Frances Velay Fellows - Summer 2024
Meet the students who participated in the Frances Velay Women in Science Fellowship
Program - Summer 2024!
The Frances Velay Women and Science Research Fellowship program at Stony Brook is
administered by URECA in collaboration with Dr. Maria Nagan (Department of Chemistry;
Associate Dean for Curriculum, College of Arts and Sciences).
Rachel Anderson
Physics major
Mentor: Dr. Mengkun Liu (Physics)
Project: Developing a Tunable Dye Laser for Visible Range Scattering Near-field Optical Microscopy
Ophelia Burden
Earth & Space Sciences major
Mentor: Dr. Marine Frouin (Geosciences)
Project: A Multi-Method Luminescence Dating Approach to the late Pleistocene to early Holocene in the southwestern Kalahari Desert, Botswana
Alo Chakravarty
Physics major, recipient of Physics & Astronomy Barish-URECA award
Mentor: Dr. John Hobbs (Physics)
Project: Investigating the Exotic Higgs Boson Decay pp → H → Za → bbμμ with the Large Hadron Collider
Bishaka Dahal
Chemistry major
Mentor: Dr. Stanislaus Wong (Chemistry)
Project: Exploring Novel Techniques for Nine Element High Entropy Oxide Synthesis
Katie Hsu
Biology & Psychology majors
Mentor: Dr. Berhane Ghebrehiwet (Medicine)
Project: C1q and C1q receptors (gC1qR and cC1qR) as potential targets against cervical cancer
Isabella Janowicz
Biology major
Mentor: Dr. Bernadette Holdener (Biochemistry)
Project: Blocking O-Glucosylation of Epidermal Growth Factors Causes Soft Tissue Syndactyly
Manahil Kashif
Biochemistry major
Mentor: Dr. Maya Shelly (Neurobiology)
Project: The Scaffold Scribble Interacts with Rac1 GEFs to Regulate LTD
Katherine Otavalo-Barros
Biology major
Mentor: Dr. Howard Sirotkin (Neurobiology)
Project: Modeling seizure sensitivity and kindling using zebrafish larvae
Sheina Peralta
Astronomy & Physics majors,
recipient of Physics & Astronomy Barish-URECA award
Mentor: Dr. Eric Jones (Laser Teaching Center, Physics)
Project: Optical Holography
Juliet Slota
Geology major
Mentor: Dr. Troy Rasbury (Geosciences)
Project: Improving the Chronology of the Chama Basin in New Mexico