Megan Smith (pictured above), senior in biochemistry and microbiology, received an Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the American Society for Microbiology. Smith was among 43 undergraduates to receive a 2015 fellowship from ASM, the largest society dedicated to a single life science.
With the support of Nicole Buan, assistant professor of biochemistry, Smith is investigating the purpose of binding proteins recently discovered in the gut-dwelling microbe Methanobrevibacter smithii. Smith is specifically examining how these bindings proteins affect the dynamics between M. smithii and one of the gastrointestinal tract’s most important bacteria.
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Ellie Feis, Brittany Bell and Elliot Wilke presented papers at the 40th annual European Studies Conference, hosted Oct. 9-10 by the University of Nebraska at Omaha. All three students are undergraduate research assistants through UNL's UCARE program and work with Beverley Rilett, lecturer in English.
- Feis presented on "Victorian Married Women's Rights, Feminism and George Elliot's 'Middlemarch.'"
- Bell discussed "Silence = Death: Gender Rights, 'Wuthering Heights' and the Outspoken Emily Brontë."
- Wilke presented "Distance, Death, Sexual Violation and other traumatic Triggers in Virginia Woolf's Childhood."
- Rilett also chaired two panels at the conference, exploring perspectives on Shakespeare and British feminist history.
