On this week's episode of The Sci-Files, your hosts Mari and Dimitri interview Emily Bolger. Emily Bolger is a 5th year PhD Candidate in the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering. She works in the Computing Education Research Lab (CERL) with Dr. Danny Caballero. Her dissertation research uses Natural Language Processing to identify and synthesize themes in Instructional Change Strategies in Undergraduate STEM Literature. Systematic literature reviews critically collec...
Mar 23, 2025•22 min•Season 9Ep. 19
On this week's episode of The Sci-Files, your hosts Mari and Dimitri interview Aubree Marshall. Aubree is a 5th year PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology. They work in the MSU Bioarchaeology Lab with Dr. Gabe Wrobel, and their research interests include understanding health, diet, and food access in ancient Maya populations, specifically from Central Belize. To do this, Aubree analyzes the proteins and micro-remains extracted from dental calculus - the same stuff your dental hygienist...
Feb 02, 2025•14 min
Mari and Dimitri interview undergraduate student researchers from Michigan State University's Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP). The second episode of this 2-part series features Chris Lin, Kevin Villatoro, and Darnilla Samuel. If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com . Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter or Instagram !...
Jan 26, 2025•15 min
Mari and Dimitri interview undergraduate student researchers from Michigan State University's Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP). The first episode of this 2-part series features Kandy Pierre, Mohamed Elgallad, and Isteaq Zim. If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com . Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , and YouTube !...
Jan 19, 2025•14 min
Mari and Dimitri interview student researchers at the 16th annual Graduate Academic Conference (GAC), hosted by the Council of Graduate Students (COGS). The final episode of this four-part series features interviews with Jared Reiling from the Department of Computational Math Science and Engineering, and Priyanka Kathari from the Department of Teacher Education. If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifiles...
Nov 03, 2024•9 min
Mari and Dimitri interview student researchers at the 16th annual Graduate Academic Conference (GAC), hosted by the Council of Graduate Students (COGS). The third episode of this four-part series features interviews with Md Fyaz Sadiq from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Marc Freidman from the Plant Pathology Program. If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com . C...
Oct 13, 2024•19 min
Mari and Dimitri interview student researchers at the 16th annual Graduate Academic Conference (GAC), hosted by the Council of Graduate Students (COGS). The second episode of this four-part series features interviews with Roselane Kithan-Lundquist, and Ifeanyichukwu Eke from MSU's Microbiology department , and Simon Sanchez from the Department of Biomedical Engineering. If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at the...
May 05, 2024•18 min
Mari and Dimitri interview student researchers at the 16th annual Graduate Academic Conference (GAC), hosted by the Council of Graduate Students (COGS). The first episode of this four-part series features interviews with Sam Norcia and Char Dengler from the College of Nursing, and Bismarck Amaniampong from the Department of Chemistry. If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at thescifileswdbm@gmail.com . Check The S...
Apr 28, 2024•15 min
On this week's episode of The Sci-Files, your hosts Mari and Dimitri interview Veona Cutinho. Veona works in the Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory at MSU led by Dr. Jose Cibelli. She works with zebrafish embryos and manipulates them so they can be ideal donors for cloning. These tiny embryos are perfect for studying cloning because their development is quick, easy to see, and happens outside the body! While cloning was once a big deal, it's kind of old-fashioned now because it's tough to get it ...
Mar 24, 2024•21 min
Yunting Gu is a PhD candidate in linguistics from Michigan State University. Her research in speech production suggests a basis for several universals regarding the sound pattern of languages. Despite the differences in languages, some sound patterns are common to most languages of the world. For example, cross-linguistically, syllables starting with pl are more frequently observed than syllables starting with pt, which is more frequent than syllables starting with lp. Also, syllables that have ...
Mar 17, 2024•21 min
On this week's episode of The Sci-Files, your hosts Mari and Dimitri interview Kiyotaka Suga, a PhD candidate in Second Language Studies. One of the engaging questions for second language (L2) teachers is how to introduce grammar instruction to help adult L2 learners develop their well-balanced communicative abilities. Most L2 teachers may believe intuitively that engaging in output (speaking and writing) practice in L2 classrooms is crucial for adult L2 learners to develop their productive skil...
