On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kaelyn Sanders. Kaelyn is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University , where she received her Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice Studies & Criminology and Sociology with a minor in Security and Intelligence . She is now an incoming Ph.D. student at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice Program . Her research interests are mainly in corrections, prisoner reentry, and school shootings as well as mass shooting...
Aug 03, 2020•29 min•Season 4Ep. 4
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Lauren Jernstadt. When Lauren is not working as an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Physics and Astronomy , where she studies single molecule biology using fluorescent laser tweezers, Lauren is discussing with her former Bioethics Capstone instructor Kathleen Lowenstein a very different topic: the ethical implications of telehealth, specifically services that provide contraception. Telecontraceptive service...
Aug 03, 2020•24 min•Season 4Ep. 3
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Abdulrahman Alharthi, Erin Sawyer, and Kaylie Williams. Abdulrahman, Erin, and Kaylie are all undergraduates at MSU and work as research assistants in Dr. Kimberly Fenn’s Sleep and Learning Lab . Abdulrahman Alharthi is a 4th-year undergraduate student majoring in Biomedical Laboratory Science with a concentration in Clinical Chemistry and minor in Leadership in Integrated Learning . Erin Sawyer is a 2nd-year undergraduate stud...
Jul 27, 2020•21 min•Season 4Ep. 2
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Paige Cordts from the MSU Department of Mechanical Engineering . Currently, she is working to understand the difficulties individuals with disabilities face when accessing and using transportation, whether that be public or private. Individuals with physical disabilities face many challenges in society, with one of the largest being barriers related to transportation. The most common forms of transportation used by physically d...
Jul 27, 2020•20 min•Season 4Ep. 1
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Lauren Collier-Spruel. Lauren is a doctoral candidate in the Michigan State Organizational Psychology program whose research focuses on the effectiveness of diversity interventions at work. Specifically, she has completed a variety of projects on ally intervention and ally effectiveness. There are a lot of people who say they are allies for people who have been marginalized by society. But is it enough to be an ally? The resear...
Jul 20, 2020•21 min•Season 3Ep. 24
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Jenna Walters. Jenna is a M.S. student studying the influence of extreme heat conditions on blueberry pollination and bee nutrition. Her work draws from an applied ecology background as she studies the entire blueberry crop system- pollen physiology and chemistry, fruit yield and quality, and bee health and diet preference. Jenna has broad interests in pollination ecology across natural and managed systems and is particularly i...
Jul 20, 2020•24 min•Season 3Ep. 23
On this week of The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny speak with Kevin Kraef, a Junior at MSU's James Madison College and Eli Broad School of Business majoring in International Relations and Supply Chain Management. Kevin conducted his research on behalf of MSU's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) directed by Dr. Matthew Grossman. In the past year, he investigated the effects of earned income tax credits (EITC), child tax credits (CTC), and publicly funded programs lik...
Jul 13, 2020•22 min•Season 3Ep. 22
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Jeremy Gingrich from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology . There are over 300 million tons of plastics produced globally every year. Since plastics break down poorly in the environment, this number compounds yearly and has led to ubiquitous human consumption of plastics through food, water, and airborne dust. One main chemical component of plastics are bisphenols. Bisphenols are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs...
Jul 13, 2020•25 min•Season 3Ep. 21
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Harnoor Kaur. Harnoor is an undergraduate student at MSU majoring in Criminal Justice with an additional major in Political Science and a minor in Peace and Justice Studies . She is extremely interested in research involving civil liberties and human rights. During her freshman year at MSU, she started undergrad research under Professor DeJong in the Criminal Justice School on the misrepresentation of transgender homicide in th...
Jul 06, 2020•13 min•Season 3Ep. 20
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kathleen Rhoades. Kathleen is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology program studying tart cherry breeding and genetics with Dr. Amy Iezzoni , the Tart Cherry Breeder at MSU. The goal of the breeding program is to create new varieties of tart cherry that are better-adapted to Michigan’s climate, resistant to pests and diseases, and easier to process for packing, drying, canning, and consum...
