Cognition, Aging, and Brain Imaging
Caitlin Bowman, Psychology
The Cognition, Aging, and Brain Imaging Lab is part of UWM’s Department of Psychology, and our research focuses on healthy memory function in young and older adults. We want to understand how people can both form memories of individual experiences and also make connections between experiences to create new knowledge. To answer this question, we ask human participants to do computer-based memory experiments that can be completed in the lab or online. We also use fMRI to measure the brain mechanisms of memory and their age-related change. Students who become involved with the lab may help design the experiments and program them using python-based computer software. They may help manage data collection and complete initial data analysis. They will also be involved in weekly lab meetings where we discuss ongoing projects, review data, and read research articles related to current projects. Outside of lab meetings, students can expect to meet with the lab director (Dr. Caitlin Bowman) individually at least once a week to discuss their progress on projects as well as their plans for the future.
Impact of Emergent Contaminants and Dietary Nutrient Supplementation on Fish Growth and Health
Dong Fang Deng, School of Freshwater Science
This project aims to comprehend the specific nutrient requirements of diverse fish species at various life stages while exploring the potential effects of emergent contaminants such as microplastics and PFAS. The evaluation criteria include fish growth, survival rates, overall health, and the nutritional quality of the fish. Students participating in this project will be responsible for acquiring skills related to fish care, including feeding, monitoring water quality, and collecting relevant samples and data. Collaborating with fellow lab members, participants will undergo training in standard operating protocols and regularly attend lab meetings to present their research findings.
Effects of Estrogens on Learning and Memory in Mouse Models of Menopause and Alzheimer’s Disease
Karyn Frick, Psychology
Our laboratory’s main goal is identifying the molecular mechanisms in the brain through which estrogens enhance memory in mouse models of menopause and Alzheimer’s disease. This project will introduce students to the basic elements of neuroscience research. Within the four-week program period, students will gain hands-on experience handling and behaviorally testing mice, and will be introduced to brain surgery, gonadectomy surgery, hormone treatments, brain dissections, and molecular biology techniques.
Neurobiology of Attention and Perception in Health & Disease
Adam S. Greenberg, Psychology (UWM) & Biomedical Engineering (MCW)
The Sensory Neuroscience, Attention, and Perception Laboratory (SNAP Lab) aims to understand how human behavior is guided by the world we perceive. We primarily study how perception of objects (in both visual and auditory modalities) and attention to objects are implemented in brain mechanisms. We use a combination of cognitive neuroscience methods including psychophysics, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), and computational modeling. This work also aims to determine whether measures of attention/perception can be used as biomarkers for cognitive decline in various patient populations due to disease (age-related hearing loss, dementia, etc) or treatment (chemotherapy, bone marrow transplant, etc). During this four-week program, students will learn how to create visual/auditory stimuli, test human subjects, and engage in supervised data analysis through hands-on experience. There may also be opportunities to collect and/or work with human neuroimaging data.
Innovative Solution for Vaping Cessation among Young Adults with Special Health Needs
Joshua Gwon, Nursing
This project examines the special health needs among young adults who want to quit vaping. The objective is to develop an innovative vaping cessation intervention tailored to young adults with special health needs. To do this, students will be involved in testing the feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of the intervention. This will include participating in research meetings, reviewing literature, assisting with recruitment of the participants, assisting with data collection procedures and interpretation of collected date, and contributing to the dissemination of findings.
Quantitative Financial Analysis
John Huck, Finance
The goal of this research project is to examine the illiquidity of OTC markets by using unique data on premiums and discounts paid from PIPEs (Private Investment in Public Equity). This project requires data from various sources that need to be collected and joined. For example, pricing data on OTC securities needs to be downloaded from Bloomberg and Factset. Financial statement data on these firms comes from Compustat and CapitalIQ. Finally, the PIPEs data comes from Private Raise. The role of the project assistant would be to collect needed pricing data from Bloomberg and Factset, and verify matches between the pricing data, financial statement data, and PIPEs data and conduct preliminary analysis. Student will verify matches for merged data either programmatically or by hand, provide summary statistics for data, and generate initial analysis. Student will gain skills in “big data.” This project would be suitable for a student with some programming experience, or an intended computer science or engineering major.
History of the Brady Street Neighborhood
Sean Kafer, Film, Video, Animation & New Genres
Doc|UWM is the documentary media center in UWM’s Peck School of the Arts Film, Video, Animation and New Genres Department that bridges academics with real world experience and gives students the unique opportunity to work on professional productions. Students collaborate on short form videos that raise awareness about a variety of contemporary political and social issues as well as feature-length documentaries for public television broadcast. The UR@UWM students will join the team to film and edit interviews with Brady Street residents and historians to learn about this diverse and historic neighborhood in Milwaukee and to discuss its future.
Disrupted Social Information Content in the Entorhinal Cortex in a Mouse Model of Schizophrenia
Jeffrey Lopez-Rojas, Psychology
Identifying and adequately reacting to social signals is crucial for survival. Yet, social cognition is compromised in several neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. A necessary component of social interactions is a robust social memory, the ability of an animal to recognize and remember a conspecific. Despite its relevance, the mechanism and circuits in the brain supporting social recognition memory are still poorly understood. The entorhinal cortex, as one of the largest hubs in the brain connecting with a range of cortical and subcortical structures, is well suited for playing a central role on it. However, the functional relevance of the lateral subdivision of the entorhinal cortex and its role in social cognition remain much less understood. In the lab, we use a variety of experimental approaches, including different kinds of behavioral tasks, large-scale optical recording of neuronal activity in freely moving animals, optogenetics, pharmacogenetics, electrophysiological recordings, circuit tracing, among others. Participating students will be involved in a variety of tasks, including assisting with the design and execution of experiments, collecting and analyzing data, participating in lab meetings and presenting results to the research team, conducting literature reviews and staying up-to-date on the latest research in the field.
