2022 University of Chicago Undergraduate Research Symposium: Session 1

A personalized breast cancer risk screening program adjusts the imaging modality and frequency of screening exams according to a woman's risk of developing breast cancer. This approach has the potential to reduce costs and false positives by reducing unnecessary exams and finding more cancers at an earlier stage when they are still curable. Deep learning is a class of artificial intelligence algorithms that progressively extracts higher-level representations from raw input. We are developing Multimodal AI for Cancer Risk Assessment (MAICARA), which combines imaging, clinical, and genomic data into a single deep learning model to predict breast cancer risk. One critical challenge to applying deep learning techniques in the biomedical domain is the relative scarcity and expense of labeled patient data. Recently, new self-supervised methods which rely on contrastive losses have been shown to generate representations that are as good for classification as those generated using purely supervised methods. The advantage of contrastive loss functions is that they are able to extract features independent of labels associated with the pretraining dataset. We have collected over 30,000 mammograms and breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) exams from over 10,000 patients at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Building on our existing prototype, we adapt the contrastive self-learning technique for MAICARA. We collate unlabeled MRI data from public datasets, refine our existing image preprocessing pipeline, and use those data to pretrain a model using the Momentum Contrast framework. We then fine-tune the model with our breast MRI imaging data for the task of breast cancer risk prediction. Finally, we optimize the hyperparameters and evaluate the performance of the model.

Aarthi Koripelly

Anna Woodard, UChicago Department of Medicine, Data Science Institute

College Global Health Scholar, Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences, Computing Science, Statistics

Cocaine is a widely abused narcotic with an estimated 11-billion-dollar impact on healthcare industries. Cocaine users can escalate from habitual to compulsive use, resulting in addiction. When a cocaine addict stops taking the drug, they are still at a high risk for relapse. Current research in how to mitigate relapse involves glucagon-like-peptide-1, or GLP-1, which is currently known to play a role in preventing drug and cue-induced relapse of cocaine abuse. However, there exists no present research into the GLP-1 and stress-induced relapse of cocaine addiction. We investigated whether GLP-1 agonist Exendin-4 (Ex-4) prevents reinstatement of stress-induced cocaine conditioned place preference (CPP) in mice. We first established and then extinguished cocaine CPP (10mg/kg) using a twice daily (cocaine/saline) protocol and then (saline/saline) protocol. We then assessed whether forced swim paired with Ex-4 injection prevented reinstatement at 10ug/kg, 3ug/kg, and 0ug/kg of Ex-4 using a within-subject control model. The results were analyzed using paired t-test statistical analysis software. We observed statistically significant cocaine CPP acquisition and extinction data. Additionally, we observed no cocaine CPP reinstatement in the drug group after forced swim + Ex-4 10ug/kg and forced swim + Ex-4 3ug/kg. However, when the same mice were given forced swim + saline injection (0ug/kg Ex-4), there was no significant reinstatement. When mice were given a priming injection of cocaine (10 mg/kg), there was still no significant reinstatement. These data indicate there was no evidence of stress or drug induced reinstatement. The two injections of Ex-4 possibly prevented reinstatement on the third test when no Ex-4 was given. With these data in mind, GLP-1 presents a viable therapy for drug, cue, and stress induced relapse. Further research, however, is needed to investigate impacts of repeat-exposure to GLP-1 in the context of drug use.

Alexis Hatch

Ming Xu, Anesthesia and Critical Care

Dean's Fund for Undergraduate Research Awardee

Biological & Health Sciences, Neuroscience

The ability to control the spatial and temporal timing of gene expression is critical for the development of multicellular organisms. The interactions between distant cis-acting regulatory elements (enhancers) and promoters are important for the transcription and translation of genetic information into developmental regulatory programs. In vertebrates, the efficiency and specificity of these interactions are impacted by the 3D structures Topologically Associating Domains (TADs). TADs form through dynamic extrusions of chromatin loops by the cohesin complex. The genomic range of extruded loops is delimited by CTCF-bound sites, and their dynamics and stability are influenced by interactions between CTCF and a cohesin subunit STAG. Most invertebrate animal lineages possess a single STAG ortholog which functions in a diversity of processes. In vertebrates, STAG duplication has resulted in three STAG orthologs, STAG1, STAG2, and STAG3, with distinct functions during mitosis, meiosis, and TAD formation. To understand how the evolution of different STAG orthologs has impacted loop extrusion and TAD formation in animals, we will study the properties of the ancestral STAG proteins from sea anemones and hemichordates (which exist as single copies) and test their ability to rescue STAG1 and STAG2 function in vertebrates. STAG localization, TAD formation, and gene expression will be assessed using different genomic profiling techniques including CUT&RUN, Hi-C, and RNA-seq in a mammalian cell culture model in which human STAG1 and STAG2 are replaced by STAG1/2/3 orthologs from sea anemone and hemichordates. This research will provide insight into the role of distinct STAG orthologs in chromatin organization and the potential function of ortholog-specific protein domains in the interaction of STAG with cohesin and CTCF. In the future, such knowledge could be used to analyze cohesin variants found in different species or patients.

Ana Bertuol

Dr. Heather Marlow, Organismal Biology and Anatomy, Marlow Lab, The University of Chicago; Dr. Francois Spitz, Human Genetics, Spitz Lab, The University of Chicago

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

Recent advances in immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) have revolutionized the cancer therapy landscape, improving survival in subsets of patients across a range of malignancies. However, the responses have been very limited in advanced prostate cancer (PC), due to multiple mechanisms of intrinsic resistance to ICI. One of the central mechanisms for resistance to ICI in PC is a sparse immune infiltrate, with a predominance of myeloid suppressive cells within the tumor microenvironment. We hypothesized that activation of the nucleotide-binding domain (NOD)-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome can activate innate immunity within myeloid suppressive cells, thereby overcoming intrinsic resistance to ICI. The NLRP3 inflammasome is a molecular platform that mediates critical inflammatory innate immune responses in the host defense against microbial pathogens and in response to cellular stress. We thus evaluated the impact of an NLRP3 agonist (BMS-392959) in a murine c-myc-driven prostate cancer mouse model. Our results demonstrate significant tumor control in BMS-392959 treated mice, which is accompanied by a global increase in immune cell infiltration. Mechanistic studies reveal a tumor extrinsic, macrophage mediated anti-tumor response driven by M1 polarization and subsequent tumor phagocytosis. Results are heightened in combination with standard-of-care castration using Degarelix and complete tumor control is seen with triple combination Degarelix, Copanlisib, and BMS-392959. Collectively, our results demonstrate NLRP3 as a promising therapeutic target to overcome resistance to ICI in advanced PC.

Anna Argulian

Akash Patnaik, BSD and Department of Medicine, Hematology/Oncology, Patnaik Lab, UChicago

DAAD RISE Scholar, Liew Family Research Fellow, Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

Sleep is critical to a variety of cognitive functions, and insufficient sleep can have negative consequences for mood and behavior in both development and adulthood. An important open question is how sleep duration impacts functional brain organization which may in turn impact cognition. To characterize the functional brain networks relating to sleep across the lifespan, we analyzed data from the publicly available Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study dataset, which includes functional MRI and sleep duration data collected via Fitbit from 9–12-year-old preadolescents (n =1518). We applied connectome-based predictive modelling (CPM) to predict participants’ mean daily sleep duration over 7.57 days on average from their resting-state functional connectivity patterns. Models trained and tested using 10-fold cross-validation successfully predicted sleep duration from brain connectivity patterns (mean correlation between predicted and observed sleep duration values: r = 0.22, p < 0.001). We next sought to replicate this finding in a novel dataset, the Human Connectome Project sample, which includes fMRI data from young adults aged 22–35 years (n=594). Fully cross-validated CPMs again predicted self-reported sleep duration from resting-state functional connectivity patterns (r = 0.14, p < 0.001). To test the robustness and generalizability of these models, we asked whether the same functional brain networks predicted sleep duration in preadolescence and adulthood by applying CPMs trained in the ABCD Study sample to predict sleep duration in the independent HCP dataset and vice versa. Models predicted sleep duration in each dataset from CPMs trained in the other (ABCD predicting HCP r = 0.14, p < 0.001; HCP predicting ABCD: r = 0.19, p < 0.001). Thus, resting-state functional connectivity predicts sleep duration, and network models are valid and generalizable across demographically-distinct participant populations and datasets. Future work can test whether functional networks related to sleep are also predictive of cognitive function.

Anurima Mummaneni

Monica Rosenberg, Psychology, CAB Lab

Neuroscience

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are important membrane-enclosed organelles for cell-cell communication. Found in all biological fluids and produced by myriad cell types, EVs are highly varied in cargo, size, and profiles, enabling the diagnosis of various diseases through an analysis of a patient’s EV profile. However, our understanding of biomodulation-induced EVs dynamics is limited. Since the release of EVs is regulated by a calcium-dependent pathway, we hypothesize that bioelectrical stimulation and calcium ion fluxes will impact EVs release. Here we combine super-resolution imaging and bioelectrical stimulation to perturb cell-EVs dynamics. We labeled cells with pHluorin-CD63, a live-cell exosome release reporter, to monitor EVs dynamics upon electrical stimulation with interdigitated gold electrodes. We observed enhanced release of EVs during and after bioelectrical modulation. We hope to further develop a bioelectronics-based EVs generator in order to enable the large-scale generation of EVs for tissue engineering and biomolecule delivery applications.

Ellie Ostroff

Dr. Bozhi Tian, Chemistry; Lingyuan Meng, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences, Chemistry

The ratio of donor to recipient predicted heart mass (PHM) has been validated as an independent predictor of all-cause mortality and readmissions post cardiac transplantation (HTx) in adults. We assessed the ability of PHM to predict 1- and 3-year all-cause mortality in pediatric HTx recipients. 4997 pediatric heart transplant recipients undergoing initial isolated orthotopic HTx between 1989 and 2017 were identified (9.5 ± 5.4 years; 56% male) from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) registry. Subjects were grouped into 5 equally sized groups by PHM ratio; severely undersized (.86 ± .08), undersized (1.03 ± .04), size-matched (1.16 ± .04), oversized (1.33 ± .06) and severely oversized (1.68 ± .22). 1417 patients (28%) received hearts undersized by PHM. PHM mismatch as defined by the five equally sized groups was not significantly associated with survival at 1 (P=0.109) or 3 years (P=0.108) in univariate Kaplan-Meier analysis. When defined as a continuous variable, PHM ratio was a significant predictor for 1-year mortality in univariate Cox proportional hazards analysis (HR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.149-1.958; P=0.003) but not after adjustment for relevant covariates (HR, 1.273; 95% CI, 0.947-1.710; P=0.109). There was no increased risk of death at 3 years due to PHM mismatch after adjustment (HR, 1.076; 95% CI, 0.845-1.372; P=0.551). These data are the first to show that donor-recipient predicted heart mass ratio mismatch is not associated with reduced 1-year or 3-year survival in pediatric heart transplant recipients. Future studies validating the echocardiography-based equation with pediatric patients may be warranted as the initial equation for calculating predicted heart mass was derived from an adult population.

George Li

Valluvan Jeevanandam, Section of Cardiac Surgery, UChicago Medicine, University of Chicago; Daniel Rodgers, University of Chicago

College Summer Research Fellow, Dean's Fund for Undergraduate Research CONFERENCE Awardee

Biological & Health Sciences

The ability to heal wounds is critical to life itself, as skin is the primary barrier against pathogens and other environmental dangers. In higher animals, wound healing will not proceed without de novo transcription. We investigated whether transcription is necessary for wound healing in the exumbrellar epithelium of Clytia hemisphaerica medusa. C. hemisphaerica is a new model organism used to study wound healing due to its rapid healing capabilities (600x faster than humans) and the ease of imaging healing in an intact animal. C. hemisphaerica presents a simplified model system for studying epithelial wound healing as it lacks a blood system or immune cells. Nevertheless, many of the morphological steps in high animal wound healing are conserved. For example, cell spreading to close small wounds and cell sheet migration to close larger wounds are observed. We inhibited transcription in C. hemisphaerica and assessed wound closure compared to control organisms in small and large wounds. There were no phenotypic differences between C. hemisphaerica in transcription-inhibited organisms compared to controls. Likewise, there were no significant differences between the rates of wound closure or between the proportions of wound healed of each condition. Overall, our findings suggest that transcription is not necessary for healing of small or large wounds in C. hemisphaerica, suggesting that the necessary mechanisms for epithelial wound closure in C. hemisphaerica exist prior to injury. This finding paves the way towards new inquiries regarding mechanisms and genetic pathways of epithelial wound closure.

Isabel O'Malley-Krohn

Dr. Jocelyn Malamy, BSD, Malamy Lab; Elizabeth Lee, Malamy Lab

Biological & Health Sciences

The gene aristaless has been described as a major regulator of multiple developmental processes in insects. Aristaless is classified as a paired-like homeodomain transcription factor mainly associated with appendage patterning and extension during insect embryonic development. In Lepidoptera, a gene duplication event gave rise to two versions of the gene: aristaless1 (al1) and aristaless2 (al2). Recent work has shown that al1 is still related to this ancestral appendage formation role. Furthermore, a novel role has been characterized in which al1 has been shown to also control white and yellow pigmentation in Heliconius butterfly wings. These white and yellow color patterns, as well as the switch between them, has been relevant for the study of evolution and biology in Heliconius butterflies. However, the question remains of whether al2 is also functional with respect to the ancestral appendage role, and if it has any relevance to pigmentation. Characterizing al2 and comparing it to what we know from al1 will provide insight about any subfunctionalization of the duplicate genes and will inform us about gene function following duplication events. Our work shows that al2 is also associated with appendages, similar to al1. Some of these appendages includethe spines, eyes, legs, and parts of the mouth. Furthermore, our work highlights that al1 and al2 have temporally distinct expression domains, with al1 shifted earlier and al2 shifted to later time points of embryonic development. Finally, we also describe differences in the cellular localization between al1 and al2, both of which exhibit clear differences with respect to nuclear colocalization. These results suggest that, following the gene duplication event, al1and al2 may have achieved a level of subfunctionalization associated with temporal and spatial (cellular) shifts.

