On this week's episode of The Sci-Files, your hosts Mari and Dimitri interview Emily Bolger. Emily Bolger is a 5th year PhD Candidate in the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering. She works in the Computing Education Research Lab (CERL) with Dr. Danny Caballero. Her dissertation research uses Natural Language Processing to identify and synthesize themes in Instructional Change Strategies in Undergraduate STEM Literature. Systematic literature reviews critically collect and evaluate findings from a specific area of research. In collaboration with her colleagues, the analysis seeks to identify themes in undergraduate STEM education specifically focused on literature highlighting instructional and curriculum strategies. Extending previous work conducted about 15 years ago, the team is repeating the analysis with new literature and assessing the integration of machine learning tools. With developments in Natural Language Processing, the field behind tools like ChatGPT, there are many techniques available for assisting our researchers in extracting information from the literature. The team explores how machine learning methods can provide new insights to traditional methods in systematic literature reviews.

Emily also works with her colleagues in CERL to develop curriculum materials for CMSE’s undergraduate Data Science and Computational Modeling courses, particularly assignments that focus on data ethics and algorithmic bias.

If you're interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter and Instagram! 

 On this week's episode of The Sci-Files, your hosts Mari and Dimitri interview Aubree Marshall. Aubree is a 5th year PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology. They work in the MSU Bioarchaeology Lab with Dr. Gabe Wrobel, and their research interests include understanding health, diet, and food access in ancient Maya populations, specifically from Central Belize. To do this, Aubree analyzes the proteins and micro-remains extracted from dental calculus - the same stuff your dental hygienist scrapes off your teeth! Dental calculus, or tartar, fossilizes in life, meaning that the materials found in the matrix would have passed through the individual's mouth before death. This method allows bioarchaeologists to study food specificity and access, something that previous dietary study methods cannot provide. In turn, this allows us to begin to understand the relationship between food access and different aspects of social identity (i.e., osteological sex, age, and socioeconomic status).

If you're interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at [email protected]. Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter and Instagram! 

Mari and Dimitri interview undergraduate student researchers from Michigan State University's Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP). The second episode of this 2-part series features Chris Lin, Kevin Villatoro, and Darnilla Samuel.

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Mari and Dimitri interview undergraduate student researchers from Michigan State University's Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP). The first episode of this 2-part series features Kandy Pierre, Mohamed Elgallad, and Isteaq Zim.

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Mari and Dimitri interview student researchers at the 16th annual Graduate Academic Conference (GAC), hosted by the Council of Graduate Students (COGS). The final episode of this four-part series features interviews with Jared Reiling from the Department of Computational Math Science and Engineering, and Priyanka Kathari from the Department of Teacher Education.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at [email protected].  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

Mari and Dimitri interview student researchers at the 16th annual Graduate Academic Conference (GAC), hosted by the Council of Graduate Students (COGS). The third episode of this four-part series features interviews with Md Fyaz Sadiq from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Marc Freidman from the Plant Pathology Program.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at [email protected].  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

Mari and Dimitri interview student researchers at the 16th annual Graduate Academic Conference (GAC), hosted by the Council of Graduate Students (COGS). The second episode of this four-part series features interviews with Roselane Kithan-Lundquist,  and Ifeanyichukwu Eke from MSU's Microbiology department , and Simon Sanchez from the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at [email protected].  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

Mari and Dimitri interview student researchers at the 16th annual Graduate Academic Conference (GAC), hosted by the Council of Graduate Students (COGS). The first episode of this four-part series features interviews with Sam Norcia and Char Dengler from the College of Nursing, and Bismarck Amaniampong from the Department of Chemistry.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at [email protected].  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! 

On this week's episode of The Sci-Files, your hosts Mari and Dimitri interview Veona Cutinho. Veona works in the Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory at MSU led by Dr. Jose Cibelli. She works with zebrafish embryos and manipulates them so they can be ideal donors for cloning. These tiny embryos are perfect for studying cloning because their development is quick, easy to see, and happens outside the body! While cloning was once a big deal, it's kind of old-fashioned now because it's tough to get it just right. Veona and team at the Cellular Reprogramming Lab  are trying to figure out what the problem is. She's focusing on a troublemaker called H3K9me3, a protein that makes cloning less efficient. By understanding and dealing with this protein, Veona hopes to make cloning much smoother and better. It's like upgrading an old invention to work faster and smarter!

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Yunting Gu is a PhD candidate in linguistics from Michigan State University. Her research in speech production suggests a basis for several universals regarding the sound pattern of languages.

Despite the differences in languages, some sound patterns are common to most languages of the world. For example, cross-linguistically, syllables starting with pl are more frequently observed than syllables starting with pt, which is more frequent than syllables starting with lp. Also, syllables that have a consonant followed by a vowel (such as so) are more common across different languages than syllables which is a vowel followed by a consonant (such as an). The question is — where do the observed linguistic universals come from? There are two possible answers. First, it may merely be a coincidence that languages share some patterns. Second, linguistic universals may come from some shared property of human beings.

If you’re interested in discussing your MSU research on the radio or nominating a student, please email Mari and Dimitri at [email protected].  Check The Sci-Files out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube!