A novel phage particle called a "phagelet" has recently been identified, which has been found to infect M. achiense and its prophage HerbertWM. It is similar to bacteriophages in many ways, except that it has a smaller genome, lacks tail proteins, and lacks a lysin cassette. This particle has only been observed in M. achiense, and while there are similar satellite phages in other hosts, these phagelets appear notably unique. This project aims to address that gap in knowledge by studying another bacteria from the same family, M. smegmatis. The study sought to create numerous lysogens for M. smegmatis using phage isolated previously at William & Mary, and then use them to screen for potential phage-like particles in soil through enrichments. By doing so, the study will support efforts to ascertain whether these "phagelets" are widespread among the Mycobacterium family and provide insight into evolutionary relationships among bacteriophages. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology major, Chemistry major

Advisor: Margaret Saha, Biology

This summer, the American-Bosnian Collaboration analyzed how using a pedagogy of children's literature can impact intercultural competency amongst Bosnian youth. Following the intense violence of the 1990s, Bosnia suffers from a partially segregated school system based on nationality. Opportunistic politicians seek to keep wartime divisions inflamed by segregating schools and teaching different versions of history. Our hypothesis was that by exploring the complex themes of empathy and tolerance through engaging children's literature, students would be able to relate to strangers more effectively. Through a mixed-methods experimental research design, we qualitatively believe that children's literature has a positive effect on intercultural competence, and we are still analyzing the statistics. Regarding the conflicts in Ukraine and Russia as well as Israel and Palestine, we are concerned by the damage done to education by war and believe that the lessons learned from Bosnia could be applied to post-conflict peacebuilding to avoid a vicious cycle of polarization.

Student Major(s)/Minor: International Relations, Arabic

Advisor: Paula Pickering, Government

Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer can be written as a sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers. Baird-Smith et.al. converted the process of decomposing a positive integer into its Zeckendorf decomposition into a two player game, with columns corresponding to the Fibonacci numbers. They showed for all n not equal to 2, Player 2 has a winning strategy, though the proof is non-constructive, and a constructive solution is unknown. We expand on this by investigating "black hole'' variants of this game, where pieces placed in certain columns are trapped in a "black hole". With these constraints, we analyze the games with black holes on the third and fourth columns and construct a solution, using a parity-stealing based non-constructive proof to lead to a constructive one. We also construct a solution for a pre-game in which players take turns placing down pieces in the outermost columns before the decomposition phase begins.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Mathematics

Advisor: Fan Ge, Mathematics

This project focuses on the detection and classification of hand tremors in Parkinson's disease patients using inertial measurement unit (IMU) data and machine learning techniques. Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder, causes motor symptoms such as tremors, which significantly affect patients' quality of life. The proposed method preprocesses raw IMU data by removing noise, normalizing, and segmenting into time windows. Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) is applied for feature extraction, followed by dataset balancing. The processed data is input into a deep learning model combining a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) layers to classify tremor and non-tremor activities. Leave-one-out validation was performed on multiple patient datasets, achieving improved detection accuracy compared to state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods. This approach provides a scalable and non-invasive solution for real-time monitoring of tremors, enabling more effective management of Parkinson’s symptoms and personalized treatment options.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Computer Science and Mathematics

Advisor: Gang Zhou, Computer Science

This summer research project originally planned to continue an exploration of anthocyanin regulation in Mimulus (monkeyflower) petals. The goal was to cultivate a population of flowers to empirically evaluate predictions of a computational model. However, due to unforeseen health concerns of the student researcher, continuation of this work became unrealistic. The project was adjusted such that the new goal was for the student to develop a range of skills in botanical and mycological sciences. Through assisting other student researchers, the student gained internship experience in laboratory and field protocols for two additional projects. Two weeks were spent in the Blue Ridge Mountains studying the relationship between milkweed hybridization and nectar sugar concentration, with an overarching goal of explaining how plants may adapt to climate change. The remainder of the summer was spent identifying fungi in the college woods for an ecological diversity project, which aims to catalogue the range of species present in coastal Virginia and to expand William & Mary’s herbarium. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology

Advisor: Josh Puzey, Biology

This project, Charting Freedom, explored and collected eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements for runaway enslaved people and servants in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Over the summer, the focus was on locating and evaluating the freedom-making practices of unfree laborers, including enslaved Africans and indigenous people, convicts, and indentured servants, and the information for the digital humanities project was compiled. To achieve this, I recorded variables including names, unfree status, race, ethnicities, gender, and geographies, and newspapers and collected legal sources were transcribed to evaluate change over time. The project gave particular attention to unfree people’s measures to escape, defiance of patriarchal institutions, and the impact of the American Revolution. Because the ads were collected, transcribed, and compiled in a website via Google Sites, access will be available to William & Mary students and faculty (with the potential to grow beyond), to better understand how people defined and achieved freedom.

Student Major(s)/Minor: History and Economics

Advisor: Nicole Dressler, History

While the body gets a large part of the focus in perfecting athlete performance, the brain is truly one of, if not the biggest, success marker. This study aimed to decipher the difference between success and failure in sports using 4 levels of basketball players. Using a brain scanner called a Functional Near-Infrared Spectrometry(FNIRS) device, athlete brain recruitment was tracked during 3 basketball drills alongside the use of a biosensor watch. Both of these sensors together recorded the physical and mental changes within the athlete during their performance.The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was found to be inhibited in all levels of athletes before a successful shot. This area, being known for high level processing and multitasking, causes failure due to overthinking. This shows that meditation, mindfulness and focus on the overall task at hand can lead to success in sports. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Neuroscience Major, Kinesiology Minor

Advisor: Stephanie Caligiuri, Kinesiology

 This research project examines the relationship between American national identity and attitudes toward immigration policy, with a focus on the role of ethnic nationalism. Using survey data collected by Professor Mackenzie Israel-Trummel and her colleagues, the study conducts a statistical analysis to compare immigration attitudes between two groups: respondents who identified a white individual as a “true American” and those who identified a non-white individual. The analysis reveals a significant difference in immigration policy attitudes between these groups, with the former group exhibiting more restrictive views. These findings suggest that associating American identity with whiteness is linked to negative attitudes toward immigration, potentially exacerbating political polarization and instability in the United States as immigration remains a contentious issue.

Student Major(s)/Minor: International Relations

Advisor: Mackenzie Israel-Trummel, Government

Although the current Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirits (MMIWG2S) crisis has recently become a topic of investigation, most research on high rates of violence against Indigenous gender minorities has focused on legal and theoretical arguments because of the lack of data collection on Indigenous Reservations. To advance the field of Native American studies and allow for quantitative methods in the future, this project explores available data for demographic, economic, and social indicators on U.S. Reservations. By compiling an extensive data set of key variables across time and physical geographies, this study seeks to answer the question, “How can available indicators serve as proxies for crime rates on Indigenous Reservations, and what insights can be gained from analyzing these proxies in the context of the MMIWG2S Crisis?” and contribute to ongoing efforts to reduce the prevalence of violence against Indigenous gender minorities.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Economics major, Government major

Advisor: John Parman, Economics

Clara Rinker, "An Algorithm of Aesthetics: the Mathematical Beauty of Type-B Turing Pattern Development in Monkeyflowers" 

This project explores a mathematical model that describes the development of unique patterned phenotypes in successive generations of monkeyflowers. This flower’s phenotypes do not follow typical Mendelian Laws of Inheritance, suggesting there is a different biological explanation for how phenotypes are formed in this species. In Ding et al. 2020, it is suggested that the biological explanation for pattern development in monkeyflowers is actually an activator-inhibitor reaction-diffusion system, making the creation of phenotypes much more complex and variable than could be described using Mendel’s Laws. The Turing model examines how interactions between an activator and inhibitor give rise to pattern formation that can be explained with reaction-diffusion models. There are two possible types of a Turing model that describe pattern development through different types of interactions between activator and inhibitor. This project closely examines the type-B model, eventually comparing it to the type-A model developed in Simmons et al. 2023 to determine what biological conclusions can be drawn from the mathematical models of this supposed system.