Feb 25, 2024•17 min
Bryan Stanley is a PhD student in the Physics Department. He does Physics Education Research (PER), where he primarily studies informal physics programs. Informal physics programs create physics learning spaces outside of the traditional classroom settings. Examples of these types of programs include, but are not limited to, summer camps, planetarium shows, public lectures, student groups, science festivals, and open houses. The events that these programs host are sometimes called public engagem...
Feb 18, 2024•17 min
When you get a scrape or cut, you might reach for a tube of Neosporin, but have you ever wondered what exactly this antimicrobial ointment does to bacteria, or how bacteria might avoid being killed? Bacteria possess a dizzying variety of specialized protein machinery that help them resist our medicines, complicating treatment of infection. Natasha, a graduate student in the department of microbiology and molecular genetics, studies these antibiotic resistance machines with the help of cryo-elect...
Feb 11, 2024•21 min
Blood transfusions can be life-saving procedures for patients in need. However, they can also impart much more devastating complications, leading to poorer outcomes than prior to transfusion, such as infection, inflammation, and even death. This is in part due to the red blood cell “storage lesion”, which refers to the irreversible metabolic and physiological damages that occur to red blood cells (RBCs) during their storage period, such as membrane damage, protein/lipid oxidation, glycation, cel...
Feb 04, 2024•22 min
Period poverty is an important, yet often ignored, public health crisis. The social shame and steep cost of menstrual products often push low-income people to adopt unhygienic practices during menstruation, negatively impacting their health, education, and dignity. Specifically, period poverty significantly impacts young menstruators in universities. The lack of access to menstrual hygiene products forces many students to resort to rags, paper towels, toilet paper, and other substitutes, increas...
Nov 19, 2023•20 min
Alyssa studies the reproductive biology of African electric fish, called mormyrids, with a focus on their sperm and eggs. These freshwater fishes are found throughout lakes and river throughout the African continent and are used by research laboratories across the globe to study questions in evolution, neuroscience, behavior, and other biological disciplines. Besides their amazing ability to produce electricity, these fishes are also unique in that their sperm cells lack tails. Almost all animal...
Nov 05, 2023•15 min
Ben is a graduate student in the Departments of Integrative Biology and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at Michigan State University. His research interests include understanding how species adapt to changing environments, especially thermal stress and conservation of coldwater fishes. Ben uses genomic tools to improve our understanding of species conservation by examining adaptive potential and genetic health in wild trout populations. If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on th...
Oct 22, 2023•18 min
On the first episode with the new hosts of The Sci-Files, Mari Dowling and Dimitri Joseph interview Megan McGrath. Interacting with the world relies on our ability to take in information and stimuli from our environment and integrate it into a cohesive explanation of what it happening around us. But the world is full of constant, unending stimuli...so how do we know what to pay attention to? If we were consciously aware of everything that was happening in the world, we would never be able to fun...
Oct 08, 2023•23 min
On this episode of The Sci-Files, Mari Dowling and Dimitri Joseph interviewed Chelsie Boodoo and Daniel Puentes about their research. Daniel Puentes graduated from Michigan State University with a Ph.D. in Physics. His work focused on using experimental information to inform nuclear astrophysical simulations describing the creation of elements in space. Daniel also developed a first-generation beam stopper dedicated to dissociating molecules to improve low-energy rare isotope measurements. Danie...
Sep 18, 2023•12 min•Season 9Ep. 17
Chelsie and Daniel visited the COGS Graduate Academic Conference (GAC) for the last time. For their final interview, they spoke with Dimitri Joseph and Mari Dowling, the new hosts of The Sci-Files. Dimitri Joseph is a 4th-year DO-PhD student in the Pharmacology and Toxicology department. He uses bioinformatics to study disparities in cancer. Mari Dowling is a 4th-year DO-PhD student in the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Department of Anthropology. Her graduate work is in medical anthropolog...