Isabella Cisneros

Marcus Kronforst, Ecology & Evolution

UChicago Alumnae Fund Fellow

Biological & Health Sciences

Community health workers (CHWs) are trusted community members who promote awareness and provide education and care for health issues. While studies support the effectiveness of CHWs in various settings, no consensus exists on whether CHW-based interventions are effective in the K-12 school setting or on best practices. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of CHW-based interventions within schools and elucidate models of successful CHW integration. This systematic literature review identified CHW interventions in schools using PubMed, CINAHL, and SCOPUS databases. Articles were included if they described an intervention led by CHWs, targeting children and/or parents, and taking place primarily within a school (pre-kindergarten, Head Start, K-12, alternative high schools). For each included article, data about the study characteristics, CHW intervention, and results were extracted. Of the total 1,875 articles identified in the initial search, 17 met inclusion criteria and were included in the final analysis. Studies were excluded if they were not written in English or described an intervention outside the United States. Ten of the 17 articles included described a positive outcome, including increasing asthma self-management, reducing drug abuse, developing resilience, and achieving smoking cessation. Eleven articles provided details regarding CHW recruitment, training, and roles that would enable reproduction of the intervention. The use of CHWs in schools for children and/or families is promising. Successful interventions varied in terms of school locations, populations, and topics, suggesting CHW-based interventions in schools are adaptable to meet community needs. However, limited reporting of CHW roles, recruitment, and training precluded the identification of CHW models associated with success. More comprehensive reporting is needed to determine best practices of CHW integration within the school setting. Next steps should include establishing a standardized reporting mechanism for CHW interventions in schools to allow for reproducibility, scalability, and evaluation of studies.

Isabella Xu

Dr. Anna Volerman, Department of Medicine, UChicago Medicine

Dean's Fund for Undergraduate Research CONFERENCE Awardee

Biological & Health Sciences

The proline rich region (PRR) is an identifying component of the hybrid proline rich protein (HyPRP) family in plants. These important proteins, present in diverse land plant taxa, have been best studied in Arabidopsis, in which their role in modulating responses to both pathogenic and beneficial microbes has been established. Many HyPRPs localize to the chloroplast outer envelope membrane. This chloroplast localization is thought to be central to their role in biotic stress responses as the chloroplast is a key site in the production of signaling and defensive molecules. Alongside the PRR, HyPRPs have an N-terminal hydrophobic domain which includes a transmembrane helix and a C-terminal lipid-transfer, protein-like domain consisting of an eight-cysteine motif. The PRR occupies a central position between these two domains. HyPRPs target chloroplasts via a non-classical bipartite signal consisting of both the hydrophobic domain and the PRR; when either domain is removed, they fail to localize. My research seeks to better characterize the properties of this signal and its components, with particular emphasis on the PRR. My work thus far has utilized visualization of transiently expressed GFP-fusion protein constructs to demonstrate the capacity of PRR insertion to drive chloroplast localization in otherwise non-localizing HyPRP relatives. I have used similar experiments to establish the importance of a certain length of PRR as a threshold necessary for robust chloroplast targeting. My current work centers on investigation of potential role of PRR phosphorylation on accentuating localization, as well as developing new experimental methods for the same. My past and future experiments thus seek to outline the key components driving HyPRP subcellular localization with the aim of widening our understanding of how this important family of proteins promotes plants’ capacity to respond to their biotic environment.

Jack Riley

Jean Greenberg, MGCB

Beckman Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

The mechanisms in the neocortex that determine how external sensory stimuli and internal states are simultaneously encoded by multineuronal activity remain unknown. This is made all the more difficult by the fact that the temporal evolution of neural activity in response to identical stimuli differs across repeated trials. To address this challenge, previous research has distilled neural activity in local neural populations into functional networks (FNs), which are network models quantifying the pairwise spike time correlations between the dynamics of any two neurons as connections. Using neural activity recorded from mouse primary visual cortex (V1) to construct FNs, we previously demonstrated that pairwise correlations in FNs can be used to accurately predict neuronal activity on a single trial basis, and that a neuron’s strongest incoming connections, which form its functional group, are crucial to these accurate predictions. However, it remains unclear whether a similar approach will be equally efficacious in other cortical areas. Generalizability of this approach would provide insight into overarching rules governing cortical sensory processing, and we tested this by studying the mouse barrel cortex, a brain region processing whisker input. We used two-photon imaging of neuronal activity in the barrel cortex to construct FNs and then employed regularized linear models and generalized linear models to predict dynamics on held out recordings. We anticipate that, like V1, barrel cortex neurons will have well-modeled dynamics driven by strong incoming connections and exhibit a consistent functional group size for well-modeled neuron dynamics, but also display a spatial and anatomical dependence of neurons comprising the functional group. Going forward, we plan to assess the relative importance of internal and external variables in driving barrel cortex dynamics and analyze model performance over repeated experiments. Altogether, our work on information encoding contributes to developing biomedical innovations such as neural prosthetics and brain-computer interfaces.

Jeff Guo

Jason MacLean, Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago

Neuroscience, Statistics

Murine norovirus (MNV) is a positive-sense RNA virus used as a model for human norovirus, the major cause of nonbacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. Following entry, MNV creates a replication complex (RC) to replicate its genome using host membranes. Vps34 (vacuolar protein-sorting 34), a class III phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), is critical for RC formation in certain types of (+) RNA viruses, including MNV. In this study, we demonstrate that Vps34 activation is important for MNV replication, and that a MNV non-structural protein, NS4, is sufficient for this activation. To investigate the change in Vps34 activation during infection, murine microglial cells were infected with MNV, and the Vps34 activation level, which is inhibited by p300 via acetylation, was quantified by Western blot. Upon infection, levels of acetylated Vps34 decreased, and the active form of p300 also was reduced. To identify which viral non-structural (NS) proteins were responsible, individual NS proteins were transduced into cells and Vps34 activation was measured. Only NS4 expression phenocopied the substantial increase in Vps34 activation levels and decreased p300 activation. Current studies are investigating how VPS34 activation benefits MNV infection. Vps34 acts as a lipid kinase to generate PI3P which plays a role in the cellular autophagy pathway. By using a GFP-fused PI3P-binding domain, puncta formation can be quantified and compared in MNV-infected or NS4-transduced cells. Vps34 also associates with Beclin1, which plays a role in various cellular functions such as autophagy or endosomal pathways. Measuring expression of Beclin1 can indicate if MNV interacts with these pathways. The way these downstream effects of Vps34 are affected during MNV infection and NS4 transduction may help elucidate the complex interactions between viral protein NS4 and the cellular PI3 kinase Vps34.

Jessica Oros

Dr. Glenn Randall, Department of Microbiology, Randall Lab, University of Chicago

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

Asian persons have an increased risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) compared to non-Hispanic White persons. The prevalence of T2D among this population has grown in recent years, as Asian persons are the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in the US. We conducted a meta-analysis of US randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effectiveness of T2D interventions at improving systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and HbA1c among this population. An electronic search of literature in PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Medline was conducted from 1985 to 2019 for studies evaluating T2D interventions among predominantly minority populations. This analysis was limited to RCTs with >6% of total participants identifying as Asian, utilizing the 2020 US Census as standard. Interventions focusing on the efficacy of a drug, device, diet, surgery, or procedure were excluded. A random-effects meta-analysis was performed to calculate the pooled effect size of the various outcomes. Of the articles reviewed, nine met inclusion criteria. All included HbA1c and five included SBP/DBP. Participants were 62.8% Asian and 40.3% female with a mean age of 53.4 years. Interventions included diabetes education programs, utilization of community health workers, bilingual counseling, and cognitive therapy. There was a 0.36% decrease in HbA1c in the experimental group when compared to the control group (95% CI -0.48 to -0.25, p=0.80, I2=0%). Compared to control, these interventions had minimal effects on SBP (-0.08, 95% CI -0.22 to 0.07, p=0.73, I2=0%) and DBP (0.01, 95% CI -0.22 to 0.25, p=0.23, I2=29%). This meta-analysis found that RCTs for T2D in Asian persons modestly lowered HbA1c with minimal impact on SBP/DBP. Future analysis should include observational studies to evaluate a larger sample and investigate their impact on other markers of health, as well as characterize these effects by level of intervention to inform health policy.

Jielu Yu

Neda Laiteerapong, Internal Medicine, University of Chicago; Amber Deckard, University of Chicago Internal Medicine

Biological & Health Sciences

Observing the behavior of chronically deafferented individuals has illuminated the importance of somatosensory and proprioceptive feedback in motor tasks. In this study, we contrast the performance of KS, a woman who congenitally lacks somatosensory and proprioceptive afferents, with IW, a man who experienced adult-onset degradation of somatosensory fibers. KS has been found to use visual information as a fast and automatic method of forming a body schema and guiding her movements. It is hypothesized that visual inputs are substituted for proprioceptive and touch inputs in motor coordinating regions of KS’s brain, specifically the cerebellum. Unlike KS, IW cannot access visual information quickly and automatically because he grew up with proprioceptive inputs. We are developing an interactive virtual reality (VR) game to compare novel motor task acquisition between KS, IW, and control subjects. Instead of a conventional joystick, the game features two remote sensors. One is placed on the wrist, and the other is put between the elbow and shoulder. By eliminating the joystick use, the game minimizes somatosensory and proprioceptive feedback to the players, which is more fair for all the participants. A challenge encountered has been aligning the position coordinates for each research participant according to their most comfortable planes of movement. We leveraged point cloud data from the user’s arm movements to implement a custom biometric calibration to the controls. Subsequently, important statistics from the test runs, such as reaction time on specific turns, route efficiency, etc., will be analyzed in the springtime.

Jonathan Zeevi, Noor Amin

Peggy Mason, Neurobiology

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Neuroscience

One of the hallmarks of cancer is its ability to resist powerful attacks from the immune system.Immune evasion often results from epigenetic changes – changes in gene expression that are not governed by DNA mutations. Recent studies have linked increased expression of KDM5B – a K4H3 histone demethylase – with the repression of immune responses to viral infections and cancers. Specifically, KDM5B expression was found to be inversely correlated with the infiltration level of antitumor CD8+ T-cells in many types of cancers. However, it is still unclear whether KDM5B mediates cancer immune evasion. My project aimed to determine whether KDM5B promotes tumor progression through the suppression of the anti-tumor immune response. To determine whether KDM5B plays a role in immune evasion, the gene was first knocked out in murine squamous cancer cells of the skin using the CRISPR-Cas9 system. Additionally, restriction-enzyme cloning was used to develop a KDM5B cloning vector that was used to generate a murine squamous cancer cell line with overexpressed KDM5B. Subcutaneous injections of KDM5B knockout, KDM5B overexpression, and control vector transduced cells were then performed on immunodeficient and immunocompetent mice. Tumor growth in all three types of mice was measured for approximately three weeks. We found that the loss of KDM5B resulted in the reduction of tumor growth on immunocompetent mice compared to tumors that originated from control cancer cells and the cells overexpressing KDM5B, suggesting that KDM5B plays an important role in mediating cancer immune evasion. The next step in my project is to further elucidate the mechanism of KDM5B-mediated immune evasion by characterizing the tumor immune landscape and identifying KDM5B downstream effectors. My research has the potential to elucidate the function of KDM5B and uncover a novel cancer immune evasion mechanism that could serve as a potential target for improving cancer immunotherapy.

Jovan Stanisavic

Yuxuan (Phoenix) Miao, The Ben May Department for Cancer Research

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

The aorta is the largest artery in the human body that transports nutrient-rich blood for systemic circulation. Its stability is critical for proper bodily functions. The most common aortic disease is the abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), an enlargement of the aortic wall that increases the risk of fatal rupture of the aorta if left untreated. Endovascular aortic repair (EVAR), a method to repair aneurysms by restricting blood flow into the aneurysm sac through the insertion of a cylindrical stent, has increasingly become an attractive choice of treatment for AAAs in recent years. While EVAR decreases hospital stays, pain, operative morbidity, and mortality, it is also associated with increased rates of re-intervention, increased costs, and long-term mortality in comparison to open surgery. Chief cause among these complications is the Type 1A endoleak. When the biomechanical stability between the proximal seal zone of the cylindrical stent and ill-defined geometry of the AAA is compromised, Type 1A endoleaks occur – persistent perigraft blood flow between the endograft and aortic wall. The complexities of Type IA endoleaks indicate a lack in understanding of the biomechanical interface and geometric compatibility between the two surfaces. The goal of this study is to compare the surface geometry, specifically curvedness and Koenderink shape index of aortas that demonstrated successful remodeling after EVAR and aortas with persistent Type 1A endoleaks. By employing a computational methodology for analyzing the surface geometry, we plot the changes of the mean shape index vs. curvedness of the AAAs pre-op and post-op. We expect to observe a clear distinction in the trajectories of the surface geometry changes and the shape metrics of the pathological aortas between the two cohorts. By further understanding the 3D geometry of these two cohorts, we hypothesize that we will be able to predict the remodeling potential of AAA.

Julius Kim

Luka Pocivavsek, Department of Surgery

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences, Chemistry, Computing Science, Engineering, Physics

Cancer evolves dynamically and reiteratively through the process of clonal expansion, genetic diversification, and clonal selections. These processes mark the genome through mutational signatures inferred from single nucleotide variants, insertions and deletions, and structural variants. Consequently, cancer’s life history (evolutionary trajectory) is encrypted in the somatic mutations present. However, it remains unclear how mutation processes change during cancer evolution due to a lack of reliable methods to reconstruct evolutionary trajectories of mutational signature activities. Women of African ancestry experience more aggressive breast cancer with higher mortality rates than white women of European ancestry. Differential somatic evolution has not been investigated in detail in this understudied population. Dr. Funmi Olopade’s team has performed deep whole-genome sequencing (WGS) on 97 breast tumors (90× depth) and paired normal tissue (30× depth) from Nigerian women with breast cancer. Key events in the somatic evolution of these tumors were identified and compared with a similar WGS analysis from 76 breast cancer cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas. We aim to implement a timing model to reconstruct tumor evolutionary trajectory based on both observed density of mutation frequencies (taking copy number profiles into account) and changes in mutational signature activities. We tested TrackSig algorithm and are now actively testing a newer version of method, TrackSigFreq, to identify subclones using both mutation type and variant allele frequencies and to detect changepoints between distinct subpopulations that exhibit little to no change in signature activity.