Neurobiology of Learning, Memory, and Aging-Related Deficit
James Moyer, Psychology
The student will learn a variety of laboratory techniques, including protein analyses, animal handling, morphological analyses, as well as general lab procedures/responsibilities. The student will learn responsibility for our neuronal reconstructions, which involve creating 3D-reconstructions of neurons from biocytin-filled neuronal recordings (e.g., filling a neuron with a dye during recordings to make it visible). These studies are technologically demanding and will involve analyzing dendritic length, branching patterns, and spine density as a function of cortical layer, learning, and aging.
Oral History & Local Nurses
Jessica Nelson, History
The objective of this project is to expand the collection of the Center for Nursing History by creating archival-quality oral history interview recordings of nurses in the Milwaukee area. In fall 2023, graduate students began this process by creating an oral history with the Center’s founder, Dr. Laurie Glass; we hope to add around ten more interviews this summer. The student will work with the professor and the Center for Nursing History to conduct oral history interviews with local nurses who have donated items to the Center for Nursing History Archives. The student would research the nurses’ lives and prepare questions for the interview; conduct and record the interview; process the recording in accordance with archival standards; and add it to the oral history database hosted by the UWM library. They would gain skills in interviewing, digital file management, and oral history.
Holding on to a Single Protein Molecule
Ionel Popa, Physics
Proteins are the molecules that perform the majority of tasks needed in our cells, and their activity is what determines how well our cells function and communicate with each other. Our body is made of ~37 trillion cells, and each cell has on average 10^10 proteins. So, it is hard to even imagine that one could separate a single protein molecule from such a high number and perform measurements on it in a laboratory settings. In this project, you will learn to do just that – to separate and tether a single protein molecule between a glass surface and a paramagnetic bead and apply mechanical forces in the picoNewton range (10^-9 N), similarly to what a protein experiences in our bodies. You will be measuring how mechanical forces trigger domain unfolding, which is the loss of 3D structure due to the breaking of the hydrogen bonds that hold the protein structure together. You will be joining a young, dynamic and diverse research team composed of chemists, biologists, physicists and engineers. For more information, visit http://popalab.uwm.edu.
Self-Healing Metal Matrix Composites
Pradeep Rohatgi, Materials Engineering
Self-healing in metal matrix composites could change how we repair space shuttles and rovers deployed in areas with no human contact. The ability to autonomously repair and fix a broken part similar to how bones heal could completely alter the space race. This project aims to develop a composite material using the shape memory properties of Nitinol alloys. The student will learn the basic concepts of how shape memory alloys work, how they can be embedded in metal matrices, and how to test the failure and recovery modes in the composite materials.
Graphene Reinforced High-Performance Materials
Pradeep Rohatgi, Materials Engineering
The need of the hour is creating lightweight composite materials that can be used in challenging environments. Imagine if we had a material that could be used for building frames in frozen oceans or over volcanoes. This project attempts to incorporate graphene into aluminum composites, that will offer not only high strength but also reduce the weight of the composite material. An additional product would be its ability to withstand high temperatures. The students will learn the basics of the composite synthesis process, casting methods and characterization techniques to find mechanical properties.
Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School at Midtown, Milwaukee
Arijit Sen, History
The BLC Field School is a nationally recognized award-winning project that combines immersive learning with civic engagement. Our goal is to write urban histories that reflect the lived realities of people in Milwaukee’s marginalized and segregated neighborhoods. In Summer 2024 we will examine community spaces such as streets, sidewalks, alleys, open spaces, gardens, empty lots, and parks in Milwaukee’s Midtown neighborhood. Using methods such as material culture and architectural documentation, history harvests, short and long form oral histories/interviews, community led walks, asset mapping, and spatial ethnography, we will document the geography, layout, and stories of everyday life in these spaces. Students will attend the field school in person and participate in data collection, analysis, documentation, and final presentation.
Mother Computer
Nathaniel Stern, Art & Design
Mother Computer will be a series of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered and nature-inspired artworks and writings that experiment with and exhibit how non-humans might sense, think, and create along with us, toward more fruitful futures. We ask, “Where are the differences between information, synthesis, understanding, thought, and creativity?” “How might we collaborate with materials and software on creative production, question creation, and problem solving?” “What are the most intensive ways of prompting with non-human forms of intelligence – including but not limited to AI, plants and animals, art and texts, and other ecological forms?” Asking and answering these questions as part of our research is already starting to take the forms of custom data-sets and prompts towards, AI poetry and paintings, or AI fonts and animations, for example, and we are moving towards sculptures, scientific hypotheses, and more. My students work with me, my current collaborator – Sasha Stiles – and as a team from conceptualization and sketching, through prototyping, production, and critique, and into the exhibition space – with curators and directors.
Development of Immersive Gamification for Balance Assessment and Rehabilitation
Jerald Thomas, Computer Science
Gamification techniques bring game mechanics (e.g. scores, badges, quests, etc.) to other tasks to increase motivation and enjoyment of the task. My lab is currently developing assessment techniques for balance impairment that uses consumer grade virtual reality (VR) headsets. We are wanting to explore gamification for purposes other than motivation, such as to aid with assessment and rehabilitation for highly anxious patients. Working on this project, you will use the Unity3D game engine to build upon these assessments by developing game mechanics that conduct the balance impairment assessments. Programming experience or game development experience will certainly be helpful, but are not required.