We seek to understand if FoxA2+ stem cells from various skeletal sites display self renewal and multipotency. The student involved in this project will gain practical experience in sterile tissue culture techniques and in assessing stem cell self-renewal through serial passaging. They will also learn fundamental trilineage differentiation techniques for adipocytes, chondrocytes, and osteoblasts to evaluate multipotency. We anticipate this will require approximately 5 hours per week. If the student has additional availability and is interested in contributing more time, they may also participate in transplanting FoxA2+ cells into surgically created cartilage lesions to assess repair.

I have two research projects:

The first one is related to the catalytic properties of a heterogeneous green catalyst designed to be coupled with an electrolytic hydrogen peroxide generator which has been shown to break down water contaminants such as Estrogenic compounds (this is the RAISE research lab-Research Alliance in Science and Engineering)

The second one (the mPIRE project) is related to metallopeptide interdisciplinary research project which is focused on the metal binding and redox properties of a library of small peptides (from 5-15 aminoacids length) which are structurally related to the Ab Amyloid peptide related to Alzheimer’s disease. The students study the complex formation of these peptides with various redox metals and then check the redox activity of the complexes towards neurotransmitters and plasmid DNA as substrates to assess redox capabilities of these peptides.

Students may participate in one of two projects: (1) Identification and analysis of new dwarf galaxy candidates in imaging from SuperBIT, a stratospheric balloon-borne telescope. (2) Calculate cosmological volume and cosmic variance for a planned two-point correlation function analysis of the COSMOS-Web JWST survey.

The selected student will work with Prof. Toyoko Orimoto on cutting-edge research in experimental particle physics. Prof. Orimoto is interested in the discovery of new particles and interactions at CERN Large Hadron Collider with the CMS Experiment, as well as developing a future muon collider facility in the US. The selected student will work on data analysis and/or computer simulation studies towards these goals.