Lingyue Yu

Olufunmilayo Olopade, Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago; Yonglan Zheng, Olopade Lab, Department of Medicine; Toshio Yoshimatsu, Olopade Lab, Department of Medicine

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory CNS disease with subnormal IFN-a/b (interferon) serum levels and responses. IFN-β is the most common therapy for MS, due to its antiviral, antitumor, and immune regulatory actions. IFN-β has been shown to increase the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines, downregulate the expression of proinflammatory cytokines with an overall shift in the balance from a proinflammatory response to an anti-inflammatory response, as well as reduce the number of inflammatory cells capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier. Polyethylene glycol-conjugated IFN-β-1a(Plegridy) has a longer half-life than unconjugated IFN-β-1a (Avonex) and could lead to differences in molecular responses that modify therapeutic benefit. Total RNA from 106 peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) samples, and paired sera from 20 clinically stable IFN-treated MS patients and 10 healthy controls (HC), were assayed. Global gene expression was characterized with highly sensitive Clariom D microarrays and levels of 78 serum proteins with Luminex multiplex at 0, 6, 24, and 48 hours after Avonex or Plegridy injection (short-term effect) and after 1 and 7-months of Avonex or Plegridy treatment (long-term). Plegridy induced a prolonged and more extensive peak in protein levels, compared to Avonex, with a significant delayed effect, and it primed the immune system to IFN induction, with higher levels after 7 months of Plegridy treatment, compared to 1 month after starting treatment. Several biomarkers demonstrated a similar pattern of activation across different time points and treatment groups. Molecular signatures during IFN-β therapy suggest long-term effects of PEGylated IFN, compared to traditional unconjugated IFN-b-1a. IFN therapy significantly balanced correlations between Th1, Th2, Th17, chemokine, antiviral, and neuroprotective protein pathways, now similar to healthy controls.

Maya Olcer

Anthony Reder, UChicago Medicine Neurology, Surgery Brain Research Center; Xuan Feng, Reder Lab

Biological & Health Sciences, Neuroscience, Immunology

Recent research by Stier et al. has demonstrated that collective network effects of urban built environments drive larger cities to have lower rates of depression than smaller cities, indicating that depression shares features with other collective phenomena (e.g., infectious diseases). Yet, all previous work has focused on large scale, whole city, analysis of trends in depression. My research is part of a project to characterize the local variability of depression rates within cities and discover whether individual variation in human mobility impacts these rates. I used geo-located Twitter data from individual users, together with OSMnx software, to visualize and analyze user movement through street networks within the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Depressive sentiment was detected via a machine learning model applied to individual users’ tweets. These analyses have revealed significant associations between depression and human mobility at both the level of individual twitter users and in larger neighborhoods, defined by ZIP codes and Zillow neighborhood boundaries. To our knowledge, this is the first neighborhood level characterization of depression within cities, and these data will aid in discovering how socio-economic and health disparities between neighborhoods are associated with the collective physical and social environment risks for depression.

Maya Ordonez

Marc G. Berman, Department of Psychology, Environmental Neuroscience Laboratory; Andrew Stier, Environmental Neuroscience Laboratory

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Neuroscience

The emerald ash borer (EAB) is an invasive species first spotted in Michigan in 2002, and it has since spread throughout the United States. This research aims to investigate allelic variants, identified in seven candidate genes, potentially associated with resistance to the invasive EAB. Samples were collected from black ash (Fraxinus nigra), Manchurian ash (Fraxinus mandshurica), and black-Manchurian hybrids. Exceptionally high resistance to the emerald ash borer was found in Manchurian ash trees, and unusually low resistance was found in black ash trees, despite the two species being closely related sister groups in phylogenetic studies. Identifying the genetic basis of this striking difference could be beneficial for understanding resistant strains of ash trees. The hypothesis was that there would be variation in alleles correlating to demonstrated high and low resistance, which was estimated from previous bioassay data. 30 genotypes from each species were sampled, and, after DNA extraction and PCR amplification, each candidate gene was sequenced via Sanger sequencing. After samples were sequenced and aligned, codons were translated to amino acids and sites of allelic variation were identified. Sites of amino acid variation significantly associated with the observed phenotype (level of resistance) were found in four of the seven candidate genes. While some alleles identified in the original paper were validated in this study, novel alleles were also observed, and some alleles initially identified as solely homozygous were found to be heterozygotes in some samples. However, others were present but no longer appeared significantly associated with resistance level. Strong levels of linkage disequilibrium were observed among significant allelic variants, implying linked mutations and inheritance. Understanding which genes contribute to resistance against the EAB will allow researchers to improve future tree breeding for resistance to EAB.

Miranda McKibben

Timothy Wootton, Ecology and Evolution

Biological & Health Sciences, Environmental & Urban Studies

Cesarean Delivery (CD) is associated with adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. While factors such as maternal age and BMI have been extensively explored as risk factors for CD, fewer studies have investigated the role of maternal height in the likelihood of CD in the United States. Previous reports, which showed an inverse correlation between maternal height and CD, were largely based on homogenous populations in other countries. The purpose of this study is to determine if maternal height is an independent risk factor for CD using large-scale, heterogenous U.S. population data. The National Vital Statistics System provides annual data on all births occurring in the U.S. Using 2016-2019 data, we analyzed full-term, nulliparous, singleton births constituting a total of 5,239,407 births. SPSS was used to calculate adjusted odds ratios (aORs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals. The rate and odds of CD decreased as maternal height increased. This correlation remained significant after controlling for the following factors: maternal race, age, BMI, birth weight, and paternal race. Compared to 64-inch-tall mothers, women 60 inches in height were 2.1 times more likely to have CD, whereas women taller than 71 inches were 0.58 times as likely. When stratified by race, there was also significant evidence for the influence of maternal height on CD likelihood for Asian and Hispanic mothers. Based on aORs, maternal height had a stronger influence on CD than BMI>30, maternal age up to 39 years, and fetal birth weight up to 4499g, making it one of the most significant factors to affect CD rates. From this analysis of national birth data, height should be considered one of the prognostic indicators of CD. While height is not a modifiable factor, understanding height as a risk factor for CD is still valuable for healthcare professionals when assessing and counseling pregnant patients.

Nicole Yao, Narvella Sefah, Bella Gomez

Dr. Yuzuru Anzai, Lenox Hill Hospital; Dr. Maria Teresa Benedetto-Anzai, Lenox Hill Hospital

College Global Health Scholar, Dean's Fund for Undergraduate Research CONFERENCE Awardee

Biological & Health Sciences

Currently, cardiovascular disease (CVD) drug discovery has focused primarily on addressing the inflammation and immunopathology aspects inherent to various CVD phenotypes such as cardiac fibrosis and coronary artery disease. However, recent findings suggest new biological pathways for cytoskeletal and extracellular matrix (ECM) regulation across diverse CVDs, such as the roles of matricellular proteins (e.g. tenascin-C) in regulating the cellular microenvironment. The success of anti-inflammatory drugs like colchicine, which targets microtubule polymerization, further suggests that the cardiac cytoskeleton and ECM provide prospective therapeutic opportunities. Within this project, we aim to gather evidence supporting the efficacy of pharmaceutical modulation of cellular ECM elements in the treatment of CVD from computational, in-vitro, and in-vivo methods.

Patrick Sun

Bohdan Khomtchouk, Department of Medicine, Pritzker School of Medicine

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

Medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) have the capacity to ectopically express nearly any gene in the genome, to mirror ‘self’ and promote the selection of a tolerant T cell repertoire in the thymus. This ectopic expression includes genes encoding a variety of antigens typically expressed in pancreatic βcells. Expression of these pancreatic antigens in the thymus at sufficient levels is crucial to purge pancreas-reactive T cells and is thus critical for type one diabetes (T1D) prevention. While their expression in the pancreas is well characterized, the determinants of expression of pancreatic antigens in the thymus are largely unknown. Gene expression is generally thought to be regulated by lineage-specific transcription factor (TF) networks, whose actions are reflected in patterns of chromatin accessibility, notable at gene promoters and their non-coding regulatory elements. To determine what regulatory elements and TFs regulate the expression of genes encoding pancreatic antigens targeted in T1D (Ins2, Gad2, Slc308a, Ptprn, andIca), I analyzed existing ATAC-seq datasets from murine mTECs and β cells. By focusing on the regions ± 1Mb of the promoter regions, these data reveal novel putative regulatory elements that act in a tissue-specific manner in the thymus to mediate gene expression of pancreatic factors and lower T1D risk.

Peyton Dooley

Andrew Koh, Department of Pathology, Koh Lab at the University of Chicago

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

Communities of racial/ethnic minority groups experience a higher prevalence of Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) with higher rates of diabetes-related complications compared to non-Hispanic White people. Interventions that utilize community health workers (CHW) are often successful at improving glycemic control. This analysis aimed to examine the effectiveness of CHW interventions on glycemic control in people of racial/ethnic minority groups with T2DM. A search of electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, PsycInfo) to identify articles published between 1985 and 2019 was conducted using broad search terms for diabetes, race/ethnicity, and disparities. To further refine articles to those focusing on CHW-based randomized controlled trials, abstracts were searched for “community workers” and “promotores.” A random effects model was used to calculate the effect of CHW interventions on hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) with future plans to analyze effects on other cardiovascular risk factors such as body mass index, blood pressure, and cholesterol. A total of 22 RCTs were identified, involving 4996 adults (26% Black, 50% Hispanic, 11% Asian, and 11% Pacific Islander). CHW interventions among people of racial/ethnic minority groups was associated with a 0.44% (95% confidence interval: -0.56% to -0.31%; p<0.0001) reduction in HbA1c. CHW interventions are an effective means to lower HbA1c among people of racial/ethnic minority groups with T2DM. This finding is important for future healthcare policies, which should work to emphasize culturally sensitive interventions for patients with T2DM while maintaining cost effectiveness through CHWs. Future research should examine the effectiveness of CHWs for diabetes prevention.

Raj Shetty

Neda Laiteerapong, Internal Medicine--Biological Sciences Department; Amber Deckard, The University of Chicago Medicine

Biological & Health Sciences

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is one of the leading causes of neonate mortality. Treating CHD poses a significant financial burden on the healthcare system and an emotional burden on the family. While mutations in specific genes are known to cause some forms of CHD, the mechanistic connection between these genes and dysregulation of cardiac development is not well understood. Hedgehog (Hh) signaling plays an important role in the timing of differentiation of cardiac cells. Hh signaling in the second heart field has been shown to induce the expression of FOXF1, a forkhead box transcription factor, integral to cell differentiation. However, we do not understand how FOXF1 regulates these genes. In this investigation, we tested the transcriptional activity of putative FOXF1 target enhancers in the presence and absence of FOXF1. These putative enhancers were identified as FOXF1 binding by ChIP-seq. We then selected high-confidence enhancers based on multiple criteria, including binding of the cardiac transcription factors TBX5, NKX2-5, and GATA4 at these sites, and the presence of the activating histone mark H3K27ac in mature cardiomyocytes. To evaluate the FOXF1-dependent activity of these enhancers, we have performed luciferase transcription activity assays in the HL-1 cardiomyocyte cell line. Our preliminary results show FOXF1 has the potential to act as either an activator or repressor of transcription in a context dependent manner. However, the mechanisms underlying this novel bifunctionality remain a mystery. Further study of these putative FOXF1-dependent enhancers will advance our understanding of how FOXF1 selectively regulates target enhancers to control cardiac development.

Sandhini Agarwal

Joshua Theisen, Departments of Pediatrics, Pathology, Human Genetics, and Genetic Medicine, University of Chicago; Matthew Stocker, University of Chicago; Ivan Moskowitz, University of Chicago

Biological & Health Sciences

Sonic hedgehog (Shh) is a key morphogen involved in patterning diverse embryonic tissues including the brain, face, and limb. If Shh-mediated patterning is perturbed, serious neurological health issues such as holoprosencephaly and intellectual impairment can occur. Despite the important role of Shh in development, how Shh traverses and patterns complex tissues remains poorly understood. I aim to overcome these limitations by determining the fundamental mechanism by which Shh traverses through the cellular environment. We are developing two approaches that utilize CRISPR-Cas technology for editing the embryonic genome that allows for Shh distribution to be assessed at (1) endogenous levels mediated by the Shh regulatory elements, and (2) exogenous levels. Specifically, the first approach consists of endogenously labeling Shh with a trackable green fluorescent protein (sfGFP). The Shh-sfGFP fusion protein will then be assessed through space and time via high-resolution live imaging. The second approach consists of exogenously labeling Shh through the incorporation of a doxycycline-inducible Tet-On system into the Shh locus in order to activate a genetic Shh-GFP cassette. This two-part experiment requires: (1) the production of appropriate genetic constructs, (2) in vivo manipulations of the early chick embryo through microinjection and electroporation, (3) imaging of the manipulated embryos, (4) analysis of the technique’s efficiency, and (5) determination of the spatial and temporal localization. Based upon early preliminary results and the experimental design, our experiment should provide mosaic and scattered labeling of cells producing Shh. We can then examine the dispersion of Shh in vivo with high fidelity. Future directions include determining which manipulations can be made within the project to (1) improve efficiency, and (2) develop broad strategic steps to make the Shh labeling technique applicable in other species. Thus, we more broadly seek to understand the fundamental mechanisms by which diverse morphogens pattern the embryo which is fundamental to our understanding of birth defects.