Sep 11, 2023•10 min•Season 9Ep. 16
Chelsie and Daniel visited the COGS Graduate Academic Conference (GAC) for the last time. They continued to interview students briefly about their research. Listen to them speak with Jamily Ramos De Lima and Betul Kara. If you want to discuss your MSU research on the radio or nominate a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at scifiles@impact89fm.org . You can ask questions about future episodes here. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , and YouTube !...
Sep 04, 2023•10 min•Season 9Ep. 15
Chelsie and Daniel visit the COGS Graduate Academic Conference (GAC) for the last time. They interviewed students briefly about their research. Listen to them speak with Debkumar Debnath, Sam Weiser and Daniel Marri. This will be a three-part series as Daniel and Chelsie say bye and welcome the new hosts of The Sci-Files soon. If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at scifiles@impact89fm.org . You can ask question...
Aug 14, 2023•18 min•Season 9Ep. 14
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Brett Volment. Heart diseases represent the leading causes of death worldwide. Researchers commonly use cellular and animal models to investigate and study cardiovascular disease and other diseases. However, these models do not provide the best representation of human physiology. To this end, Brett’s work focuses on growing and creating miniature 3D human hearts, termed “heart organoids” that allow more faithful insight toward ...
Jul 24, 2023•13 min•Season 9Ep. 13
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Joshua Kaste. Joshua is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University, and he works in the Shachar-Hill laboratory. His work focuses on building and analyzing mathematical models that describe the rates of all the chemical reactions going on in a living cell or whole organism. If you think of all the chemical compounds and the chemical reactions between them as a sort of ...
Mar 20, 2023•20 min•Season 9Ep. 12
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts, Chelsie and Danny, interview Jamell Dacon. Jamell is the MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering . His current research focuses on fairness and bias in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Because inclusivity matters in all forms. He intends to investigate, examine and mitigate societal biases to conceptualize the "isms" that plague our society via NLP technologies to increase social justice and reduce feelings of disenfranchisement. Specificall...
Jan 23, 2023•21 min•Season 9Ep. 11
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts, Chelsie and Danny interview Emily Greeson. Emily works in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics department in the Contag lab at Michigan State University. Her work focuses on studying and engineering genes in bacteria to create new functions. Recently, Emily has been working on Bacillus subtilis, a soil bacterium, and adding temperature-sensitive repressors to it to control protein production. Temperature-sensitive repressors respond to changes in temp...
Oct 24, 2022•16 min•Season 9Ep. 10
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts, Chelsie and Danny interview Hariharan Ramakrishnan. Cisplatin is an incredibly powerful chemotherapy drug used to treat a variety of cancers. However, its side effects, such as kidney toxicity and painful neuropathy, may result in dose reduction or termination of treatment increasing patient mortality. Physicians must closely monitor the patient’s kidney function during chemotherapy due to the high risk of kidney failure, and the patient’s sensitivity, d...
Oct 10, 2022•14 min•Season 9Ep. 9
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Anna Kim and Roksana Riddle. The United States CDC estimates 2.8 million drug-resistant infections resulting in 35,000 deaths yearly. Pseudomonads are amongst the most resistant to antimicrobials, not only in clinical settings but equally in plant systems like P. syringae. P. syringae is a causative agent for multiple diseases affecting nearly all major economic crops worldwide. Despite the yearly rising numbers of drug-resista...
Sep 26, 2022•17 min•Season 9Ep. 8
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Sam Barans. Sam researches patient histories of trauma in populations at Clinical High Risk for psychosis at the University of New Mexico. With estimates of trauma exposure ranging from 54 to 97% in this population, it's important to identify trauma risk factors and focus treatment on patients' history of trauma. Sam's research aims to identify discrepancies between patient self-reports of trauma and clinician reports of Advers...
Sep 26, 2022•14 min•Season 9Ep. 7
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Jamie Liebold. Zahra is a senior studying Comparative Cultures and Politics with Minors in Global Public Health and Epidemiology and Computational Math, Science, and Engineering. Aware of the racial bias in police use of force, Zahra's research focuses on the impact police administrative policy can have on police behavior, especially regarding police use of force. This episode will look at the situation of the State of Michigan in ...
Aug 03, 2022•10 min•Season 9Ep. 6
