Six Berry College students have earned thousands of dollars for their research in the coming academic year.
Berry College has named Sarah Cooper, Andrew Lockhart, Meghan Albritton, Daniel Hinson, Grant Simonds and Michaela Rowland as 2016-2017 Synovus Scholars.
The Synovus Sophomore Scholars Program awards up to $2,000 to students who are rising sophomores and $500 for faculty or staff mentors to support projects related to the student's exploration of academic, research or growth experiences such as research, internships, entrepreneurial service or work projects or artistic endeavors.
For Rowland’s research project, she will work with Assistant Professor of Economics James Sharpe to examine several different organizations in Atlanta who resettle refugees. The process includes everything from enrolling families into English as a Second Language classes to finding housing and jobs.
“Since refugee resettlement is such a controversial topic in both America and in Europe I wanted to examine the effects resettlement has on Atlanta's economy,” Rowland said, an economics major from Augusta, Ga.
Cooper, a biochemistry major from Lafayette, Ind., will begin her research this fall with Berry Associate Professor of Biochemistry Dominic Qualley on the West Nile virus. She will study the capsid, or core, protein of the West Nile virus and how it interacts with viral RNA.
“If we can better understand the mode of protein-RNA binding, then inhibitors could be created to prevent the binding which would halt the replication of the virus,” Cooper said.
Albritton will work alongside Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Zachary Taylor analyzing a sediment core collected from a Colorado lake to reconstruct fire patterns from the past 7,600 years.
“Radiocarbon dates will allow me to perform statistical analyses to identify individual fire events, and the data gathered will help land managers predict future fire patterns that are shifting due to modern climate change,” said Albritton, a Spanish major from Rockmart, Ga.
Lockhart, a mathematics and physics major from Ringgold, Ga., will work on a project titled “An acoustic demonstration of finite difference conversion.” Hinson, a music major from Meigs, Ga., will work on “A choral study of Florence Beatrice Price.” And Simonds, a biology major from Hoschton, Ga., has a research project titled “Investigation of arterial damage due to the pathogenesis of hypertension in spontaneously hypertensive rats.”
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Written by Public Relations Student Alexi Bell