Sara Salomon

Timothy Sanders, Sanders Lab, Neurobiology

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Neuroscience

Examining the mechanics of memory formation is necessary to form a better understanding of how humans learn. The way behaviors are encoded and reinforced in memory for later recall is influenced by the context in which they are learned; however, the extent of context’s influence is currently unknown. Our overarching objective is to investigate whether learned behaviors, and specifically odor-cued behaviors, are strictly context dependent, or if they can be generalized to various settings. To interrogate this question, we train rats in two unique experimental contexts that randomly deliver one of three context-dependent or context-independent odors. If the correct behavior is performed following delivery of the corresponding odor, a liquid reward is administered. The core of the experiment involves changing the context in which a previously learned odor is presented and observing the rat’s behavior. The way in which the rat behaves will indicate whether its learning of the odor-association is strictly linked to context. Currently, two rats have been trained in one of the experimental contexts. Through performing consistently above chance, they have demonstrated learning of an association between two odors and their respective behaviors. Following this pilot behavioral experiment, the long-term goals of the project are to implant a rat with a recording electrode that will collect data on neural signals while the animal is learning in the experimental context. Studying the displayed behavior and neuronal processes of rat models in this behavioral module could provide insight into how context influences learning in various human applications including in habit forming (e.g., addiction recovery) and applied behavior analysis.

Uma Mani

Jai Yu, Department of Psychology, Neurophysiology of Experience, Memory, and Knowledge

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Neuroscience

DiGeorge syndrome, also known as 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, is the most common deletion syndrome in humans. It is a syndrome caused by a microdeletion on the long arm of chromosome 22, and 90% of the cases occur due to new mutations during early development. Symptoms and conditions of this disease include congenital heart problems, kidney defects, hearing loss and autoimmune disorders. We aim to elucidate the mechanisms of disorders that result from deficiencies of the CRKL (CRK-Like) gene, which is localized to the chromosomal region linked to 22q11.2 deletion syndrome and has also been linked to kidney defects among distal 22q11.2 deletions that do not include TBX1. While CRKL point mutations that are found within canonical domains essential for CRKL protein interactions could be understood easily, we have also identified a few missense mutations in a non-canonical domain. Our project aims to characterize these mutations found in non-canonical domains in an over-expression system in mouse embryonic fibroblast cell culture. We have hypothesized that these mutations (c841, c847) have an impact on cell proliferation, adhesion, spreading, and motility. We have generated mutant cDNAs as well as wild type CRKL and two control mutations (160L, 207F), which have been fused to a variant of green fluorescent protein and induced into cell culture. Cell adhesion and spreading assays reveal that for our two mutations, c841 experiences an increase in cell spreading while c847 experiences a decrease in cell spreading, suggesting that non-canonical mutations have the ability to affect cell morphology. Currently we are working to determine the impact of these mutations on cell proliferation and evaluate the ability of the non-canonical mutations to complement Crkl-deficiency in tissue culture. Overall, our results lead to the explanation of the mechanisms behind diseases that result from CRKL gene deficiencies.

Violet Wu

Akira Imamoto, Ben May Department of Cancer Research

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences

Neuromuscular systems contain great diversity among body plans, neural circuits, and behaviors in the animal kingdom. It is unknown to what extent each element of the motor circuit has changed over evolutionary time. We raised the central hypothesis that evolution of motor circuits follows a “bowtie” model wherein motor neurons change more slowly over evolutionary time than their inputs and outputs: pre-motor networks and muscles. We studied to what extent multiple components of motor neural circuits in insect larvae, behavior output, body morphology, neuromuscular junctions, and ventral nerve cord, diverge in the order Diptera, specifically between the species Phoridae: Megaselia abdita, Drosophilidae: Drosophila melanogaster, and Stratiomyidae: Hermetia illucens. On the behavior level, we observed that Hermetia have asymmetrical crawling waves, and Megaselia are able to initiate a more diverse range of movements with abdominal and posterior segment than Drosophila. On the anatomical level, we identified the intrasegmental dorsal muscle group in Megaselia and extended transverse and lateral muscle group. We found the differences of synaptic bouton innervation pattern in ventral muscle group across species. We also identified homologous sets of similar numbers of interneurons and motoneurons expressing Even-skipped and pMad based on relative positions in the nerve cord. This project will ultimately provide a better understanding for creation of behaviors and evolution of the nervous system.

Yiqin Gao, Bianca Campagnari

Elizabeth S. Heckscher, Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, University of Chicago; Marie Greaney, Neuroscience; Seth Donoughe, Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology

College Summer Research Fellow, Dean's Fund for Undergraduate Research Awardee

Biological & Health Sciences, Neuroscience

Fundamental issues regarding the origin of ray-finned fishes (actinopterygii) such as the basic relationships between early actinopterygian groups and the evolution of morphological specializations are still far from resolved despite their extraordinary biodiversity and ecological importance. Although there exists a well-sampled record of early actinopterygian fossils, few of them have been thoroughly described, resulting in a lack of comparative data to investigate the diversification and evolution of ray-finned fishes. This project sought to reduce the data gap by constructing a new anatomical model of the Carboniferous actinopterygian Woodicthys bearsdeni. Morphological character information has been recovered with improved accuracy from segmenting, or digitally dissecting, the X-ray μCT(microcomputed tomography) scanned models of a dorsoventrally compressed fossil braincase and a laterally compressed fossil specimen of Woodicthys bearsdeni. The new data was then used to update past descriptions as well as the existing character matrix of this species. A character matrix codes morphological characters comparable across different species, and the new character matrix of Woodicthys bearsdeni would allow us to conduct hypothesis testing on its relationships to other described actinopterygian fossils and extant fishes, which would be the next step of this project. We will continue our effort to refine morphological knowledge of Woodicthys bearsdeni to understand the interrelationships of ancient fishes and the evolution of actinopterygian anatomy.

Yunyan Mo

Michael Coates, Committee of Evolutionary Biology, Coates Lab, University of Chicago; Abigail Caron, Committee of Evolutionary Biology, Coates Lab, University of Chicago

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences, Geophysical Sciences

Within Greek and Roman mythological narratives and art, there are rigid gender roles and archetypes. These integral aspects of Greco-Roman media give way to a gender mutability that allows for an appropriation of their narratives in queer and trans art. Joel-Peter Witkin’s work draws from these popular narratives and iconography in his photos, often using trans individuals. Through an exploration of Joel-Peter Witkin’s two works Canova’s Venus and The Three Graces, Los Angeles, from the Smart Museum collection, I show how Greco-Roman mythology supplies context through gender archetypes and metamorphosis for the appropriation into queer culture. The scope of the research begins with Witkin’s work, and the narratives they’re attached to, but also the narratives attached to Greco-Roman gods/goddesses and the practices of representing the gods in physical art. This research has been done through extensive reading of Witkin’s practice through interviews, documentaries, and exhibition publications/texts; as well as related theory and the original texts that representations of Greco-Roman gods draw from. The evidence is led by the Witkin photos, and the originals that he is recreating and transforming; together the photos and the narratives produce a compelling argument for the application of gender mutability to Greco-Roman myth. The application of Greco-Roman myth to art, and specifically to queer art, has been done; but my research specifically focuses on the use of the narratives in Witkin’s work and how they can be applied in future contexts. From my research, I’m producing a scholarly essay that explores a narrower application through Witkin’s two works, and a zine which will explore more myths that explore gender mutability and transformation.

Daisy Coates

Berit Ness, Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry, Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago

Fine & Performing Arts, Gender and Sexuality Studies, History, Humanities

Michelangelo Buonarotti is one of the most renowned artists of all time and was well known for leaving several of his works unfinished. This paper will provide an alternative way to examine the life and performance of Michelangelo by analyzing data around different time periods of the artist’s life. By segmenting his life and artworks into periods based on his travels and patrons, I used metrics such as completion rate of works, productivity (number of works in a year per period), and time to completion to consider the artist’s reputation as one who could not complete his commissioned artworks. I have compiled a database of Michelangelo’s artworks including information on each artwork such as: the title of the work, its start date, its end date, its original location, current location, patron, and patron’s profession. Based on preliminary data analysis and qualitative research on his life, I was able to segment his life into seven different periods under which I analyzed his performance and commissions separately. My data analysis demonstrates that Michelangelo’s biographers like Vasari or Condivi often portrayed him falsely as an independent artist throughout his life by including fictitious stories. My study shows the importance of Medici patronage for Michelangelo’s career and will provide an in-depth analysis of his performance across different periods in his life. A database allows me to study an artist’s life and performance and potentially uncover false reputations or confirm rumors with data. Having historical art information in the form of data has allowed me to ground my arguments with quantitative evidence. While art historians often focus on a particular artwork for research questions, the novelty of my method allows me to study a larger quantity of artworks in depth, providing a more macro view.

Doga Sarier

Lia Markey, Art History, Newberry Library; Niall Atkinson, Art History

Humanities, Interdisciplinary Humanities

Gadfly Midwife is a forthcoming book by Dr. Agnes Callard, focusing on the value of Socratic inquiry in modern everyday life. The book is an examination of Socrates’ impact on modern thought and intellectual engagement, and aims to provide Socratic guidance on how to live a meaningful life. The book explores the act of thinking as a social project; the acquisition of knowledge as the ultimate pursuit of human life; and the importance of overcoming discomfort and the fear of ignorance in this pursuit. Professor Callard demonstrates these topics by analyzing how the Socratic Method has shaped history and how it can be applied to daily experiences. My role is to review her chapter drafts as she writes them and discuss with her any questions that her writing prompts. I ask clarifying questions to ensure her book is digestible to her intended audience, which is a general public with little previous exposure to Socratic thinking. My duties also entail probing her text for topics I believe she can further explore, or which could generate nuanced objections to her argument.

Jessica Aaron

Agnes Callard, Philosophy Department

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Interdisciplinary Humanities, Philosophy

As increasingly complex scientific concepts are developed and new forms of entertainment are becoming popularized, there is a growing need to make science accessible through mainstream channels. To address this need, we have made quantum physics accessible to individuals of all ages and education levels. We focus on communicating quantum physics since it is traditionally only taught in higher level science courses with advanced mathematics. As a result, quantum physics remains a mystery to most despite its importance in modern technologies. To demystify quantum physics, we have created a theater production and card games that demonstrate core scientific principles, including superposition, entanglement, and quantum measurement. Our development of these projects have followed one of traditional scientific experimentation, meaning we use a top-down process with continuous testing. We begin by addressing a problem, proceed by experimenting with different ideas, and then conclude by examining the results and making alterations as needed in response to feedback. Therefore, this method encourages the maintenance of an open mind, thereby yielding the best possible version of our art. For our theater production, we aimed to create an emotionally compelling story that simultaneously communicates quantum physics, thereby engaging art-oriented individuals with science. Production development has included brainstorming, researching, and improvisation. For our card games, we aimed to incorporate quantum physics into the game mechanics so that when players participate in the game, they are completing actions and obeying rules analogous to those of quantum physicists. Creating the games has involved research, art development, and playtesting. Through our theater improvisations and game playtests, we have met our goal, successfully introducing quantum physics concepts to nontraditional audiences. In the future, we will continue to work on these projects in hopes of performing our theater production locally and distributing our games nationally in order to further reach new audiences.

Jessica Markman

Sunanda Prabhu-Gaunkar, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, STAGE Lab; Nancy Kawalek, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, STAGE Lab

Education & Scholarship of Teaching, Fine & Performing Arts, Physics, Science Communication

Beshrew Me! is an experimental digital edition of The Taming of the/a Shrew—specifically, of the two versions of that play (Anonymous, 1594 and Shakespeare, 1623) whose relation scholars and editors have never been able to solve. The project seeks to de-center the figure of the author to focus instead on the techniques of domestication that motor the period’s expressions of shrew-making. Beshrew Me!nests the texts of both plays within the profusion of proverbs, gestures, and household artifacts (i.e., dressers, rings, trenchers, ballads, warming pans) that inculcate, materialize, and sometimes critique the domestic hierarchy. We are the three undergraduate researchers on this project, responsible for tracking common objects, gestures, and parlance, respectively. The objects project stream focuses on “scriptive objects” whose images and inscriptions interact with common parlance and gesture to reinforce the techniques of shrew culture, including both explicit references to marriage, and broader classical and cultural references that are mobilized in the service of shrew-taming. The gestures project stream tracks iconographic movement and action. At this point in our research, there are two identifiable classifications of staged action in what we label as “micro” and “macro” gestures. Micro-gestures single out temporary, singular actions (i.e., pouring a glass of water). Macro-gestures track clusters of micro gestures that conjure more abstracted techniques of shrew-taming. The Common Parlance project stream stems from the thesis that much of the play’s speech is pulled or derived from external textual environments, including classical literature, the Bible, the theatre world, and the common idiom of the time. Lately, we have been investigating the syntax and structures invoked to enact the “taming” environment. Using the novel capabilities of the classification systems in the OCHRE database, we analyze these invocations and their collocation with the object and gestural streams.

Josephine Dawson, Caroline Galt, Jacob Schroeder

Ellen MacKay, Associate Professor of English and Chair of Theatre and Performance Studies (TAPS), University of Chicago; Sarah-Gray Lesley, University of Chicago

CRASSH Scholar

Humanities, Visual & Performing Arts

In the summer of 2021, I worked remotely with Professor Tom F. Wright of the University of Sussex to study the conceptual evolution of charisma and the myths and misconceptions that conceptual evolution has spawned in history. Charisma is a concept which is simultaneously omnipresent and extraordinarily diverse; today, the term can be used to refer to figures as diverse as John Lennon and John Kennedy. In turn, the term’s modern usages often seem to have little relationship to its historical conception. When we use charisma to describe our favorite celebrities, it is hard to say we are using the same term as the sociological term introduced by Max Weber in the 20th century, let alone the initial concept introduced to Christian theology by Paul the Apostle. Our research question was thus twofold: what exactly do we mean when we discuss charisma, and what has the term ‘charisma' done for us as a society throughout history? Our research consisted of two main components, a literature review and a series of self-contained projects studying linguistic corpora to track keyword usage over time, with an eye towards constructing a list of myths concerning charisma. Through the literature review process, we worked to reconstruct an intellectual history of charisma. The second component of our research involved analyzing keyword usage in online corpora. After selecting a variety of keywords related to charisma, I examined frequency of keyword uses in a variety of different databases, ranging from online archives of print newspapers to compilations of web-based publishing. Drawing on these two sources, we developed the aforementioned list of myths about charisma; these myths, defining the various misconceptions of charisma that have accumulated about the concept, served to clarify what charisma means for our society and the societies which came before our own.

