3rd Annual Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Symposium
April 16 - 17, 2025
Great Hall and South Ballroom
Memorial Union
Daily Schedule
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Morning Events (South Ballroom) | |
| 8:30 – 9:00 | Breakfast, Networking, and Registration |
| 9:00 – 9:30 | Welcome Announcements and Introduction by Dr. Asheesh Singh, CALS Associate Dean for Research and Discovery |
Make sure to visit the Graduate Career Services table from 8:30-4:00 AM to explore a wealth of career services, resources, online platforms, and opportunities designed to help you secure an industry job. Dr. Svitlana Zbarska, Graduate Career Services lead, along with career coaches, will be available to review your resume or CV and provide personalised advice on your job search. | |
Student Oral Session 1 (South Ballroom) | |
| 9:30 – 9:45 | Morgan Vorwald - Genetics and Genomics "A high-fat, high-sucrose diet does not exacerbate inflammatory and ER stress signaling in diaphragm of mdx mice" Advisor: Dr Joshua Selsby |
| 9:45 – 10:00 | Claudia Carrillo - Nutrition Science "Assessing the effects of different dietary fiber interventions on kidney health and vitamin D homeostasis in a preclinical model of type 1 diabetes" Advisor: Dr. Matthew Rowling |
| 10:00 – 10:15 | Bimala Acharya - BCB "Deep Learning for Pig Detection: A Step Toward Early Identification of Fall-behind Weaned Pigs" Advisor: Dr David Rosero |
| 10:15 – 10:30 | BREAK |
| 10:30 – 10:45 | Pengxin Yang - Biochemistry "Integrative profiling of transcriptome and chromatin accessibility reveals evidence associated with BCG administration induced trained immunity in porcine immune cells" Advisor: Dr Christopher Tuggle |
| 10:45 – 11:00 | Jeong Byoung Chae - Veterinary Medicine "Molecular Characterization of Ten Viral Pathogens Causing Calf Diarrhea in Hanwoo (Bos taurus coreanae) by Next Generation Sequencing" Advisor: Dr. Jodi McGill |
Keynote Speaker 1 (South Ballroom) | |
| 11:00 - 12:00 | Dr. Elisa Crisci - Assistant Professor of Virology, North Carolina State University “The PRRSV Puzzle: Next-Gen Insights into vaccine, immunity and pathogenesis” -Introduced by Sage Becker, ImBio |
| 12:00 – 1:00 | Lunch |
Student Oral Session 2 (South Ballroom) | |
| 1:00 – 1:15 | Ankur Kumar - Genetics and Genomics "Plasmalogens Regulate Mitochondrial Dynamics during Aging in Drosophila melanogaster" Advisor: Dr Hua Bai |
| 1:15 – 1:30 | Thị Hong Anh Pham - MCDB "Investigating Ether Phospholipid Impact on Mitochondrial Cristae Structure" Advisor: Dr Hua Bai |
| 1:30 – 1:45 | Madison Lane - MCDB "Building a synthetic cuticle: Characterizing the impact of maize transcription factors on cuticle biosynthetic pathways" Advisor: Dr Marna Yandeau-Nelson |
| 1:45– 2:00 | Joseph DeTemple - Genetics and Genomics "Circadian rhythm differences between temperate and tropical maize inbreds in response to photoperiod" Advisor: Dr Jianming Yu |
| 2:00 – 2:15 | Alejandro Aragon Raygoza - GDCB "Exploring the effects of ethylene-related transcription factors during maize shoot development" Advisor: Dr. Josh Strable |
| 2:15 – 2:30 | BREAK |
Keynote Speaker 2 (South Ballroom) | |
| 2:30 – 3:30 | Dr. Benjamin Cole - Biologist Research Scientist, Joint Genome Institute “Single-cell profiling of plant / environmental interactions” -Introduced by Sabrena Rutledge |
Poster Session Day 1 (Great Hall Memorial Union)