Jul 06, 2020•25 min•Season 3Ep. 19
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Leigh Anne Tiffany. Leigh Anne is a second-year doctoral student in the Information & Media Program with a dual major in Environmental Science and Policy. She works jointly with John Besley, Ph.D ., in the Department of Advertising + Public Relations , and Bruno Takahashi, Ph.D. , with the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism in the School of Journalism . Her research centers on topics related to science communication...
Jun 29, 2020•23 min•Season 3Ep. 17
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kyle Whitehouse. Kyle is an undergraduate student at the MSU Residental College of Arts and Humanities (RCAH) . Purpose and adversity go hand in hand. If you have purpose and goals in life, there is going to be adversity along the way. For Kyle, racism has been one of the primary adversities affecting him for a long time that he had to overcome. Young black children are growing up and seeing numerous acts of racism. But, spread...
Jun 29, 2020•19 min•Season 3Ep. 18
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Adam Kawash. Adam is a Ph.D. candidate in the MSU Department of Physics and Astronomy . The main research question he is trying to answer is what is the nova rate of the Milky Way? A nova occurs in a double star system when the core of a dead star steals matter from its companion star. If enough matter is accumulated the outside of the dead star can become hot enough for nuclear fusion to occur. This causes an outflow of the ac...
Jun 22, 2020•17 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Located in the Department of Anthropology , the Michigan State University Forensic Anthropology Laboratory (MSUFAL) works to uncover stories in human bones. The graduate students, Amber, Kelly and Micayla at the MSUFAL are trained by lab director, Dr. Joseph T Hefner , a board-certified forensic anthropologist, and Dr. Carolyn Isaac in the study of the human skeleton. Forensic anthropologists do many different things from working with the police and medical examiners to scientific research exper...
Jun 22, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 15
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Dhaval Gandhi. Dhaval is an undergraduate student at MSU in the departments of Neuroscience (College of Natural Science) and History Philosophy & Sociology of Science ( Lyman Briggs College ). He examines how neuroscience has slowly crept its way into various fields like marketing, philosophy, and law. Chiefly, Dhaval focused his research efforts on the ways neuroscience has begun to influence the legal system, creating a n...
Jun 15, 2020•18 min•Season 3Ep. 13
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Zachary Morehouse. Zach is a 3rd-year osteopathic medical student at Michigan State’s College of Osteopathic Medicine . When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Zach was looking for a way to use his background in molecular virology and drug development, in conjunction with the knowledge he has gained from medical school thus far, to do his part in the fight against this disease. In mid-March, he received a call from one of his former re...
Jun 15, 2020•15 min•Season 3Ep. 14
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Megan Miller. Megan is a registered nurse and is graduating from the MSU College of Nursing Ph.D. program in Spring 2020. Her experiences in palliative and hospice care have led to a mixed-methods dissertation project focused on holistic (mind, body, spirit) approaches to pain for people with advanced cancer. With a majority of advanced cancer patients reporting pain, management of this symptom continues to be a critical proble...
Jun 08, 2020•17 min•Season 3Ep. 12
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Hamid Karimi. Hamid is a 5th year Ph.D. student in the MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a member of the Data Science and Engineering Lab . His research is generally focused on data science and machine learning where he seeks to extract insightful patterns in data that can then be used to both understand/analyze the past and to make predictions about the future. More specifically, he is interested in applyi...
Jun 01, 2020•18 min•Season 3Ep. 11
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Nick Ivanov. Nick is a second-year graduate student, pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Michigan State University (MSU). His major research area lies at the intersection of blockchain and the security of the Internet of Things (IoT). He conducts his research as part of the MSU SEIT (SEcure and Intelligent Things) lab led by Dr. Qiben Yan. They use smart contracts to replace password-based authentication with private-key ...