Kian Yoo-Sharifi

Tom F. Wright, Rhetoric, University of Sussex

International Junior Research Associate

History, Humanities, Interdisciplinary Humanities

Huge changes in the world are underway because of the development of artificial intelligence (AI). Even today, AI algorithms impact a global population. These algorithms are increasingly implemented and growing in computational power; as they take on more impressive tasks, their effect on the population is expanding. Understanding this expansion is a great difficulty, in part because we request that AI performs on a scale so large that is too complex for us to directly evaluate actions. Despite many uncertain aspects, we need to find a method to ensure these systems are aligned: constrained by our values, and consistent with our ethic. We need to discover what moral commitments are sensible to maintain, and we should persistently question whether or not the system which is currently in place is consistent with those commitments. This paper’s central question explores what moral commitments are implicit in deploying a particular AI system. This is a crucial step in deciding what AI systems we should use, a reflection that is not performed often enough. I cannot investigate what moral commitments every proposal for AI would entail in this paper, so I will do so for a specific one: recursive reward modeling. This paper claims that recursive reward modeling makes two implicit commitments. First, we must think that a conversation with a recursive reward learner about our intentions reflects our authentic intentions. Second, we must think that means and ends are separable. These two are not an exhaustive list, but rather are a start to decide when it is appropriate to use recursive reward modelers.

Maggie Hayes

Anubav Vasudevan, Department of Philosophy

Computing Science, Humanities, Interdisciplinary Humanities, Philosophy

Since its founding in 1833, The University of Chicago has advanced a commitment to freedom of expression. In collaboration with Professor Leila Brammer and the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse, our team will produce freedom of expression case studies for high school and college audiences. Focusing on instances in which UChicago’s stance on freedom of expression was challenged, we analyzed historical documents from UChicago’s archives and relevant literature on UChicago’s history. We also studied archival records of student newspapers, like the Maroon, and national newspapers, like Chicago Tribune and New York Times. With the case studies produced by this research, audiences will examine the historical conflict itself as well as the response of the UChicago students, administration, faculty, and the community at large. Working through the case studies, students will analyze historical documents and relevant literature on the topics and deliberate about how they, in the role of students, faculty, or administrators, would respond in similar situations today. Through these instances in UChicago’s history, we hope to expose students to the principles of freedom of expression, work them through contestations, and develop capacities that foster productive discourse. In addition to the case study itself, we will craft an accompanying pedagogical guide. In this specific case study, our team focused on the conflict surrounding Charles R. Walgreen, founder of Walgreens Pharmacy, who pulled his niece out of her UChicago classes in the early 1930s for fear that she was being exposed to communist propaganda. Under fire from publishers and politicians across the nation, UChicago administration and students reaffirmed their commitment to let professors teach the curricula of their choosing.

Maggie Mills, Teddy Foley, Robert Gorman

Leila Brammer, Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Education & Scholarship of Teaching, Discourse and Rhetoric, Case Study, Free Expression

Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration (STAGE) is a unique laboratory at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering that aims to integrate the disciplines of science, technology, and art. The lab seeks to communicate, demonstrate, and cultivate scientific interest and intrigue with the use of creative, artistic mediums. Curiosity - The Making of a Scientist, specifically, aims to capture the human story of scientists in the form of a documentary-style web series. With my research project, I want to educate, intrigue, and generate curiosity in a diverse audience by making the scientific content interesting and accessible. In investigating what inspires the research subject, I seek to understand the nature of curiosity itself and its role in the intricate world of science. I want to go beyond explaining the research as a lectured topic and, instead, develop the scientist's story, creating a framework where the conceptual, abstract ideas and complex scientific topics are intimately tied to the scientist’s personal journey. The huge gap between the public perception of science and the reality of scientific research severely limits the scope of public engagement with science. Documentary style series have become an effective and widespread medium to introduce new topics and capture the attention of an audience who might not have an educational background on the subject. The combination of video, audio, and animation are powerful mediums to tell a story, and documentaries specifically allow an audience to get a more intimate view inside the world of the character being captured. My work demonstrates how thoughtfully composed documentary episodes can function as a vehicle, exposing people to the research process: where it happens, who it involves, what it entails, and why it is at times exciting, frustrating, tedious, and rewarding.

Marti Gendel

Dr. Sunanda Prabhu-Gaunkar, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Biological & Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Visual & Performing Arts

This research project explores the history and culture of Japan’s early modern urban environment and its traces in the present-day landscape through paintings and prints from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. The main purpose of the project is to generate materials and contents for Professor Chelsea Foxwell’s new undergraduate course called Tokyo and Beyond: Picturing the Early Modern Japanese City by analyzing broadly the depiction of early modern urban space and its relation to the current-day layouts of Tokyo and Kyoto. The current state of the project is designed around a pair of screens from the Edo Japan called The Folding Screens of the Sceneries of Edo, and primary and secondary documentation, both textual and visual, related to this piece are collected, consolidated, and translated from Japanese to English for pedagogical purposes as well as for further research in the related field. The product of the project at the current stage will be a web resource with high-resolution, zoomable panoramic images of the pair of screens with supplementary didactic annotations and comments, which will be a centerpiece of analysis and discussion to take place in class and in student assignments. In addition, there will be a research paper synthesizing existing literature while providing new perspectives in studying this art piece. For the next stage of the project, analyses will be conducted on other art pieces depicting early modern urban space in Japan and potentially forming dialogues with the folding screen currently being studied to build a more comprehensive framework in understanding the history and culture of Japan’s urban environment for the new course.

Torres Shi

Chelsea Foxwell, Art History, The University of Chicago

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Fine & Performing Arts, History, Humanities, Visual & Performing Arts

Strong gravitational lensing is a phenomenon where a foreground massive object bends the light from a background object such that multiple images of the background object are formed. It allows us to directly probe the distribution of both luminous and dark matter in a galaxy. For this reason, strong lensing is very useful for studying the structural properties of galaxies and their evolution. However, the number of confirmed strong lenses is relatively small, and so in order to use samples of lenses to study galaxies, we need to ensure that these lensing galaxies are representative of a broader population of galaxies. In this work, we look to compare physical observables of strong lensing galaxies with those of a large population of elliptical galaxies using data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) – a survey that was primarily designed at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Chicago. The sample of strong lensing galaxies was discovered in DES imaging by a previous study, and we randomly selected a population of 10,000 elliptical galaxies from the DES galaxy catalog. We model the observed light distribution to constrain structural properties for the sample of lenses and the population of elliptical galaxies. By performing statistical comparisons between the two samples in each observable, we will determine how well the sample of DES lensing galaxies represents the broader population of elliptical galaxies. If the sample is representative, future observations and analysis of the sample can be generalized to the broader population.

Aidan Cloonan

Alex Drlica-Wagner, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics; Anowar Shajib, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Semiconducting nanocrystals are notable for their unique optoelectronic properties for next-generation technology, but large-scale synthesis is challenged by the expensive, specialized injection machinery required for “hot-injection” methods. “Heat-up” methods instead cleverly match precursor availability at the desired reaction temperature for a robust one-pot synthesis. Here, we report a heat-up procedure for PbS nanocrystals using a library of substituted thioureas that is reproducible and invariant to minor temperature and concentration differences. Controlling sulfur availability as a function of thiourea substitution helps to elucidate the primary reaction pathway and allows for identifying key matches in precursor reactivity for a general theory of viable heat-up syntheses. These methods can lead to hardier large-scale nanocrystal production as well as offer better model systems for studying the mechanisms of nanocrystal nucleation and growth through reproducible homogeneous nucleation.

Alex Hinkle

Dmitri Talapin, Chemistry, University of Chicago

College Summer Research Fellow, Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar supported by the NK Cheung Chemistry Research Fellowship

Chemistry

Food allergies currently affect 32 million people in the United States. Food allergies arise due to overactive immune responses against food antigens that originate in the gut. The commensal microbes in the gut play a crucial role in both mitigating these immune responses and maintaining a tolerogenic state. To maintain a steady state of commensals, the host produces immunoglobulin A (IgA), specialized antibodies that are most dominantly produced in the gut. Most secreted IgA is thought to bind to and regulate bacteria, but recent research has shown that IgA can also be produced in response to common food antigens, such as peanut and egg white, which could have the ability to control harmful food allergens. Our laboratory has studied the role of the microbiome in gnotobiotic mice colonized with the fecal bacteria of healthy (non-food-allergic) or cow’s milk allergic (CMA) infants. When these mice are sensitized to cow’s milk allergen, beta-lactoglobulin (BLG), they exhibit a strong allergic reaction compared to their healthy counterparts. We hypothesized that healthy mice produce more BLG-specific IgA than their CMA counterparts when exposed to BLG and the mucosal adjuvant cholera toxin (CT), which could provide insight as to whether BLG-IgA promotes tolerance. We aimed to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect BLG-IgA in the feces of healthy and allergic mice. BLG was coated on a plate and fecal samples from sensitized mice were added atop. An enzyme-tagged antibody against mouse-IgA was then inserted, thereby allowing any BLG-IgA to be quantified. Preliminary results indicate that, as expected, more BLG-IgA is observed in mice over a two-week treatment of BLG+CT, thereby validating that BLG-IgA can be detected by our method. Further steps include purifying BLG-IgA to generate a standard curve and measuring differences between healthy and CMA groups to elucidate the possible role of BLG-IgA in tolerance.

Anjali Mirmira

Cathryn Nagler, Department of Pathology; Ande Hesser, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences, Chemistry

Cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the world, can often be attributed to ischemia in which a lack of blood flow causes damage to the myocardium, the heart muscle. This damage occurs as cardiomyocytes, the primary cardiac cells, die from decreased blood flow and, consequently, cannot facilitate contraction that produces the heartbeat that is vital to life. As cardiac cells cannot repair themselves, research focuses on methods to restore contractile function to treat cardiovascular disease. Bioelectronic stimulation is one approach that has been extensively researched; however, its specific mechanisms and effects are not thoroughly understood, necessitating investigation. Recently, research has begun to explore biological mechanisms at the subcellular level due to improvements in super-resolution imaging, such as the development of stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM). Here, we propose that bioelectronic stimulation can be better understood through subcellular level investigation of mitochondria and present preliminary methods to stain and image mitochondrial morphology. These protocols were developed using fluorescence imaging and antibody staining for both live and fixed cells. Confocal imaging on a tumor cell line (U2OS) was initially used, and methods are to be optimized for STORM imaging with cardiomyocytes. Through utilizing super-resolution microscopy to study mitochondrial morphology, we can improve our ability to understand bioelectronic stimulation and advance cardiovascular disease research.

Bernadette Miao

Bozhi Tian, Chemistry

College Summer Research Fellow

Biological & Health Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering

Topological materials with intrinsic protection of electrical and spin currents are envisaged to enable new approaches to electronics, spintronics, and fault-tolerant quantum information. However, the operating temperatures for these materials remain in the milliKelvin range and are difficult to tune by traditional synthetic techniques. In this MRSEC Seed project we integrate nanophotonic crystal cavities and atomically-thin quantum materials to create cavity-driven hybrid topological materials, achieving artificial topological quantum states tailored solely by light-matter interactions. We have successfully fabricated Si-based nanophotonic crystal cavities and Bi2Se3 thin films which are key ingredients for the hybrid quantum systems. Our effort will lead to an unprecedented avenue to quantum mechanically control material properties such as topology, realizing a new paradigm of quantum materials on a chip.

Chi Ian Ip

Shuolong Yang, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Physics

Lithium metal batteries are of great importance because they can enable higher energy densities compared to current Li-ion batteries. Novel electrolytes are necessary for broadening the chemical design space to more quickly solve challenges facing lithium metal batteries and accelerate their commercialization. Inspired by previous work that has shown that a novel electrolyte class of synthesized fluoroethers successfully combines an ether building block that enables ionic conduction with a fluorinated block that simultaneously increases both oxidative stability and passivation of the lithium metal anode, we propose the exploration of fluorosilanes as their own novel electrolyte class. In addition to being commercially available, fluorosilanes contain alkoxy blocks, which, similar to an ether block, enables ionic conduction. In this work, we explore the electrochemical properties of electrolytes composed of dissolved lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)amide salt in three novel fluorosilane solvents with varying fluorinated chain length. Using techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance, Raman spectroscopy, and Density Functional Theory, we look to explain how the solvation structure of lithium within fluorosilanes affects ion transport and subsequently electrolyte conductivity. Since silanes are known for their hydrophobic character, we probe the influence of separator choice on electrolyte wetting and subsequent effects on cycling for all three compounds. During cycling, we utilize x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy to explore Li surface morphology and composition. We find that salt anion decomposition dominates the lithium surface composition while higher dendrite morphology corresponds with decreased cycling performance. We find that the silane with the shortest fluorinated chain can support long term Li/LiFePO4 cycling, suggesting this compound belongs to a promising class of novel solvents for lithium-based chemistries. Understanding the impact of building block connectivity and solvation structure effects on electrochemical phenomena will contribute to the development and exploration of novel electrolyte designs for next-generation batteries.

Christina Pirrotta

Chibueze Amanchukwu, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Amanchukwu Lab; Peiyuan Ma, Amanchukwu Lab

Engineering

An all-solid-state battery (ASSB) containing a lithium metal anode could enhance the energy density and improve the safety of conventional lithium-ion batteries. Hybrid ceramic-polymer solid-state electrolytes, which aim to combine the high ionic conductivity of the inorganic component and advantageous flexible mechanical properties of the polymer, can potentially enable the realization of ASSBs. These composite materials are commonly prepared through ball-milling or solution-casting. Solution-casting may lead to more uniform distribution while ball-milling eliminates adverse solvent effects. In this study, we assess the impact of processing methodology on overall performance of hybrid electrolytes containing Li3PS4 (LPS) and polyethylene oxide (PEO), a widely studied polymer in these systems, or polyethylene (PE), a less reactive alternative to PEO. Our previous work has shown the superior performance of PE over PEO in LPS hybrids. However, this observation is only valid for ball-milled samples, and not solution-cast samples. Therefore, there is a need to elucidate the relationship between sample morphology and electrochemical performance. To explore this relationship, we study important electrochemical metrics such as ionic conductivity, Li transference number, and interfacial ion-transport. We then use techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to image the surface of the samples and correlate LPS-polymer distribution with differences in electrochemical performance. Understanding the effects of processing methodology on the material properties of this ceramic-polymer composite is paramount to the design and commercialization of ASSBs.

