunately, most media portrayals of young people are created and reviewed by adults. The purpose of this mentorship is to enhance your interpretive capabilities about cultural representations of young adults through the process of reading, writing, research, and discussion. In response to the materials you will read and view at this site, you will create your own "zine" (little magazine) of critical commentary and reviews. You will gain practice in reading and viewing responsibly, in thinking critically and analytically, and in expressing yourself clearly in writing. Working together as a team, you and your peers will bring your individual responses together in the zine design and composition process. By the conclusion of this mentorship, you will have honed your ability to make persuasive arguments about the quality and truthfulness of youth culture. Some of the themes you might explore include teenagers and the family, as in the coming of age stories by prominent authors William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. In addition, you will watch clips from films and television shows depicting adolescents in America during various periods in history. We will discuss many themes such as teen rebellion; cultural, racial, economic, and social differences among peers; teenagers struggling with religious, spiritual, and ethical values; and physical and academic competition.Does Disney’s High School Musical accurately represent the reality of and challenges facing young people today? Do kids watch Kid Nation? How do commercials portray teenagers? This mentorship provides you a chance to gain experience in composing thoughtful and useful evaluations about youth culture; while not a course in publishing, you will certainly engage in the creative processes of zine composition and design. While all the films and television shows we will view are PG-13 or TV-14 and under, I would be happy to provide parents with a list of clips and films to be screened.

Back to Top of This Page

MATERIALS SCIENCE

Site #20

MATERIALS SCIENCE
Mentor: Dr. Harris Marcus, Director, Institute of Materials Science, and various IMS Faculty and Graduate Students

Please Note: Students who select this site are requested to be on site at 8:30 AM daily.

You have most likely heard of ceramics, metals, polymers, and nanomaterials in general, but did you know that we use these materials every single day? The production of these substances is an intricate and exacting science and calls upon chemists, pharmacists, physical scientists, metallurgists, and biotechnicians to study the composition and properties of materials. As a participant in this mentorship site, you will be involved with faculty, graduate students, and staff members who study and research materials science and engineering. Over your three weeks at this site, you will develop an understanding of the synthesis and physical and mechanical processing of the advanced materials. One or more of these advanced nanomaterials, ceramic, metal, or composite materials will be part of your research. Your exploration will involve the use of sophisticated laboratory facilities and equipment, such as microscopes, spectroscopies, and theoretical computer modeling to understand how this research is conducted. This is an excellent opportunity to get hands-on, science research experience in a high-tech lab.



Site #21

POLYMER SCIENCE: APPROACHES TOWARDS SYNTHETIC MUSCLES
Mentor: Dr. Rajeswari Kasi, Assistant Professor, Institute of Materials Science and Department of Chemistry

The structure and mechanical properties of skeletal muscles have been studied since the 15th century. The primary function of a muscle is to generate movement upon application of a force. For example, when all of the muscles in a human heart act in a synchronized fashion, directed by electrical stimuli from the brain, the heart can pump blood through the blood vessels by repeated contractions. We are interested in preparing new materials (stimuli-responsive polymers) which show muscle-like function; that is, they contract and expand in size upon application of external stimuli. The external stimuli applied can be magnetic, electrical, temperature, pH, light, cell matter, or combinations thereof. We are a team of graduate and undergraduate students who work on all aspects of materials creation and property analysis. We are currently developing stimuli-responsive polymers for applications in controlled drug release and controlled release of particles for imaging cancer cells. By choosing this research site, you will experience the making of new stimuli-responsive polymers and analyzing their properties. This project will better allow scientists to target and treat specific diseases by delivering therapeutics in a precise and controlled manner.

