Current Research Projects with LBC Faculty
Here at Briggs we value undergraduate research experiences, as we know they set our students up for success as scientists. Each year, many of our faculty have projects for which they need student assistants. Below, find opportunities to work with LBC faculty members on research in Fall 2024 or both Fall 2024 and Spring 2025.
To apply for these positions, please visit the Qualtrics application form, and refer to the Research Support webpage for further details.
Fall 2024 Projects
Project 1: Exploring the use of mechanistic reasoning in medical and nursing education
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Doherty
Terms: Fall 2024 through Spring 2025
Maximum number of research positions: 1
Expected hours/week: 7 hours per week
Location: Either remote or in-person is acceptable
Overview
How should doctors and nurses reason through medical phenomena? What types of experiences will help prepare future healthcare professionals to reason in those ways? These are some of the questions our research team hopes to answer.
Recent research has discovered that mechanistic reasoning is important for supporting physiology education, but little is known about how doctors and nurses use this type of reasoning to care for patients. To address this gap in knowledge, we will interview a variety of individuals with different levels of physiology expertise including doctors and nurses, medical and nursing students, and faculty who teach in medical school to uncover how they use mechanistic reasoning in their academic or professional lives. We will use qualitative analysis techniques to identify patterns and themes in the data to explore how doctors and nurses use reasoning in their work and to compare the reasoning used by those with different physiology expertise to understand how mechanistic reasoning develops in physiology.
This research will help ensure that we have a robust healthcare workforce that can effectively serve broader society, especially considering the growing shortage of physicians and nurses, and that starts with improving how undergraduate physiology students are taught.
Project specific qualifications or preferences:
We are looking for a researcher who may be interested in continuing past SS25 and does not plan to graduate until SS26.
Project 2: Determining the function of leg flags in Matador Bugs
Faculty Mentor: Dr. JP Lawrence
Term: Fall 2024 through Spring 2025
Maximum number of research positions: 1
Expected hours/week: up to 10 hours/week
Location: Either remote or in person is acceptable
Overview
Extreme traits found in animals are usually the result of runaway selection, particularly runaway sexual selection. The Matador Bug (Anisoscelis alipes) has large tarsal expansions on its hind legs that are brightly colored – red, orange, and black. Notably, when these insects land, they will often slowly and deliberately wave their legs, begging the question of what this behavior might signify.
Preliminary research suggests that these signals are not sexual in nature, though more research needs to be done to confirm this. For this research, the selected student will work with standardized photos and reflectance spectra to characterize the color in these insects with the intent of determining if there are differences between the sexes as well as how different prospective predators may see these insects. This is part of a larger project in collaboration with researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Students will help develop a pipeline through the statistical program, R, to process reflectance spectra and standardized photos.
Students interested in this project should be proficient with R and RStudio and be capable of working independently and part of a team. Applicants should explain why they are interested in this particular project and explicitly how skills learned will contribute to their future goals.
Project specific qualifications or preferences:
Students must be prepared to meet weekly to discuss progress and troubleshooting. Students are expected to present findings at at least one conference/symposium (e.g., LBC Research Showcase, UURAF) and are strongly encouraged to plan on publishing the work.