3:30 - 5:00
| Poster Number | Presenter and Program | Poster Title and Advisor |
| 2 | Faith Olusegun BCB | "Does modularity emerge through evolution? Evidence from a Boolean network-based computational study" Advisor: Dr Claus Kadelka |
| 4 | Alexandra Else-Keller IGG | "Phenotyping Differentially Abundant Proteins in Cryopreserved vs Fresh Bull Sperm" Advisor: Dr Karl Kerns |
| 6 | Venkata Naresh Boddepalli Plant Breeding | "Genetic analysis of pod traits in Iowa Mung bean Diversity Panel using image-based phenotyping" Advisor: Dr Arti Singh |
| 8 | Memis Bilgici Plant Breeding | TBD Advisor: Dr Thomas Lubberstedt |
| 10 | Wren Murzyn Undergraduate | "Chemistry-specific off-target effects of a therapeutic antisense oligonucleotide for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy" Advisor: Dr Ravindra Singh |
| 12 | Rabsa Naseer VMPM | "PRRSV ORF5 Ct Values: Vaccine-like Strains Show Higher rtPCR Levels" Advisor: Dr Giovani Trevisan |
| 14 | Chunoti Changwal Plant Biology | "Decoy engineering: a trap for plant pathogens" Advisor: Dr Thomas J Baum |
| 16 | Jack Moran Agronomy | "Investigating Seed Treatments and Soil Amendments to Improve the Establishment of Kentucky Bluegrass as a Perennial Groundcover" Advisor: Dr Susana Goggi |
| 20 | Sophie Krivograd IGG | "Investigating Tryglysin A resistance and gene regulation in streptococci" Advisor: Dr Britta Rued |
| 22 | Meagan Putzier Engineering | "Holder for Ultrasound Transducer to Enable Photoacoustic Imaging" Advisor: Dr Monojit Pramanik |
| 24 | Rachael Gorman Biochemistry | "The interaction of the Arabidopsis xyloglucan xylosyltransferases with the COPII member SAR1 via their di-arginine motifs is critical for delivery to the Golgi" Advisor: Dr Olga Zabotina |
| 26 | John Ssengo IGG | "Dissecting Puccinia sorghi haustoria at the molecular level: A multi-omics investigation" Advisor: Dr Steven Whitham |
| 28 | Caden Klopfenstein Undergraduate | "Solutions to Address Biases and Increase the Accuracy of Social Contact Matrices" Advisor: Dr Claus Kadelka |
| 30 | Maddumage Dona Ginushika Premarathne IGG | "Alternative splicing in Gossypium hirsutum during fiber development" Advisor: Dr Corrinne Grover |
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Student Oral Session 3 (South Ballroom) | |
| 9:00 – 9:30 | Breakfast and Networking |
| 9:30 – 9:45 | Md Shahriar Mahmud - Mathematics "Adaptive human behavior and delays in information availability autonomously modulate epidemic waves" Advisor: Dr Claus Kadelka |
| 9:45 – 10:00 | Priyanka Banerjee - Computer Science "Identifying core operons in metagenomic data" Advisor: Dr. Oliver Eulenstein and Dr. Iddo Friedberg |
| 10:00 – 10:15 | An Phan - BCB "Prioritizing Literature Curation of Under-annotated Proteins with IgnoroMeNot" Advisor: Dr Claus Kadelka |
| 10:15 – 10:30 | Parnal Joshi - BCB "Cross-species quantification of protein function annotations provides insights into the utility of model organisms" Advisor: Dr Iddo Friedberg |
| 10:30 – 10:45 | Rodolfo Calderon - MCDB "Pronephric derived nitric oxide acts in the NF-kB pro-inflammatory transcription mechanism" Advisor: Dr Raquel Espin Palazon |
Poster Session Day 2 (Great Hall Memorial Union)
10:45 - 12:15
| Poster Number | Presenter and Program | Poster Title and Advisor |
| 1 | Catherine Fonder MCDB | "Evaluating the effect of shockwave impacts on the behavior of adult hippocampal progenitor cell neurospheres" Advisor: Dr Donald Sakaguchi |