Student Major(s)/Minor: CAMS Mathematical Biology major and Hispanic Studies major 

Advisor: Greg Conradi Smith, Applied Science

This project will focus on ambrosia beetles: a beetle that colonizes trees. In the process, they spread and farm symbiotic fungi, their only source of food. Invasive species of ambrosia beetles might have had an extensive impact on forest health in the Southeastern US due to the adverse effects that their non-native fungi can have on trees and on wood decomposition. This project will look at the role of pre-established colonies in the aggregation of specific ambrosia beetle species in host trees. Furthermore, the project will also look at the influence of pre-established colonies on beetle and fungal community composition.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology and Data Science

Advisor: James Skelton, Biology

In the sperm-producing gonad of C. elegans, cells are cytoplasmically connected by a rachis. Such connections are highly conserved across animal species, including humans. In C. elegans, the rachis of oocyte and sperm producing gonads are similar during mitosis, but diverge during meiotic prophase. ANI-2, a shortened version of the annillin protein ANI-1, maintains the cytoplasmic connections in the rachis. Here, we examine the male rachis structure and the role of sperm-specific proteins in its formation. ANI-2 immunofluorescence and actin staining showed 1) sperm specific features occur during meiotic prophase, coinciding with sperm specific production 2) rachis structure is independent of sperm size 3) ANI-2 is required for rachis structure in both oocyte and sperm producing gonads whereas the kinase SPE-6 is sperm-specific and 4) differences in rachis structure reflect the gamete and not the somatic sex. Further research should explore spermatogenic specific features of the rachis and its regulators. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology, Japanese Studies

Advisor: Diane Shakes, Biology

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxometry is a powerful tool in material analysis and kinetics. Its data can be described as an exponential decay that depends on the “spin-spin relaxation time constant” T2, a parameter that characterizes a material’s NMR behavior. Two methods, the inverse Laplace transform and the matrix pencil, have been developed to quantify the number of unique T2s. However, both of these methods require human intervention, such as the assignment of smoothing constants, which does not allow for confident and reproducible results. This project utilizes two machine learning methods to determine the number and character of contributing T2s from relaxometry data. These methods include a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm and a sparsity matrix approach. By showing that these methods converge onto a single answer, this project offers a reproducible and systematic way of analyzing T2s from NMR relaxometry data. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Chemistry, Physics

Advisor: Tyler Meldrum, Chemistry

Despite their vibrant green color, ecologists are still largely in the dark about freshwater sponges. Freshwater sponges comprise 3% of global sponge diversity, but they are critical to the water filtration and community structure of ponds, lakes, and streams. Historically, research on freshwater sponges has been constrained by their small size, cryptic habits, and difficult species identification. Consequently, ecologists today still have a limited understanding of their range, species diversity, and role as key ecosystem water filters. This project aims to establish a database for an environmental DNA (eDNA) methodology to identify sponges using DNA from water rather than visual appearance. eDNA is an established method of species identification that has demonstrated greater scale, diversity, and taxonomic accuracy than traditional collection-based surveys. With an eDNA database, researchers can more easily discern between sponge species, allowing for further study and application to real-world problems.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology

Advisor: James Skelton, Biology

Following WWII, over twelve million German expellees (Vertriebene) were forced to flee from their homelands in Eastern Europe to East and West Germany. Many refugees desired to return home, but the prospect of return dissipated as West Germany reconciled with its Eastern neighbors. Since the end of the war, Germans have debated whether the topic of German wartime suffering was appropriate when memorializing the Holocaust. My research question inquires, how have the Vertriebene been included and excluded from collective memories of German victimhood? My paper, written in German, details the evolution of victimhood narratives from 1945 to now. My research shows that memories of the Vertriebene have shifted alongside changes in broader German victimhood narratives. Today, a new museum in the center of Berlin, called the Center for Displacement, Expulsion, and Reconciliation, remembers the Vertriebene as both victims and perpetrators, while understanding displacement as a global theme.

Student Major(s)/Minor: History major, German Studies minor

Advisor: Jennifer Gülly, German Studies