Three students and their advisor, Stephanie Lauback, presented their research in January. Courtesy | Stephanie Lauback
Three Hillsdale students won an honorable mention for their research in biophysics at the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at Argonne National Laboratory on Jan. 21.
Sophomore Abigail (Abby) Gilreath and seniors Linnea Larson and Khadija Hamisi presented their research, titled “Characterization of Magnetic Actuation of Biological Systems.” Alongside junior Avery Buchanan and sophomore Kayla Loescher, the group spent the past summer and fall semesters gathering and analyzing data.
The conference was an opportunity for several colleges to meet and encourage undergraduate women to continue their studies in physics through talks, networking events, and research presentations. Larson will be presenting this research again later this month in a biophysics conference in California.
According to Assistant Professor of Physics Stephanie Lauback, the project investigated how magnetic beads, which are microns in diameter, react to changes in magnetic fields.
“My students are trying to figure out how these beads respond to magnetic fields, and to do that they apply known magnetic fields and look to see how the beads respond to that,” Lauback said.
The beads are commonly used in medicine, because they can tag cancer cells in blood samples, Lauback explained.
The project considered a question that has not been studied before. Two properties that describe the motion of a magnetic bead, the permanent and induced moment, have never been studied at the same time at lower magnetic fields.
“No research paper has been published that studied these two behaviors at lower fields and higher fields, so that’s what we’re trying to find out,” Hamisi said.
In order to analyze these properties, the students designed nanoscale rods out of DNA that attached to the beads and excited the beads with magnetic fields at various strengths. The DNA rod allowed them to see the orientation of the bead under a microscope. The experimental process involved plenty of pipetting, video analysis, and data collection.
Gilreath enjoyed this hands-on part of the research.
“I really liked the experience of working in a lab especially over the summer,” Gilreath said. “It was like a nine-to-five job, you know everyday coming in what experiment you are going to run and what you’re looking for, but there’s always things that pop up, and you have to adapt and improvise.”
Lauback is impressed with how much her students learned over this process.
“I enjoy seeing my students grow from, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ to, ‘Well, let me give you an idea on how to do this right,’” Lauback said.
During the conference, the three students impressed the judges with their explanations and rigorous research.
“One judge,” Hamisi said, “looked at me and asked, ‘Are you a graduate student?’, I said, ‘No, I’m an undergraduate.’ That was probably the moment he decided to give us the award.”
But to Hamisi, the conference experience was even more valuable than the award itself.
“It was really nice meeting different international women STEM students and talking to them about the challenges we all face and the things we’re studying,” Hamisi said. “It was really heartwarming, I felt like I was going to cry. I felt like I belonged.”