May 25, 2020•24 min•Season 3Ep. 10
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview 2nd-year medical students at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine , Brittany Ladson, Christian Rohl, and Basma Al Masraf. Since 2017, there have been over 70,000 opiate-related deaths, namely in the 18-25 year old group. It has been shown that implementing educational and Naloxone distribution programs can reduce the total number of opioid overdoses up to 55% within those communities. To address the growing...
May 18, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 9
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Bridget Walker. Bridget is a third-year student in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) at MSU. She began working at the Potter Park Zoo as a summer student under Dr. Ronan Eustace , the staff veterinarian and Director of Animal Health at Potter Park Zoo (PPZ), where she conducted a research project and zoo medical cases. She has been featured on The Sci-Files before for her research at PPZ with Doppsee, but this episode fo...
May 11, 2020•17 min•Season 3Ep. 8
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Pranshu Bajpai. Pranshu is a final year Ph.D. candidate researching information security in the Security Research Lab headed by Dr. Richard Enbody in the MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering . His research interests lie in computer and network security, malware analysis, digital forensics, and cybercrimes. A special kind of malware, called ransomware, caught his attention during the early years of his Ph.D. due to...
May 04, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 7
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Zoe Hansen. Zoe is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the human gut microbiome. Specifically, she is investigating how foodborne infection (for example, a Salmonella infection) influences antibiotic resistance in our gut. Antibiotic resistance refers to the ability of bacteria to survive despite being treated with drugs design...
Apr 27, 2020•14 min•Season 3Ep. 6
In early April, The Sci-Files hosted its first Q&A session hosted by Chelsie and Danny with guests from past interviews on The Sci-Files. The guests gave small talks about their research. The audience had children of all ages and they have the opportunity to ask the scientists questions about their research. Here are the slides that the speakers used during their presentations. Mike's research focuses on the signals emitted from the explosive ending of massive stars, he will be discussing wh...
Apr 24, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Season 3Ep. 5
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Victoria Toomajian. Victoria is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the MSU Biomedical Engineering department, in the Contag Lab . She studies the use of extracellular vesicles as a delivery tool, focusing on the heart post-myocardial infarction as a therapeutic target. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small, membrane-bound particles released from cells, which play a role in cell to cell communication. They naturally contain a vari...
Apr 20, 2020•18 min•Season 3Ep. 4
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kaitlyn Daza. Kaitlyn is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Animal Breeding and Genetics Group at the MSU Department of Animal Science . You may have heard the statistic that by the year 2050, the global population is projected to hit 9 billion people, and we will need to vastly increase our food production to meet that demand and feed the world. This intimidating statistic brings challenges to many industries, including animal agricultu...
Apr 13, 2020•18 min•Season 3Ep. 3
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Funmi Ayeni. Funmi is a doctoral student in Ecological/Community Psychology at Michigan State University . Her areas of research expertise include mixed-methods evaluations of community interventions for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, improving the community response to sexual and gender-based violence, evaluating victim service programs, and policy development. She is currently working on her Thesis study to ex...
Apr 06, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 2
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Jose Rodrigues. Jose is a DO-PhD candidate in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics through the College of Osteopathic Medicine. Jose is training as a third-year medical student and completing his dissertation work which focuses on antibiotic resistance, evolution and molecular epidemiology of the bacterial pathogen Campylobacter jejuni, under the direction of Dr. Shannon Manning Ph.D., M.P.H. C. jejuni is a bac...
Mar 30, 2020•18 min•Season 3Ep. 1
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Courtney Harrison. Courtney is a second-year master’s student in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at the Michigan State University Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory. Her research investigates the effects infectious diseases have on lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) and their subsequent recruitment to the Great Lakes. Recently, lake whitefish commercial yields have been declining, along with abundance and growth. Si...
Mar 23, 2020•14 min•Season 2Ep. 28
On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Aaron Staples. Aaron is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. He is originally from Massachusetts, where he completed my undergraduate studies prior to attending Purdue University. There, he attained his Master of Science in Agricultural Economics, writing his thesis on consumer valuation of different sustainability attributes in beer. Now, much ...
Mar 16, 2020•18 min•Season 2Ep. 27