| 3 | Rabsa Naseer VMPM | "PRRSV Ct Value Distributions Across Sample Types" Advisor: Dr Giovani Trevisan |
| 5 | Onyinyechi Judith Amaechi IGG | "Evaluating single nucleus RNA sequencing in Gossypium (cotton) fiber" Advisor: Dr Corrinne Grover |
| 7 | Reyna Winders Undergraduate | "Investigating the Xyloglucan Xylosyltransferase Heterodimer Organization" Advisor: Dr Olga Zabotina |
| 9 | Fred Rogers Namanda MCDB | "FHOD3 and DIAPH3 control stress fiber organization and cell migration through shared but non-overlapping mechanisms" Advisor: Dr Ian C. Schneider |
| 11 | Oluwatobiloba Aminu BCB | "GWAS Approach to Identify Diagnostic Markers in Avibacterium paragallinarum" Advisor: Dr Mohamed El-gazzar |
| 13 | Masuma Khatun Usha MCDB | "Rewiring endothelial cells toward definitive hemogenic endothelium" Advisor: Dr Raquel Espin Palazon |
| 15 | Sristi Dey IGG | "Impact of tryglysin on metal homeostasis in oral streptococci" Advisor: Dr Britta Rued |
| 19 | Leticia Herrera Biochemistry | "Analyzing Cohesion: Investigating Cdc23 S.Cerevisiae Mutations and it's Role in Chromosome Separation" Advisor: Dr Mohan Gupta |
| 21 | Ludvin Mejia IGG | "Determining the role of lncRNA BCAR4 in human trophoblast cells" Advisor: Dr Geetu Tuteja |
| 23 | Matthew Wendt IGG | "Environmental and Genetic Factors Underlying Maize Cuticular Wax Accumulation Under Drought Stress" Advisor: Dr Marna Yandeau-Nelson |
| 25 | Fazhir Kayondo IGG | "A genome-wide association study of measures of stress response in young healthy pigs and in grow-to-finish pigs exposed to a natural polymicrobial disease challenge" Advisor: Dr Jack Dekkers |
| 27 | Breigha Boyle IMBIO | "Exploring the Efficacy of FDA-approved inhibitors on Rift Valley Fever Virus Pathogenesis" Advisor: Dr Todd Bell |
| 29 | Ushashi Bhattacharjee Undergraduate | "Benchmarking BioEmu-1: Establishing a Baseline for Protein Structural Ensemble Prediction" |
| 12:00 - 1:00 | Lunch |
Student Oral Session 4 (South Ballroom) | |
| 1:00 – 1:15 | Nesreen Sedeek - Neuroscience "Differentiation and Proliferation of AHPC Neurospheres Plated on Gold Substrates Subjected to Electric Stimulation" Advisor: Dr Donald Sakaguchi |
| 1:15 – 1:30 | Swathi Nadendla - BCB "Coupling Bioinformatics approaches and Oxford Nanopore (ONT) sequencing for enhanced Diagnosis of Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) in Poultry" Advisor: Dr.Mohamed El-Gazzar |
| 1:30 – 1:45 | Benjamin Jacobs - Statistics "Heterosis gene detection for RNA-seq data without replicates: an objective Bayesian approach" Advisor: Dr. Peng Liu |
| 1:45– 2:00 | Xinglin Jia - BCB "CLEAR: Concise List Enrichment Analysis using R" Advisor: Dr Claus Kadelka |
| 2:00 – 2:15 | Sabrena Rutledge - BCB "Defining trophoblast cell lineages within the rat placenta using single-cell RNA-sequencing" Advisor: Dr Geetu Tuteja |
| 2:15 – 2:30 | BREAK |
Keynote Presentation 3 (South Ballroom) | |
| 2:30 – 3:30 | Dr. Junhyong Kim - Co-Director, Penn Program in Single Cell Biology “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once: From Single Cell Biology to the Theory of the Cell Type” -Introduced by Sabrena Rutledge |
| 3:30 – 4:30 | Closing and Awards CeremonyClosing remarks by Dr. Jodi McGill, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies Awards Ceremony
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