Claire Fuschi

Chibueze Amanchukwu, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Amanchukwu Lab; Priya Mirmira, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Engineering

Current treatments for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) involve suppressing hyperactive immune responses but do not address the underlying problem of fixing the damaged mucosal layer of the gastrointestinal tract. Despite recent advancements, nonspecificity in localized drug delivery remains a major issue that leads to long-term health complications. As such, we hypothesized using a hyaluronic acid-rebamipide conjugate system to enhance the delivery of rebamipide to the damaged mucosal layer. Rebamipide is a drug that protects the mucosal layer and aids in healing. The conjugate system is an amphiphilic nano-conglomerate of hyaluronic acid-based nanoparticles that modulates the delivery of rebamipide. Thus far, we worked on synthesizing the hyaluronic acid-rebamipide conjugate and anticipate good synthesis results. After the organic synthesis stage, we aim to test in vitro on CACO-2 cells, a human colon adenocarcinoma cell line, to contribute towards finding innovative treatments for IBD.

Elaine Liang

Bozhi Tian, Chemistry; Jiuyun Shi, Chemistry

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences, Chemistry

The rapidly expanding field of single cell genomics is establishing novel techniques with applications in medicine, research, and industry. Profiling certain mammalian cells using RNA-Seq is now possible, but sequencing single microbial cells remains a challenge with current technology. Specifically, many microbial cells are small in size (~1 μm), have thick, resilient cell walls, and contain miniscule amounts of RNA. The JOD (Jaws of Death) Project seeks to create a reproducible technology that can lyse a wide range of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes. The project is structured in two parts: the fabrication of the microfluidic device and its components, and then the sequencing of the lysed cells. The research involves establishing the optimal parameters for the fabrication of a microfluidic device and analyzing the resulting effluent. The device is composed of a micro-fabricated silicon chip with sharp tip arrays driven by a piezoelectric drive. Fluid containing microbial cells is sent through the device connected to the silicon chip, mechanically crushing cells as they flow through. The sharp tip arrays have various shapes and dimensions in order to experimentally determine the best overall geometry for cell lysis. Then, the resulting cell fragments are analyzed using image tools and RNA sequencing. I have examined the set-up with the use of plastic beads, with the intention of improving efficiency before microbe experimentation. My role involves the fabrication of multiple devices, experimentation with the system, and varying techniques to improve the efficiency of the lysis mechanism. Research also involves refining the set-up, further experimentation with different silicon chips and smaller beads, further image analysis, and integration of microbial cells, namely Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida albicans. Plastic beads of sizes varying from 3μm to 10μm have been successfully crushed using the device, and we are beginning to observe experimental success with microbial cells.

Emilio Rosas Linhard

Supratik Guha, Pritzer School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago; Anindita Basu, Basu Lab, University of Chicago

DAAD RISE Scholar, Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Engineering

The particles of an ordinary fluid interact with each other attractively and repulsively, producing the familiar properties of pressure and viscosity (resistance to shear). However, if we introduce more complicated interactions, the fluid obeys different laws. For instance, a 2D “chiral fluid” of interacting clockwise spinning particles includes forces perpendicular to the line between particles. A fluid where particles experience such chiral interactions violates conservation of energy, and these interactions must be artificially driven, making them “active fluids.” Real-world applications of such fluids are common, in biophysics, because organisms have internal sources of energy. In the Irvine Lab, recent experimental studies of 2D active chiral fluids have opened the door to a rich variety of phenomena with wildly different behavior from everyday fluids. A hydrodynamic theory has been proposed to describe these fluids, but tests of this theory have been limited due to the difficulty of theoretically modeling these new fluids, especially their bulk behavior. We develop theory describing the behavior of such fluids in various classic scenarios such as droplet spreading and lubrication, as a test of the hydrodynamic theory and parameters. We compare our predictions with experiments and simulations to form a unified picture of the physics of these phenomena in these fluids.

Jessica Metzger

William Irvine, Department of Physics, Irvine Lab, James Franck Institute

Physics

The synthesis of multiply bonded late transition metal coordination complexes with high oxidation states is a key topic in organometallic chemistry. These systems have been studied to answer fundamental questions regarding electronic structure, reactivity, and biological functionality. We have previously succeeded in synthesizing and characterizing pseudotetrahedral cobalt (III) and cobalt (IV) oxo complexes, stabilized using a strongly electron donating scorpionate ligand. This presentation covers a detailed evaluation of the bonding in these complexes which challenges canonical, literature pictures. We then describe efforts to synthesize longer-lived cobalt (IV) oxo ande cobalt (V) nitride complexes. Recognizing the high reactivity of the previously synthesized cobalt (IV) oxo complex to intramolecular hydrogen atom transfer, a new supporting ligand was designed in the hopes of slowing intramolecular degradation by replacing activable hydrogen atoms with fluorine atoms. Density-functional theory calculations suggested that the target ligand would likely be capable of stabilizing high oxidation state cobalt complexes. Towards the synthesis of a cobalt (V) nitride complex, a novel cobalt (II) azide complex was synthesized and characterized with NMR and IR spectroscopy. The redox properties of this complex were probed using cyclic voltammetry. Oxidation of this complex yielded an unstable cobalt (III) azide complex, which was characterized using NMR and UV-Visible spectroscopy. Finally, photolysis of the cobalt (III) azide complex was attempted, and the terminal decay products were isolated and characterized. Additional studies should be carried out to synthesize and experimentally determine the metalation scope of the novel ligand, and to determine whether a cobalt (V) nitride complex can successfully be captured as a terminal product or reaction intermediate.

Joel Gardner

John Anderson, Chemistry

College Summer Research Fellow, Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Chemistry

Organic synthesis plays a vital role in pharmaceutical research and drug development, as well as materials science, agriculture, cosmetics, and textile industries. Expanding the synthetic chemist’s toolkit advances the development of society in all aspects. Specifically, developing new methods that afford fresh perspectives to old problems in chemical synthesis solves the tactical problems facing chemists who are pushing the boundaries of synthetic possibilities. Skeletal editing allows for late-stage modification of organic molecules by altering their core structural motifs via insertion and deletion of atoms. Anomeric amides accomplish skeletal editing through direct nitrogen deletion of secondary amines to afford the corresponding deaminated alkanes. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were used to corroborate experimental results and elucidate the mechanism of the reaction, with SN2-type attack of the secondary amine, on the nitrogen center of an anomeric amide, serving as the rate-determining step. New anomeric amide reagents were designed, and their SN2 activation energies (ΔG‡)were computed via DFT, at the B3LYP/D3/6-31G(d) level of theory, as a parameter to predict their reactivity. Synthetic efforts towards novel reagents revealed thermal decomposition pathways, which were computationally modelled to find ways of shutting them down and improve the stability of reagents. Current efforts are focused on the synthesis of substituted isooxazoline derived anomeric amides and improved understanding of substituent effects via free-energy relationships. Successful synthesis of more reactive anomeric amides would allow for the expansion of the scope for secondary nitrogen deletion, potentially situating this new method as a robust carbon-carbon bond forming reaction.

Kaan Tarhan

Mark Levin, Chemistry Department, University of Chicago

College Summer Research Fellow, DAAD RISE Scholar, Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar supported by the NK Cheung Chemistry Research Fellowship

Chemistry

Collections of masses connected by springs are a simple yet versatile model for solids. By controlling the stiffness and connectivity of the springs, one can program desired deformations in response to forces. While solving a simple system of parallel Newtonian springs is a common introductory mechanics problem, as the systems become larger, it is a significant challenge to design networks that faithfully produce multiple complex robust responses. In this project, we apply Machine Learning (ML) to find optimal solutions to this nonlinear mechanical problem in multiple dimensions. The ML used in our experiment is a form of reinforcement learning that is environment free. This means that the learning agent does not know the details of the optimization problem; instead, it updates the probability of taking certain actions according to a reward system. Through a regressive “trial and error process” the agent learns what solution is the most accurate. Moreover, we put a non-trivial twist on this design problem. We include two different categories of springs: firstly, springs whose forces are the gradient of a potential energy, as one might encounter in a typical Classical Mechanics course; secondly, springs whose force-law is non-conservative. This alteration increases the degrees of freedom for optimization and changes the landscape in which the ML algorithm must search, possibly allowing for faster convergence and more versatility in the programmed mechanical response. The fundamental concepts behind this project could suggest new approaches in various material design problems such engineering of prosthetic tissue with desired responses to relevant anatomical forces within the body.

Livia Guttieres

Vincenzo Vitelli, Physics, The University of Chicago; Colin Scheibner, Vitelli Group, Physics, The University of Chicago

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Physics

The ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider examines the properties of fundamental particles through highly energetic proton-proton collisions. The ATLAS detector utilizes high-speed electronics and real-time data processing to analyze the characteristics of particle collision debris and is continuously upgraded alongside advancements in detector science. As part of the upcoming upgrades to the ATLAS detector, the Global Event Processor aims to refine the characterization of collimated collision debris, known as jets. To build an efficient and dynamic framework, the Global Event Processor will employ the use of FPGAs. Understanding how to implement firmware designs for data processing algorithms on FPGAs is a vital component to the development of the Global Event Processor. I investigated the firmware implementation of various jet reconstruction and Missing Transverse Energy algorithms to be used in the Global Event Processor. The jet reconstruction algorithms aim to organize and prepare the observed collimated energies for later data processing. The Missing Transverse Energy algorithm computes the transverse momentum of reconstructed jets, giving insight into the energy not detected by the detector but expected by the law of conservation of energy. To build these algorithms on firmware, I used Vivado High Level Synthesis, which allowed for straightforward testing and optimization of various firmware designs. With these firmware designs, we develop an understanding of what is required in terms of latency and resource usage of the FPGAs to ensure the proper characterization of jets. From the latency and resource usage estimations of these algorithms, we gain further insight into how components of the Global Event Processor will operate and can make better informed decisions on the overall Global Event Processor upgrade.

Mac Maedke

Dr. David Miller, Physics, Miller Lab

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Physics

Exhibiting anti-inflammatory properties comparable to those of Dexamethasone, Paralianone D, a recently extracted member of the Paraliane family, has yet to have any successfully-reported, total syntheses. All members of the Paraliane family are highly oxidized terpenes, with their shared 5,5,6,5-tetracyclic skeleton, as well as high density of continuous stereocenters, making them particularly challenging targets of organic synthesis. We report progress towards the synthesis of the molecule inspired by biosynthetically relevant retrosynthetic analysis of the molecule, progress in the development of a route coupling the two fragments successfully through the Nozaki-Hiyama-Kishi (NHK) reaction, and an analysis of optimal conditions in carrying out a radical-driven ring closure in pursuing a B-ring closure through Mukaiyama radical hydration conditions. Key steps in the synthesis of the Eastern fragment molecule included the Pd-catalyzed Heck-type cyclization, previously developed by our research group, in the formation of a 5,5-bicyclic precursor that would later be followed by a Wittig reaction, producing the terminal olefin that would be key in the radical cyclization B-ring closure. Additionally, we report success in a cycloalkyl aldehyde model study, expanding upon previous applications and success of the proposed route in a benzaldehyde model study. While proving medically relevant given the molecule’s bioactivity, this synthesis may be expanded upon to develop the molecule’s synthetic analogues, with comparable properties, while expanding upon the known conditions of radical hydration methodologies in the synthesis of highly strained polycyclic targets.

Noel Cercizi

Scott Snyder, Chemistry, Snyder Group UChicago Department of Chemistry; Heng Yi, Chemistry

Chemistry

The goal of this research project is to provide a link between galaxy disk orientation and the observed absorption properties of the surrounding gaseous halos. The focus of the study is to quantify the morphologies of individual galaxies based on the best-fit two-dimensional surface brightness profiles.Some examples of features are whether the light from a galaxy follows an exponential disk or an elliptical shape, what angle the long axis it is oriented at, and how big it is. Providing the link between the orientation of the galaxy and the absorption properties of its gaseous halo is important because this will help us understand the physical connection between them. In particular, my role in this research project is to determine the feature of a subset of 282 galaxies taken from both ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope. For finding the features of each galaxy, I adopted the following steps. First, I would analyze the image of the galaxy to determine a “point-spread function”, which I use to consider the inherent blurring that occurs when light passes through the atmosphere and the lens of the telescope. This is a necessary first step to determine how much of the sharpness has been degraded due to image smoothing by both the atmosphere and the instrument. Then, I would convolve this point spread function with the galaxy image to extract a clearer image without these blurring effects. Finally, I use a software called Galfit to determine the features of the galaxy. In total, 98 galaxies were fit using this approach and their features were cataloged.

Rohan Venkat

Hsiao-Wen Chen, Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Astronomy and Astrophysics

The MilliQan experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a new detector under construction. The detector is being constructed with the goal of detecting so-called “millicharged particles,” theoretical dark matter particles with a small electric charge. The detector is comprised of bars and slabs of plastic scintillator coupled to photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). Before the detector can be assembled, it is necessary to study the performance of the detector components, both the PMTs and the scintillators. The purpose of this project is to characterize the performance of the MilliQan detector and its components. I present a summary of progress and results concerning the construction of a testing setup and procedure to evaluate the detector. The project is comprised of three phases. In the first phase, I study the electronic noise and dark current present in the PMTs. I compare the dark current of various PMTs, study the pulse shape of dark current pulses, and determine the voltage and time dependence of the dark current. In the second phase, I study the signal response of the plastic scintillators used in the detector. I characterize the pulse shape and response time of the PMTs (in response to LED signal) and scintillators (in response to a radioactive source signal). In the third phase, I study the detector response using simulation data, to characterize its signal sensitivity and background levels. The combination of component studies and detector simulations therefore gives a thorough understanding of the overall performance of the detector, as well as being useful during the construction process.