Back to Top of This Page

NURSING

Site #22

NURSING: THE LIVED EXPERINCE OF PRACTITIONERS AND SCIENTISTS
Mentor: Dr. Cheryl Beck, Distinguished Professor, Dr. Michelle Judge, Assistant Professor, Dr. Debbie McDonald, Associate Professor, School of Nursing, and Dr. Rhea Sanford, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Interested in seeing the inside of a hospital or nursing home through the eyes of the people who are the backbone of these agencies? Intrigued by high fidelity simulation learning? Excited about being part of a research team investigating postpartum depression, birth trauma and/or the patient’s perception of pain and knowledge about how to communicate with health care providers? If so, you are invited to join faculty in the School of Nursing this summer! These nurse leaders will show you the world of health care delivery in hospitals. You will have the opportunity to tour hospital units…intensive care units, newborn nurseries, medical surgical units, hospice facilities, well child clinics, and emergency departments. Each day you will spend a few hours in a health care facility observing nurses caring for patients and families in all aspects of health and illness. A portion of your experience will be working in our simulated laboratories preparing for learning experiences for the future nurses of our world. You will practice good hand-washing skills, learn to take vital signs (blood pressure, temperature and respirations), make hospital beds, listen to heart sounds, and see/hear what happens when someone coughs and someone else listens. Nurse leaders care for patients, and they also develop the science and knowledge needed to provide the best care possible. Thus, you will have the opportunity to work with one of two research teams led by nurse researchers. One team is exploring and studying the depression that may follow the birth of a child. Led by the internationally renowned Dr. Cheryl Beck and assisted by nutritionist Dr. Michelle Judge, you will have the opportunity to analyze data and process themes and essential statements using qualitative techniques. Another team, led by nurse scientist Dr. Debbie McDonald, is studying better ways for patients to communicate their pain so that treatment will be provided to diminish if not alleviate it. This team will provide experience in quantitative data analysis using statistics. A portion of your time will be dedicated to CITI training which addresses the ethical responsibilities of researchers as they conduct studies while protecting the rights of individual participants. Join us and explore the world of nurse leaders in practice and science!

Back to Top of This Page

PHARMACY

Site #23

PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCE: DRUG DEVELOPMENT
Mentor: Dr. Robin H. Bogner, Associate Professor, Dr. Diane Burgess, Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and their teams of Graduate Students

Once a drug molecule has been discovered and tested, it must be made into a product that can be easily administered to the patient. The science of designing and testing the drug product is known as pharmaceutics. It combines a knowledge of physics, engineering, chemistry, and physiology with the challenge of preparing a dosage form that gets the drug to the right place at the right time and in the right concentration. The pharmaceutics group at UConn is involved in research on a wide array of dosage forms from tablets and capsules to microspheres, liposomes, and nanotechnology. This site provides a wonderful hands-on opportunity to explore this aspect of the pharmaceutical drug development process. If you think pharmaceutics might be in your future, take advantage of this great learning opportunity!

Back to Top of This Page

PHYSICS

Site #24

NUCLEAR PHYSICS
Mentor: Dr. Richard T. Jones, Associate Professor, Physics

One of the biggest discoveries in physics over the last 30 years has been that the protons and neutrons that make up the atomic nucleus are not just featureless blobs, but are, in fact, made out of smaller particles called quarks. Normally, quarks are invisible and hidden away inside the nucleus, but they can be glimpsed with the aid of beams of high-energy particles. The Nobel prize in physics was awarded in 2004 to three American physicists for their theory of a force that they called "nuclear glue" which holds the quarks together inside neutrons and protons. Experimenters at this site are working on developing an intense beam of polarized light that will be used to excite the glue and measure its properties. Do you like physics? If so, this is an ideal site for anyone interested in participating on a team that is engaged in cutting-edge research in the field of quark physics.

Back to Top of This Page

PSYCHOLOGY

Site #25

MAKING MEMORIES IN THE MAMMALIAN BRIAN
Mentor: Dr. James J. Chrobak, Associate Professor, Psychology

Please note: Participation in this site requires handling of live laboratory animals. Instruction in proper handling techniques will be provided.

Can you remember what you had for breakfast yesterday? How about last Saturday? Do you remember your first "best" friend? Your second? Our laboratory is interested in the brain structures that make episodic memories. We use behavioral, pharmacological, anatomical, and electrophysiological techniques to explore the physiology and function of the hippocampal formation and interconnected structures in awake, behaving rodents. These structures are critical for the formation and consolidation of episodic memories in all mammalian species, including humans. Students working in our lab will likely participate in ongoing experiments that involve behavioral (memory) testing of rodents. Students can also gain experience working in a histochemical lab processing brain tissue for microscopic analysis, and they can listen in on the activity of thousands of hippocampal neurons in awake, freely behaving rodents! A willingness to learn and ability to handle rats (basically a big hamster) would be beneficial.



Site 26

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN? MEMORY FORMATION AND THE BRAIN
Mentor: Dr. Etan Markus, Associate Professor, Biopsychology, Brandy Schmidt, Graduate Student, and Dr. Markus' Research Team

Please note: Participation in this site requires handling of live laboratory animals. Instruction in proper handling techniques will be provided.

We go through life experiencing many different things: happy and sad events, people, places, food, and smells, just to name a few. Days or even years later, we can bring these experiences back to life as memories. In our laboratory we study how experiences are preserved in the brain. We focus on a brain structure (the hippocampus) that, when damaged, prevents the formation of new memories and disrupts navigation. If you select this mentorship site, you will join a team of UConn doctoral and undergraduate students researching how the hippocampus is involved in changing brain circuitry. You will learn to train rats on mazes. Participants will also be encouraged to ask questions and sit in on any ongoing research, regardless of the specific mentorship project they will be working on. We are currently conducting experiments examining the activity of hippocampal neurons during behavior; why old rats show memory deficits; and the process in which the hippocampus works together with or competes with other parts of the brain. This is an ideal experience for those interested in careers in medicine, biology, or psychology.



