CARRIE PRATT Ph.D. | Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Second Year Research Mentor: Dr. Mostafa Elshahed Kollweiler, Germany How did you begin your research? I wanted to improve my medical school application, so the summer before my senior year at the University of North Dakota I joined a research lab studying Lyme disease. I ended up falling in love with research and deciding that medical school wasn’t for me. I took a gap year and worked in another lab where I studied pollinator taxonomy and their microbiomes. How has it had an impact on you? My research focuses on anaerobic gut fungi that live in the digestive tracts of herbivores. I’m specifically working with non-standard hosts like birds, reptiles and marsupials. The most exciting part of my research has been my discovery of two new genera of anaerobic gut fungi that were cultured from tortoises. I presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Missouri Valley Branch of the American Society for Microbiology and I recently earned the Women’s Faculty Council Student Research Award, the Distinguished Graduate Fellowship and the Norman Durham Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Microbiology. I also just had a paper accepted to the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. What are your future plans? I’m considering pursuing a postdoctoral position in Europe, hopefully somewhere close to where I grew up. I’ve always planned on joining academia to be a professor, but I’m also open to opportunities in industry or government. Ultimately, I just want a position that allows me to conduct research I’m interested in. MAGHINBREWER Major | English (Screen Studies) Class of 2023 Research Mentor: Dr. Sarah Loss Tulsa How did you begin your research? I started doing research during spring semester 2021. I applied for the Advancing Undergraduate Research or Creative Activity (AURCA) program and wanted to do research in the English department. At first, I was hesitant because I did not know anything about linguistics, but I wanted to step out of my comfort zone, so I applied to be a research assistant. How has it had an impact on you? My research project is important because I was able to broaden the diversity within the study. I looked at minority groups and asked them questions that researchers in the past did not think to ask. I made the data more diverse, while being more inclusive of demographics that are often overlooked. I’ve presented my research a few times, including at the OSU Undergraduate Research Symposium in April and the Center for Oklahoma Studies. These were great opportunities for me to not only share my work, but also get experience with presenting to groups of people that I am not familiar with. What are your future plans? I graduated from OSU in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in screen studies, and I will be staying at the university to complete my master’s in the screen studies program. After completing my master’s, I would love to get my Ph.D. and become a professor. OSU COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SC I ENCES 9
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