On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Alissa Ball. Alissa is an undergraduate researcher in the Plant, Soil and Microbial Science Department looking at using fungi to clean up heavy metals. Current methods of heavy metal removal create toxic byproducts, so her work aims to investigate how effectively fungi can accumulate heavy metals, thus giving an environmentally friendly solution. Besides building an understanding of how fungi process these metals, her research will...
Jul 13, 2022•15 min•Season 9Ep. 5
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Jamie Liebold. This research explores Gap Junctional Intercellular Communication (GJIC) as a bioindicator of cancer. Cells use GJIC for the signaling of proteins and stresses. When a cell is stressed, it will close its gap junctions, signaling uncontrolled cell proliferation. These experiments have specifically focused on using GJIC to determine the carcinogenic effects of PFAS compounds. PFAS compounds are a classification of comp...
Jun 28, 2022•15 min•Season 9Ep. 4
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Zach Miller. A therapeutic window is a dose range between the minimum effective drug dose (MED) to the minimum toxic drug dose (MTD). Many commonly-used cancer drugs, including chemotherapies such as Doxorubicin, are highly toxic to normal tissues and have narrow therapeutic windows. The drug concentration should constantly remain between the MED and MTD in order to produce risk-free therapeutic effects. In general, critically, adm...
Jun 20, 2022•13 min•Season 9Ep. 3
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Andrew Deleruyelle. How can one go about measuring the effects forests have on combatting climate change? As a student of forestry, Andrew has observed changing climates and wondered what can be done to quantify the largescale ecological patterns they’re experiencing. When Andrew finished an ecological data monitoring and analysis course taught by MSU professor Dr. Andrew Finley, he wanted to continue learning about the forest’s im...
Jun 13, 2022•16 min•Season 9Ep. 2
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Maddy Eischer. As a student pursuing a dual degree in Apparel & Textile Design and Genomics & Molecular Genetics, Maddy has long felt the societal pressure to pick one of her passions in school and in a future career. Instead of choosing between these two dichotomous interests, Maddy has managed to use her research to highlight the interconnection between the arts and the sciences by investigating scientific advancements in...
May 23, 2022•19 min•Season 9Ep. 1
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Charlotte Best. Charlotte works in a lab that studies the influence of the gut microbiome (all the bacteria in our gut) on the brain and behavior. She is in charge of analyzing its effects on individual neurons and she also found that MRI impacts certain neurons in a negative way, which hasn't been documented before. If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie a...
May 16, 2022•14 min•Season 8Ep. 17
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Lauren Emerick. Lauren is a junior studying Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University, working for Dr. Roloff in the Applied Forest and Wildlife Ecology Lab. Lauren has been researching the behavioral changes in invasive wild pigs ( Sus scrofa ) in response to management activities in the state of Michigan. Wild pigs are a newly established invasive species in the state of Michigan, and they pose several threats; they upr...
May 09, 2022•20 min•Season 8Ep. 16
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Gregory Marchal. Gregory's research investigated influenza vaccine hesitancy. This project uses experimental data from rural Wyoming to analyze how risk preferences and perceptions of uncertainty influence parental influenza vaccine hesitancy. Their key finding is that parents who perceive that there are more "unknowns" in the risks of vaccines, relative to the risks of diseases, tend to vaccinate at a lower rate. This relationship...
May 02, 2022•16 min•Season 8Ep. 15
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Grant Bruninga. Inland lake herring can be found in lakes all around the state of Michigan as well as the Great Lakes. However, recent increases in habitat destruction, chemical runoff, and pollution have caused significant declines in lake herring populations. Since lake herring are important prey species to much notable predatory fish such as salmon and have important ecological and commercial roles in society, their conservation...
Apr 25, 2022•16 min•Season 8Ep. 14
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview June Oh. How can an English major help promote critical science literacy for STEM undergraduate students? As a humanities scholar, June has been a part of an IRB-approved interdisciplinary pedagogy project that develops a first-year writing course for STEM undergraduate students. With a team of collaborators in the College of History, Philosophy, and Science, Education, and English, this project leads an effort in designing a colle...
