“When you try to do it on leaf tissue, or the stomachs of insects that eat leaf tissue, you run into an issue where the mitochondria and chloroplasts that are found in the leaves, contaminate your sample and you end up just amplifying a bunch of mitochondria and chloroplasts,” he said. “And you can't learn anything about the microbiome because you don’t have enough bacterial species representative in your sampling. And so, my project was kind of finding a two-step method to eliminate the contamination by these two sources, mitochondria and chloroplasts.”
Colvin said he was still waiting for many of his samples to be processed, but the work has helped him crystallize his future plans. When he first arrived at Penn State last year, he said he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, other than study plant science.
“But through the lab, I’ve learned that I’m really interested in research. I want to go to grad school, and continue doing this sort of plant science research, which opens the doors for more opportunities in industry roles and scientist roles, where I can continue my passion for like problem solving, doing research or filling gaps in knowledge that we find.”
The exhibition showcases how students are working collaboratively with faculty and graduate students, and getting better than a front-row seat to how research is done at an institution classified as R1: doctoral universities — very high research activity. For those who aspire to higher degrees, undergraduate research is often an excellent steppingstone.
“I was thrilled with the variety of participants this year and the energy they brought to the Exhibition,” said Alan Rieck, associate vice provost and associate dean of Undergraduate Education. “We had a great response from volunteer judges this year. The faculty not only spend their time mentoring our undergraduate researchers, but they’ve helped to make this event possible and create an experience for our students.”
Evening of Creative Inquiry in Music
Later in the evening of April 17, students from the School of Music took to the stage in Recital Hall for a diverse demonstration in what research and scholarship can look like in music and music education.
Zachary McKee traveled to Long Beach Island, New Jersey, measured the bay tide and plotted waveform data from oscillations during the four major moon phases. He then used MaxMSP, a visual programming language for music and multimedia, to play the waveforms. By feeding the data points into his newfound instrument, McKee demonstrated how this could be used to create music by playing a snippet of an ambient track he created himself.
The junior music technology major said he felt compelled to create a piece “greater than himself” that explored climate change. Initially expecting to find that the tide levels had increased over time, McKee discovered no change in the levels he recorded in 2023 compared to records from 2003, which he said led him down a rabbit hole of astronomy and gravity to figure out why that was the case.