Sadie Seddon-Stettler

David Miller, Physics, University of Chicago

Physics

In the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), we commonly observe a phenomenon coined the “novelty effect,” where a person’s initial interactions with a robot are often motivated by a fascination that quickly weans once the person realizes the limits of the robot. As a result, the person is potentially unable to develop a long-term and interpersonal relationship with the robot. Prior HRI research has yielded promising insight that robot care-taking may increase this interpersonal connection with the robot; however, no work hitherto has explicitly investigated this potential phenomenon, especially with regards to the novelty effect. Our research addresses the challenges of both long-term and interpersonal human-robot connection. Using the Anki Vector robot as our social companion robot, we investigate whether care-taking of a social companion robot leads to a long-term and interpersonal connection with the robot, which may then benefit personal well-being. Our hypothesis is that users who care for Vector will (1) be more likely to engage long-term with the robot than users who do not, and (2) will reap a more positive impact on their overall well-being. We implement a study design where we deploy the Vector robot to off-campus UChicago students to be interacted with similarly to the “Tamagotchi,” a digital pet toy popular among young children. Over a continuous 7-day user study, we run two conditions: a caretaking condition where users will engage in mandatory daily caretaking of Vector, such as “feeding” and charging Vector, and a non-caretaking condition, where users play a mandatory daily game with Vector in lieu of caretaking. In all conditions, participants engage in a daily gratitude mental health exercise with Vector. We anticipate our study to demonstrate that a long-term and interpersonal connection between humans and robots via caretaking is instrumental in facilitating meaningful human-robot relationships.

Stephanie Kim, Spencer Ng, Clark Kovacs

Sarah Sebo, Computer Science

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar supported by the Liew Family Research Fund

Computing Science

Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies represent some of the most extreme galaxies in the known universe: they are the smallest, least luminous, least metal-enriched, and most dark-matter dominated galaxies yet discovered. Here, we report the discovery of Pegasus IV, a new ultra-faint Milky Way satellite found in archival data from the Dark Energy Camera processed by the DECam Local Volume Exploration (DELVE) survey. Pegasus IV is a compact, ultra-faint stellar system (half light radius ~ 40pc; absolute V-band magnitude -4.25 mag) located at a heliocentric distance of ~90 kpc. Based on spectra of seven member stars observed with Magellan-Baade telescope/IMACS spectrograph, we confidently resolve the system’s velocity dispersion, and measure a mass-to-light ratio of M/Lv = 167^{+224}_{-99} Msun/Lsun for the system. From the five stars with the highest signal-to-noise spectra, we measure a systemic metallicity of [Fe/H] = -2.67^{+0.25}_{-0.29} dex, making Pegasus IV one of the most metal-poor ultra-faint dwarfs yet known. We also tentatively resolve a non-zero metallicity dispersion for the system. These measurements provide strong evidence that Pegasus IV is a dark-matter-dominated dwarf galaxy, rather than a star cluster. Lastly, we measure Pegasus IV’s proper motion using data from Gaia Early Data Release 3. When combined with our measured systemic velocity, this proper motion suggests that Pegasus IV is on an elliptical, retrograde orbit, and is currently near its orbital apocenter. The discovery of yet another ultra-faint dwarf galaxy in current-generation survey data strongly suggests that the census of Milky Way satellites is still incomplete, even within 100 kpc.

William Cerny

Alex Drlica-Wagner, Astronomy and Astrophysics

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Astronomy and Astrophysics

A key feature that controls the properties of polymeric materials is molecular architecture. Recently, a new class of polymer architecture has emerged: mechanically interlocked polymers (MIPs), which are polymers that include a mechanical bond. The mechanical bond occurs when two (or more) molecular components are constrained in space without being directly bonded together, similar to a pair of interlocked rings. MIPs present an attractive frontier in polymer science, as the presence of the mechanical bond allows for unprecedented degrees of motion within the polymer architecture. The most common MIP, the slide-ring gel (SRG), is based on the rotaxane architecture: a ring (macrocycle) threaded onto a dumbbell-like molecule, where the ring can slide back and forth but is prevented from de-threading by the presence of bulky stoppers. SRGs have shown promising mechanical and chemical properties for a variety of applications such as stabilizing anode contractions in lithium-ion batteries and as a self-healing surface coating.This project outlines the synthesis of SRGs composed of polyrotaxanes, specifically a molecular architecture that uses multiply-threaded ring crosslinks to connect polymer chains. Computational modeling has suggested that this molecular architecture allows for improved gel flexibility and durability, as well as self-healing properties. The main challenge in forming a stable, doubly-threaded network is accessing a stopper group large enough to prevent de-threading of the large ring that is required for threading two polymers into a single ring cavity. Herein we demonstrate a three-step synthesis pathway to engineer a new molecular framework that prevents slippage of doubly-threaded macrocycles in SRGs by introducing a new, modified stopper group composed of both a bulky stopper group and small-ring macrocycle.

Wilson Turner

Stuart Rowan, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering; Laura Hart, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

DAAD RISE Scholar, Liew Family Research Fellow, Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar supported by the NK Cheung Chemistry Research Fellowship

Chemistry, Engineering

The Milky Way (MW) galaxy hosts satellite galaxies that have been of great interest in recent years, because their number and properties pose challenges to the current Λ Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) cosmological model and galaxy formation model. In the Local Group, about 90% of the satellite galaxies that are within the gravitational bounds of the host galaxies are quenched, whereas isolated field dwarfs are nearly all actively forming stars and gas-rich. This implies a rapid transformation of the satellite’s star formation activity after falling into MW and M31. The high quenching fraction also requires a rapid quenching time-scale (~2 Gyr) for dwarf satellites in the mass range M* ~ 106-108 Msolar. Recent papers found that ram pressure stripping, the “wind” satellite galaxies feel when they are passing through the circum-galactic medium (CGM) of the host galaxy, removes star-forming gas from satellites and is a dominant quenching mechanism among simulated satellite galaxies. Exploring the timescales of quenching and how they correspond to different quenching mechanisms is fundamental to our understanding of the color and morphology distribution of galaxies at both high and low redshifts. My research uses the Auriga project – a suite of 30 hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations – to probe into the quenching timescales of satellites and how they correspond to satellite colors. Results show that there is a clear bimodality in both the satellite infall time and color distributions, indicating that earlier infall satellites tend to be redder whereas late infaller tend to be bluer. The ratio of ram pressure stripping and restoring force is not sufficient to explain this correlation between color and infall time.

Yue Pan

Andrey Kravtsov, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The University of Chicago; Christine Simpson, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The University of Chicago

DAAD RISE Scholar, Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Astronomy and Astrophysics

After a series of uprisings toppled the entrenched autocratic regimes of the Middle East, different outcomes were observed for the countries that had undergone regime changes. Egypt had a brief spell with democracy that turned into a military dictatorship. Syria, Yemen, and Libya descended into civil war. Tunisia, on the other hand, had the longest democratic spell of those five countries. I argue that these divergent outcomes are owed, in part, to foreign intervention by outside actors in these countries. I contend that natural resources, ethnic fractionalization, and geostrategic importance have shaped the incentives that outside actors faced and later governed how they intervened in the Middle East, resulting in either backsliding and a return to autocracy or an elongated civil war with an unsustainable stalemate due to continuing foreign support. I also argue that the nature of the relative powers between domestic players as well as their independence and coherence made a significant difference in the outcomes of conflicts. Finally, I argue that because Tunisia has a limited endowment of natural resources, is ethnically homogenous, and is considered geostrategically unimportant by foreign powers, it has mostly been able to avoid the damage of foreign intervention and has been able to build a true, albeit very frail democracy.

Ahmed Zaki

Professor Paul Poast, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago; Barnard Choi, University of Chicago

College Summer Institute Scholar

Political Science

Decades of disenfranchisement and neglect of low-income and BIPOC communities on the South and West sides of Chicago have amplified food insecurity resulting in the overwhelming presence of food deserts. Other socioeconomic inequalities also define these areas where individuals have limited access and choice in food resources. Food deserts allow the festering of issues, such as diets causing illness, high pollution rates, poverty, low job prospects, high crime, and racist policing. Past scholars have understood that food justice intersects with other social movements, such as environmental and social justice, due to the crossover of similar issues. These scholars thus believe that the interdisciplinary nature of food justice warrants interdisciplinary solutions. Food justice approaches that fully encompass its multifaceted nature are necessary with the growing uncertainty of natural disasters, pandemics, and climate change. This paper investigates the connection between non-profit food justice organizations to environmental and social justice, the effects of community engagement, and the solutions identified by food-insecure community members in Chicago. This research utilizes a mixed-method approach to spatial mapping and content analysis of published information by each organization, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and Urban Growers Collective, and local newspaper articles. Through this research, I argue that community engagement of food-insecure populations can best identify the full range of food-related problems. With this identification, affected community members, through engagement with non-profit organizations, have created effective solutions to contribute to the broader field of food justice to accompany and accelerate more government and policy-based approaches. These solutions include community-led farming, incorporating the cultural significance of food, youth educational programs, strongly dedicated leaders from the community, and stimulating job growth through urban farming. Lastly, the advocacy for community engagement aligns with the participative definition of food justice, emphasizing the mobilization of affected populations, as Clement Loo (2014) argued.

Angel Soba

Evan Carver, Program on the Global Environment

Environmental & Urban Studies

We analyze Kinshasa's traffic police agency to examine the systemic nature of bureaucratic corruption and quantify its impact on society. We find that 80% of the revenue generated by the agency is unofficial, of which 60% is produced by collusion schemes between supervisors and their agents. Based on two randomized experiments we conducted inside the agency, we present three results. First, the collusive agreements hinge on actions taken by the supervisors to conceal cheating. These actions create a distinctive social cost, above and beyond any cost that may arise from agent cheating. Second, collusion enables more cheating by the agents. Supervisor collusion accounts for a 55-fold increase in the government “efficiency wage'” that would deter cheating by the agents. Third, the supervisors are motivated not just by their own income, but also by redistribution of unofficial income between their agents. The “real” agency is best described as an informal organization operating in the shadow of the official norms of the state, where vertical and horizontal redistribution of unofficial income is fueled by supervisor collusion, creating a distinctive social cost.

Erica Hogan

Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, Harris School of Public Policy

Quad Faculty Research Grant Scholar

Economics & Business, Public Policy

Of the different movements that have grabbed headlines in recent years as comprising the “global far right,” the Hindu nationalist movement in India is the largest. Although neo-Nazis and Hindu nationalists may seem worlds apart, there are shared characteristics that justify their common designation as “far right.” Among those is their ideological stance on demography, gender, and sex, which have a central place in far-right ideologies worldwide. This project investigates the specific ways in which these themes manifest themselves in the Hindu nationalist movement, especially in its simultaneous and contradictory emphases on celibacy and maintaining a Hindu demographic majority in India. In doing so, the analysis draws on primary sources from foundational Hindu nationalist ideological tracts to newspapers across the span of 150 years. I argue that the Hindu nationalists’ embrace of celibacy has its roots in British colonial rule, in which a group of Indian men were deemed sexually and romantically undesirable in the eyes of the British. Reacting to this humiliation, these men – the precursors of the Hindu nationalist movement – adopted celibacy as a way to compensate, claiming to be indifferent to the world of love and sex they still craved but were denied access to. These findings raise the question of agency in the face of the legacy of history: to what extent was the Hindu nationalists’ celibacy voluntary or chosen, and to what extent was it imposed upon them by their British colonizers? My conclusions display how gender, sex, and demography – fraught topics for radical right groups worldwide – play out differently in each movement according to local histories and contexts. Understanding the Hindu nationalists’ views on these questions is therefore inseparable from a consideration of the afterlives of colonialism and empire in India.

Jonathan Chung

Elizabeth Chatterjee, History; Colin Rydell, Department of History

Comparative Race & Ethnic Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, History

One of the greatest challenges to humanity today is political polarization, as it engenders unproductive antagonism, pressure to conform intragroup, and gridlock. Researchers have attempted to uncover the mechanism behind this phenomenon, but studies have largely focused on how perceptions of the same political information may be biased, based on preexisting political beliefs. Specifically, they have found that conservatives and liberals experienced differing neural activity while watching the same news clips. However, the role of recalling this political information (i.e., people’s memories of the information) has yet to be studied extensively. In this study, we are interested in understanding whether neural activity between conservatives and liberals will differ when remembering the same news clips. Does recalling political information exacerbate one’s political bias, and how is that reflected in their neural activity? Prior work has found that the act of remembering a politically-neutral movie reshapes neural responses from initial perception to recall in a consistent, systematic way among individuals, such that memories of events tend to converge among participants. We hypothesize that, in recalling political information, party-dependent divergence in neural activity will be increased due to the systematic alterations that have been associated with recall. In other words, we expect that neural activity of recalling a news clip will be more similar amongst, for example, liberals than between liberals and conservatives. If we let polarization run its course, it may create serious and potentially irreparable dents in political systems and communities and could prevent policies crucial to the public’s wellbeing, as evidenced by recent resistance to vaccine distribution and climate action. In investigating the mechanism of political polarization, we hope to get closer to a world in which disagreements are fruitful and societally enriching.

Katie Ko

Yuan Chang Leong, Department of Psychology

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar supported by the Liew Family Research Fund

Social and Behavioral Sciences

In 2019, the Ukrainian government passed a law that requires people to speak Ukrainian in public spaces. One goal of this law, entitled “On Ensuring the State and Function of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language,” was to promote the somewhat obscure language ideology that a country’s ethnic language should also the language used daily. This paper analyzes the implementations of this law through observation, documentation of text, and ethnographic interviews, in the fall of 2021, in Kyiv and Odessa, Ukraine. It evaluates the influence of state legislation on citizens’ language ideologies as compared to two social networks: region and age. For the network of region, this paper looks at the cities of Kyiv and Odessa and finds regional differences in adherence to the law. In Kyiv, the law has confined the use of Russian to the private sphere while Ukrainian is used in public. Meanwhile in Odessa, Russian is still the primary language and is used in almost all aspects. In both cities, it is apparent that the regional social network has more influence over language ideologies than the government. This paper also studies generational differences in language use and language ideologies between those born during the Soviet Union and those born after its collapse. It finds that both generations had their own fixed language ideologies, neither of which was influenced by the law. The 2019 language law in Ukraine therefore reveals the considerable limits of the state’s ability to regulate language choice, and the divergent implementations of the law instead reflect wider linguistic ideological differences that do not detract from a strong national identity.