Apr 18, 2022•18 min•Season 8Ep. 13
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Gregory Hess. The U.S. electrical grid, the system of control centers, substations, poles, and wires that provides electricity to almost all American homes pre-dates the computer and Internet revolutions. Introducing computers to the operation of this grid allows for the grid to react faster than any human being could, either to protect itself, heal itself, or turn itself off to avoid some physical disaster. The demand for these co...
Apr 11, 2022•20 min•Season 8Ep. 12
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Philip Engelgau. Philip's research aims to understand how banana fruit is able to synthesize its characteristic aroma compounds. The chemicals that banana fruit produce and that we sense as banana-like are derived from the same metabolic routes as valine and leucine, common, primary metabolites that are essential to the day-to-day metabolism of not just bananas, but all living things. As bananas ripen, they accumulate valine and le...
Apr 04, 2022•19 min•Season 8Ep. 11
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Claire Kopenhafer. The Hubble Space Telescope has given us many gorgeous images of galaxies, with bright stars and swirls of dust, but there's a lot more going on than we can easily see. Stars are born out of compressed gas, and gas is constantly flowing in and out of galaxies. Most of this gas cannot be seen in Hubble's pictures, but its impact is profound. Claire uses computer simulations to study how this flow of gas affects a g...
Mar 28, 2022•21 min•Season 8Ep. 10
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Alassane Sow. Alassane is an undergraduate researcher working in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics currently working on germinating symbiotic and parasitic fungi in the order Pezizalies. They are also a part of a nationwide project that focuses on creating a way to consistently grow Morels outdoors and in high tunnels. If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, ...
Mar 21, 2022•12 min•Season 8Ep. 9
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Brooke Devries. Brooke is a second-year Ph.D. student working with Dr. Hanne Hoffmann. Her research focuses on daily rhythms in the body called circadian rhythms. You'd be surprised at how many things, from sleep to metabolism, to mood and energy, have predictable rhythms throughout the day! These rhythms are all coordinated by a tiny area in the brain referred to as the SCN. The SCN gets light input from the eyes, coordinating the...
Mar 14, 2022•20 min•Season 8Ep. 8
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Azam Ali Sher. Azam is a dual major Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Medicine and Integrative Biology (CMIB) & Environmental Sciences and Integrative Toxicology (EITS) , and a BEACON research fellow at Michigan State University. There are around 3 million infections and 36,000 deaths caused by antibiotic-resistant (AR) bacteria in the USA (CDC, 2019), and many disease-causing bacteria are resistant to several different antibiotic...
Mar 07, 2022•15 min•Season 8Ep. 7
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Megan Mikhail. Megan’s research focuses on the intersection between biological and environmental risk for eating disorders, with a particular focus on underserved and marginalized populations. Historically, eating disorders have been stereotyped as “vanity disorders” that predominantly affect advantaged (i.e., white, wealthy) individuals. Unfortunately, these stereotypes have led to the increased stigma around eating disorders, and...
Feb 28, 2022•22 min•Season 8Ep. 6
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Serena Lotreck from MSU's Plant Biology & Computational Mathematics, Science & Engineering . Serena’s research is focused on helping researchers in the plant sciences navigate the flood of available information when designing new hypotheses and experiments. Since the 1980s, there has been a 3% increase per year in scientific publishing, leading to an overwhelming amount of available articles for scientists to navigate when ...
Feb 21, 2022•18 min•Season 8Ep. 5
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Maria Milan from MSU's Civil and Environmental Engineering . Rural Alaskan communities face challenges unique to other areas in the United States. Energy usage and costs are high due to the shipping of materials and cold winters. Many communities are in need of more efficient housing to combat the cold weather and provide a safe, comfortable indoor environment. Maria's research took her to a remote community on Alaska's west side, ...
Feb 14, 2022•19 min•Season 8Ep. 4
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Paul Bylsma from MSU's Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education . This thought project discusses the simultaneous proximity and distance that most of us in the academic world felt as a result of COVID online learning. Paul and his collaborators use a unique theoretical lens that foregrounds the role of the body in learning to describe how being visually present online is not enough to replicate the physical presence that we took for g...