Site #27

BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE: USING ANIMAL MODELS TO UNDERSTAND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT DISORDERS
Mentor: Dr. Holly Fitch, Associate Professor, Psychology (Behavioral Neurosciences), and a research team including graduate students Courtney Hill, Caitlin Cleary, Michelle Alexander, and Nhu Truong

Please note: Participation in this site requires handling of live laboratory animals. Instruction in proper handling techniques will be provided.

Most people are aware that animal research helps us to better understand human diseases. From immunology (e.g., AIDS research) to cancer research to neurological research (e.g., monkey models of Parkinson's disease), animals have helped us to understand and sometimes treat things that go wrong in the human body. One area that has been difficult to study in animals, however, is language disability—animals don't have language! Nevertheless, many children (estimated around 5-10%) fail to develop language normally, and a large number of these go on to become reading disabled (e.g., dyslexic). Language disability has a huge emotional and economic impact on these children and their families. Yet, we understand very little about what is happening in the brain to cause these problems. How can animals help us? An important part of language development includes the simple ability to process and discriminate complex and quickly changing sounds (such as human speech). Impairments in this ability may severely disrupt the development of language from infancy onward. Although animals cannot learn to speak, they can discriminate simple sounds. Rats can even discriminate a "ba" from a "da" sound, yet children with language disability have a difficult time with the same task. We also have some information about abnormalities in the brains of dyslexics, but these were observed "post mortem" and, because of the limits of neuroimaging, we cannot study these anomalies in living humans (much less children!). Instead, we can model these brain anomalies in rodents and test these same animals in a variety of auditory discrimination tasks. We can also assess other types of brain injury, such as those typically seen in premature/low birth-weight babies. These children also tend to suffer learning and language difficulties. Our animal studies will allow us to draw connections between (1) disrupted brain development and (2) disrupted auditory discrimination, speech perception and possibly, consequent language development. Our rodents will never develop language, of course, but these studies may begin to give us some insight on the neurobiology of basic auditory processing deficits that may occur in some children with disabling disorders of language. If you choose this site, you will be doing hands-on behavioral work with rodents, as models for human development clinical disorders (primarily auditory testing, but may include other areas of cognition/learning assessment of rodents, such as maze-testing, as well). Projects may also include anatomical assessment of post mortem rodent brain tissue.



Site #28

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND THE BRAIN: THE CASES OF AUTISM
Mentor: Dr. Inge-Marie Eigsti, Assistant Professor, Clinical Psychology, and Jessica Bean, Ashley DeMarchena and Jillian Schuh, Doctoral Students

Children typically learn a language in an astonishingly predictable fashion: the order of learning different aspects of language and the timing seem to be consistent across a wide variety of cultures, family styles, and individual differences. This amazing universality may mask some important variability. By studying special "experiments of nature" we may be able to learn more about the learning styles and brain differences that drive the process of language learning. In our laboratory, we study an important group of children who seem to be learning English in a unique way. Children with autism have subtle differences in learning style and memory functioning that influence how they learn; these factors are likely responsible in part for the dramatic language delays and difficulties that characterize autism. If you select this laboratory experience, you will help to run subjects in our language experiments. Depending on timing, you may also be involved in analyzing brain imaging data. You will help to analyze some portion of the data we have collected in these ongoing experiments. Primarily, our data consist of computer-based games and standardized assessments, as well as language produced and recorded while children tell stories or play in the lab. This will be an appropriate experience for students with an interest in developmental or clinical psychology, or cognitive science.

Back to Top of This Page

WEBPAGE DESIGN

Site #29

EMERGING WEB TECHNOLOGIES
Mentor: Archana Krishnan, Doctoral Student, Communication Sciences

Are you intrigued by the dazzling assortment of web pages vying for your attention on the Internet? Would you like to learn how to create web pages that would allow you to showcase a personal interest or passion? This mentorship site will focus on learning principles of effective webpage design. You will learn how to develop basic programming code using HTML and Dreamweaver and create animations using Flash. You will refine these skills by setting up a website or animation on an educational topic of your choice. The field of communications is becoming competitive, particularly web page design and management. This informative and fun experience will thus, give you an advantage and set you on your way to becoming a creative producer of digital content.

Back to Top of This Page