Lauren Cecchini

Lenore Grenoble, Linguistics

Global Studies

Digital media offers a multimodal approach to communication, creating a linguistically flexible environment that is rich with creative methods of production. I focus on the inclusion of the visual mode and its effects on a subsection of conventionalized gestures, identified here as Metaphorical Phrase Gestures (MPGs). These MPGs are the gestural manifestations of lexical metaphors, and they have developed two predictable processes of change that appear unique to digital media: metaphor enactment, in which the content of a metaphor is literally enacted, and prosodic emphasis. MPGs exhibit a predictable preference for metaphor enactment as well as a predictable set of prosodic features, many of which are unique to the digital environment and not yet documented within gestural literature. The role of the digital environment is crucial here; both metaphor enactment, as well as prosodic emphasis, rely on the ability of animation to visually augment a gesture in ways impossible in live production. Gesturers are no longer constrained by the limits of physics or by the faculties of their own bodies. Instead, the limits of production are defined by the intersection between imagination and a pragmatic ability to convey metaphoric information visually. Just as conceptual lexical metaphors are used to map abstract ideas onto concrete objects, MPGs reinforce and extend that mapped structure into a visual mode. Digitization further extends that structure, offering new avenues of change and emphasis not possible in live production. The methods of change identified here are highly systematic and appear across a variety of different gestures, providing encouraging evidence for the development of a set of visual, metaphoric conventions.

Leighton Stanfill

Jason Riggle, Linguistics, Chicago Language Modeling Lab

Dean's Fund for Undergraduate Research CONFERENCE Awardee

Interdisciplinary Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences

In this quarter, I contributed to our research by analyzing and cleaning data belonging to the 2020 Latinobarometer survey, a survey in most cities in Latin America about the incidence of violence. The survey tackles some specific topics on violence and gathers answers from people that inhabit the specific city in Latin America in order to have an accurate perspective about violence in that specific location. In the research, I will also be engaged in a range of specific research activities all related to this larger phenomenon of prison gangs and criminal governance in Brazil. As a native Portuguese speaker, my work within Professor's Lessing research will be to transcribe, code, and analyze qualitative material of interviews with gang members in Brazil. The transcriptions will then be used to better understand the details of power dynamics of gangs in Brazil and the daily situations within Brazilian prisons. The one- to two-hour recordings usually entail conversations of Professor Lessing with members of different gangs in various cities in Brazil, and some of them are interviews with government workers that have conducted leading roles in prisons or roles related to public safety. The confidential interviews also usually describe the daily lives of prisoners and the main power dynamics and aspects of how gangs work across several cities in Brazil. As I transcribe the interviews, I will also provide Professor Lessing with a general overview and a qualitative analysis of the recording and its main aspects. I will play a key role in Professor Lessing's book project by coding the word quantification of specific terms said during interviews that are key to his research and coding newspaper reports of violent events, researching specific gang histories, obtaining data on incarceration, crime, and violence.

Lucas Lelis Graciliano

Benjamin Lessing, Political Science

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Political Science

In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated food insecurity and caused global supply chain shortages, highlighting the vulnerability of the conventional globalized food system to large-scale disruptions. In response, actors within alternative food systems mobilized to provide emergency food relief to their communities and generate income for local farmers who lost considerable revenue during the pandemic. I set out to explore how alternative food system actors within Chicago adapted to COVID-19 to support local farmers and provide emergency food relief using a mixed-methods approach. To compare different strategies taken by food system actors across Chicago, I collected qualitative interviews, social media content, and news articles about four emergency food-relief programs initiated in response to the pandemic. Next, I conducted in-depth interviews with organizers behind one of these food-relief programs, Market Box, to understand the assets and strategies underpinning the success of this program. Results from this research found that emergency food-relief programs utilized a variety of approaches to connect populations with locally-grown food during the pandemic. A common strategy across all programs was offering contactless pickup and delivery options to allow vulnerable populations to avoid potential exposure to COVID-19 while grocery shopping. I argue that the program gained success by leveraging pre-existing relationships with local farmers and food insecure populations to quickly build a large recipient base for Market Box. Furthermore, Market Box circumvented traditional barriers to accessing free food resources by providing delivery and waiving ID and proof of income requirements to participate. The results support the expansion of the USDA’s SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot program to include smaller, local farms, with online sales platforms, to allow users greater freedom in utilizing food assistance dollars. When possible, food-relief programs should consider waiving ID requirements and offering delivery to capture a wider proportion of food insecure populations.

Mari Knudson

Dr. Sabina Shaikh, Program on the Global Environment

Environmental & Urban Studies

While multiple studies have shown that Mexican immigrants in the US often have higher levels of positive health metrics compared to US-born Mexican Americans, a growing literature demonstrates that sociopolitical stressors, including discrimination, immigration enforcement, and socioeconomic precarity, are linked to adverse mental health among foreign-born Mexicans in the US. Using binational datasets from the Mexican Family Life Survey (Mexico) and the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (United States), we explore the association between nativity, migration status, and mental health by analyzing depression scores and depression risk factors among a pooled sample including (1) US-born Mexican Americans, (2) Mexican immigrants in the US, (3) Mexican non-immigrants, and (4) Mexican return immigrants. Our study enhances the current literature by including comparison groups that are often missing in other studies: namely Mexicans who never migrate to the US and Mexican return migrants who leave the US. To evaluate differences in depression risk factors and prevalence between the four cohort groups, we use linear and logistic regression models while controlling for sociodemographic covariates, including age, gender, education, annual family income, and marital and healthcare status. We anticipate that the inclusion of previously overlooked cohorts (Mexicans who never migrate or who return home) will allow us to elucidate whether migrating to the US is protective of mental health or if returning to Mexico ameliorates declining mental health, two questions debated and left largely unanswered in the literature.

Sophie Hare

Dr. Aresha Martinez-Cardoso, Public Health Sciences, Embodying Race(ism) Lab

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Biological & Health Sciences, Comparative Race & Ethnic Studies

This project examines the contributions of German artist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian’s female students to her entomological research. Trained in watercolors by her stepfather, Merian (1647-1717) established herself as a well-regarded flower painter by her mid-twenties. In addition to selling her artworks, Merian tutored young women in painting and embroidery, and referred to these students as her Jungfern-Combanny (“company of maidens”). Merian was also fascinated by metamorphosis: she conducted research into insect life cycles and published three highly influential books of botanical and entomological illustrations. Most scholars have depicted the activities of painting and needlework that Merian undertook with the Jungfern-Combanny as separate from her entomological work. I demonstrate that, to the contrary, Merian’s relationships with her students in Frankfurt and Nuremberg were critical to her networks of material and intellectual exchange. Merian not only leveraged her students’ family ties to forge connections with male scholars and natural history enthusiasts (Liebhaber), but also sought and obtained specimens from these women themselves through the norms of gift exchange associated with amateur handiwork and artistic patronage. These specimen exchanges, which took place between women and were centered around painting and needlework, stand out in the literature on early modern collecting, and shed light on the way that women’s artistic production fostered their engagement with the global circulation of naturalia.

Stephanie Reitzig

Adrian Johns, History

History, Humanities

Spatial ability refers to the skills which one employs to transform, generate, or represent nonverbal information. There are several types of spatial skills, each employing different psychological processes making it so the associated tasks and skill levels are distinct from one another (Linn & Petersen, 1985). Spatial ability is linked to success in STEM in both the classroom and professional settings (Wai et al., 2009). Research shows that spatial skills are flexible and can be improved upon (Uttal et al., 2012), raising the possibility that children’s outcomes in STEM may be improved upon by targeting the development of specific spatial skills. The present study seeks to investigate the relationship between children’s performance on different spatial and math tasks and to answer: how are children’s mental folding errors related to their different types of spatial and math abilities and level of spatial anxiety? Using data from the virtual mental folding study, we analyze 6 to 9-year-olds’ performance on a paper folding task, a mental rotation task (Mix et al., 2018), a number line task (Gunderson et al., 2012), and a spatial anxiety measure (Suinn et al., 1988). Analyses reveal the frequency of types of errors children make in the paper folding task, the relationship between the frequency of these errors and performance on the mental rotation and number line tasks, as well as how a child’s spatial anxiety relates to their performance on different spatial tasks. This research provides a more nuanced understanding of how children’s spatial abilities develop, which has implications on how to best intervene to support their growth and better prepare children for STEM in classroom and career domains. Equipped with knowledge on how different spatial skills relate to one another, future research can begin to look at developing such interventions.

Tyler Mandrell

Susan Levine, Department of Psychology, Cognitive Development Lab; Jacob Butts, Department of Psychology; Cognitive Development Lab

PRISM Scholar

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Biodiversity losses raise concern, in particular, when keystone species — species that perform vital functions in the ecosystem — experience population declines. Ecologists have long theorized about how losing keystone species can cause significant adverse changes in the environment, and as a result, negatively affect human activities. We study the case of a sharp decline in vulture populations in India and analyze the causes and consequences of decline. Vultures are the main scavenger and an important cultural symbol. Without vultures to remove carrion from the environment, different mechanisms can contribute to the spread of infectious diseases, namely an increase in feral dogs and higher levels of water pollution. The unexpected population decline provides the setting for a natural experiment that can approximate the random assignment of vultures and the provision of their ecosystem function of sanitation. To verify the proposed mechanism, we will establish the causality between painkiller usages and the intensified chemical pollution for vultures. We will also study the fixed effect of the local weather. The research will inform us of the interrelationship between the species population and human activities. It will thus estimate the social cost of the loss in biodiversity.

Yuerong Zhuang

Eyal Frank, Harris School of Public Policy

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Economics & Business

This paper describes a fully-customizable open source method (with supplementary code on GitHub) to create linked origin-destination data on commuting flows by mode at the Census tract scale by combining LODES and ACS data from the US Census Bureau. The method can be applied to the entire US (with a small number of exceptions) for every year from 2002-2019. For demonstration purposes, the paper applies this method to 2015 commuting flows in Cook County, Illinois. At an aggregate scale the results of this application show that commuting by all modes is dominated by travel to large regional employment centers. However, the pattern is more localized for the walking mode, and focused along corridors of mode-specific infrastructure investment for the cycling and transit modes, as might be expected. The auto mode provides the most distributed pattern of travel and reveals more instances of “reverse” commuting than the other modes.

Zander Arnao

Luc Anselin, Sociology, Center for Spatial Data Science; Kevin Credit, Center for Spatial Data Science

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Environmental & Urban Studies

In the aftermath of the global financial and food crises of 2007/8, acquiring land in sub-Saharan Africa became a strategy for countries seeking to increase their domestic food security. During this time, Ethiopia’s ruling political coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF, 1991-2019), primarily pursued investments from Indian firms and became one of the top land-leasing countries in Africa. The western region of Gambella, located in its economic periphery, is the most concentrated region of land grabs in the country. I ask, what do “land grabs” in Gambella, Ethiopia by Indian agricultural companies imply about the political-economic construction of “South-South Cooperation” (SSC) by policy elites in India and Ethiopia? I use a mixed-methods case study and thematic analysis to study this relationship. Objects of analysis include speeches and writings from key political leaders and declarations from the African Union. Historically, SSC emerged in the radicalism of 1960’s dependency theory, which sought to reform the fundamentally unjust Northern-dominated international economic order. I argue that the political elites of India and the EPRDF co-opt the historic anti-colonial SSC rhetoric in order to conceal violent state interventions that facilitate neoliberalism, the accumulation of global capital, and contradict SSC’s originals ideals. In 2022, it is clear that Indian land grabs actually failed to substantially “develop” the provided land and export raw products from Ethiopia. This failure is an important site to understanding the realities of implementing SSC. This research adds to the growing body of literature that studies how multi-ethnic sub-Saharan African countries internally reconcile the dispossession needed to join the global economy by analyzing how and why the EPRDF dispossesses the pastoralist/shifting cultivator peripheral populations of Gambella. Due to the SSC literature’s tendency to focus on Sino-African relationships, this thesis adds a vital focus on how India engages with Africa.

Zebeeb Nuguse

Neil Brenner, Sociology

Environmental & Urban Studies, Global Studies, Political Science, Public Policy

Blood donation is an essential component of a functioning healthcare system. However, globally there are critical blood donation shortages. To help resolve the urgent blood shortage, it is important to advocate blood donation using effective messaging appeals. Previous studies show that self-oriented benevolent messaging is more effective in driving blood donation intentions and behaviors than other-oriented altruistic messaging. However, one critical limitation is that the majority of these studies were conducted in Western countries where people value independence and self-interest. Here, we are interested in testing whether benevolence messaging still outperforms altruistic messaging in China, or if in a more collectivistic context, altruistic messaging may outperform self-oriented benevolence messaging. Our hypothesis is that benevolent messaging will be more effective in promoting blood donation intentions than altruistic messaging even in China. We tested native Chinese speakers who speak English as a second language. Participants were recruited to do an online questionnaire where each participant was randomly given altruism or benevolence messaging and answered a series of questions related to their blood donation attitudes, intentions, behaviors, and language history. We found that there is a significant effect of actually looking up blood donation places for the altruism condition. Altruism messaging is more effective in promoting blood donation intentions in China. These findings have important implications both theoretically and practically, as understanding how to best communicate appeals to donate blood is to date a largely unaddressed question that can have major implications on helping our healthcare system reach target blood supply goals.

Ziyu Ren

Boaz Keysar, Department of Psychology, Multilingualism and Decision-Making Lab; Leigh Grant, Department of Psychology

Quad Undergraduate Research Scholar

Social and Behavioral Sciences