Three Students Win Awards for Summer Science Research Projects during Poster Presentation

Three students garnered special recognition Friday from School of Science Dean Brian Jersky for their outstanding work during the school's summer research program, while eight other students also presented their work in 2009 Sigma Xi Summer Research Student Poster Session.

Junior Thomas Reynolds won first place, taking home the Joseph P. McKenna Science Medal for the report and poster that most clearly represents the best summer research project. His work was on "The Endogenized K113 and K 115 Retroviruses in the General Public," an analysis of historical retroviral contributions to the modern human genome which could yield useful data for studying treatments for cancer and HIV. Reynolds was mentored by biology professor Keith Garrison, and used a cell line donated by UCSF's division of experimental medicine.

Senior Jeanine Schibler won second place for her work on "Mesoderm tissue development in Drosophila melanogaster," which is a well-studied fruit fly. Schibler was mentored by biology professor Vidya Chandrasekaran.

Junior Kurt Thompson won third place for his "Design for Undergraduate Experiment using Photon Entanglement." Thompson used recently developed methods to observe the particle nature of light and the nature of photon entanglement. He was mentored by physics professor Roy Wensley.

Other students who presented papers were Gabrielle Diaz, Jillian Eymann, Lindsay Flint, Easar Forghany, David Montelongo, Michelle Nenzel and Angelica Pritchard.

About 65 people attended the poster session, which was held in the atrium of Brousseau Hall.

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