Feb 07, 2022•23 min•Season 8Ep. 3
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Liang Zhao. Liang is a 2nd-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a lab member of the Environmental Virology Laboratory . His current research focuses on the prediction of fluctuations of COVID-19 incidences in communities through the application of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). As the prevalence and transmissions of COVID-19 and its variants persisting across the world from the incep...
Jan 31, 2022•19 min•Season 8Ep. 2
On this week’s SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Merve Nur Kursav. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Mathematics Education at MSU and a research assistant in the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP) with anticipated graduation in Spring 2022. She received a graduate student award, and she has been recognized as a Fulbright Scholar and a Scholarship Undergraduate Teaching and Learning (SUTL) fellow. She is committed to promoting equity in mathematics and STEM education through ...
Jan 24, 2022•20 min•Season 8Ep. 1
Kayleigh is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy . Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, many coastal communities along the northeastern coast were completely decimated. In the following 10 years, various efforts have been made by national, prefectural, and local governments to assist residents as they recover from the disaster. However, these rural areas already had major social and economic problems they were handling prior to the disast...
Dec 13, 2021•24 min•Season 7Ep. 10
On this week's SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Lexi Nadolsky. Lexi’s research focuses on diversity and inclusion in the workplace in academia, and how COVID-19 has had a harder impact on different groups of scholars, especially women and people of color. If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at scifiles@impact89fm.org. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and...
Dec 06, 2021•23 min•Season 7Ep. 9
On this week's SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Jen Fry. Jen is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at MSU . Particularly limited research has been conducted on the experiences of Black female volleyball players who played in Europe, and how place, space, and geography are intimately intertwined with how they experience life abroad based on their identities (Etzel et al., 2002). The centrality of place and space within sport and geography affects all aspects of a Blac...
Nov 21, 2021•27 min•Season 7Ep. 8
On this week's SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Lexi Nadolsky. Lexi’s research focuses on discovering the different ways that the electric fish Mormyrids determine their sex genetically. Her research involves searching for the AMHR2 gene in many mormyrid species to begin piecing together how each fish population may have evolved distinctly. If you’re interested in talking about your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Chelsie and Danny at scifiles@imp...
Nov 15, 2021•16 min•Season 7Ep. 7
On this week's SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Nick Chargo. Nick’s research is focused on preventing osteoporosis by changing the composition of the bacteria in the gut. Menopause is a well-known cause of osteoporosis, but the bone loss also occurs as a side effect of some diseases and medications. One phenomenon associated with conditions that cause osteoporosis is gut bacterial changes (aka dysbiosis). The main goal of Nick’s project is to understand how dysbiosis leads to bo...
Nov 01, 2021•17 min•Season 7Ep. 6
On this week's SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Justin Wigard. As a 2021-2022 Scholarship of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning (SUTL) Fellow, Ph.D. Candidate Justin Wigard, along with Assistant Professor Megan K. Halpern in the Lyman-Briggs College , is exploring the intersection of art and science studies in the classroom via drawing comics. More specifically, Wigard -- a Ph.D. Candidate in the English Department -- is teaching a course that centers on analyzing comics as dis...
Oct 25, 2021•22 min•Season 7Ep. 5
On this week's SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Nathan Kauffman. Nate's research revolves around developing novel radiopharmaceuticals and delivery strategies to combat solid cancers. His thesis focuses on using locally delivered internal radiation therapy to induce a systemic immune response against cancer. One of the hallmarks of cancer is the ability to escape recognition by the host immune system. By using radiation, it is possible to trick cancer into exposing itself to the...
Oct 18, 2021•18 min•Season 7Ep. 4
On this week's SciFiles, your hosts Chelsie and Daniel interview Robert Stanley. The invasive Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis, EAB), the most destructive forest tree insect in North American history, threatens the majority of the native American ash species. This includes green ash, white ash, pumpkin ash and black ash. Green ash was widely used as a street tree, white ash is famous for baseball bats, pumpkin ash for guitars and black ash for native American baskets. This insect (EAB) can...
Oct 11, 2021•17 min•Season 7Ep. 3
