Video Presentations

View pre-recorded presentations from students unable to be present at the Spring Honors Research Symposium.

Adam Jutt, Economics

"The Great Migration and Education Quality in the South"

Advisor: Dr. John Parman

The Great Migration radically altered the characteristics of both northern metropolitan areas receiving large numbers of migrants and southern counties experiencing significant outmigration. Here, I investigate the effects of outmigration on relative Black and white school quality in the South. Using neighboring county lynchings as an instrument, in conjunction with datasets on Black and white school quality and Rosenwald schools, I am able to estimate whether and to what extent differential levels of outmigration across Southern counties corresponded to differential shifts in several school quality variables. I describe two possible mechanisms: “minimum acceptable Black school quality” and “agricultural labor loss.” Ultimately, I find that outmigration led to significant decreases in term length in Black schools, but no significant changes in expenditure or in any variable capturing white school quality, likely indicating the dominance of labor loss as a mechanism.

Adam Jutt is a senior majoring in economics and mathematics. In economics, his fields of interest are econometrics, labor economics, and the economics of education. He has collaborated with Prof. John Parman and Prof. David Feldman in these areas. His thesis examines the effect of the Great Migration on Black school quality in the segregated South.

Sam Roach, Philosophy

"A Neopragmatist Approach to the Ontology of Race"

Advisor: Dr. Aaron Griffith

Metaphysicians of the social world have spilled much ink debating whether race exists and, if it does, what its metaphysical nature is. In this paper, I defend a neopragmatist approach to the race debate that I will argue gives a more satisfying answer than substantive accounts of race by allowing us to adopt frameworks for the use of ‘race’ that give us the tools to achieve our ends without worrying about how they represent metaphysical reality. Before giving these arguments, I will explain what neopragmatism is and how I will be using it in this paper. Then, I will explain how a neo-Carnapian ontology allows us to take advantage of a pluralist approach to understanding race and why this approach can give us all that we want from an account of race.

Sam Roach is a senior philosophy major. He works mostly with social ontology -- the study of the nature and existence of social facts -- and how it intersects with the philosophy of language. He plans to attend law school in the fall so that he can become a public interest attorney.

Haytham Alsayed, Biology

"Nucleocytoplasmic Shuttling of Thyroid Hormone Receptor Trα1 Acetylation and Non-Acetylation Mimics"

Advisor: Dr. Lizabeth Allison

Human thyroid hormone receptor α1 (TRα1) is a protein that affects the expression of several genes in response to thyroid hormone. TRα1 is modified by the addition of small molecules called acetyl groups (acetylation) and their removal (deacetylation). Importantly, TRα1 is imported to and exported from the cell nucleus (nucleocytoplasmic shuttling) by dedicated proteins that recognize features in TRα1 called nuclear localization and export signals (NLS, NES). The current model for TRα1 shuttling predicts that acetylation occurs in the nucleus, but it remains unclear whether TRα1's nuclear transport is influenced by the presence or absence of acetyl groups. Here, we aimed to determine whether acetylation of TRα1 at three key locations within one of its nuclear localization signals affects its ability to shuttle between the nucleus and cytoplasm. We artificially introduced fluorescently-tagged TRα1 mutants mimicking acetylation and non-acetylation, as well as normal (wild-type) TRα1 to human cells, then fused them with mouse cells to produce hybrid cells containing both a human and a mouse nucleus (heterokaryons). Fluorescence microscopy and analysis of the intracellular distribution of wild-type TRα1 and the two mutants revealed evidence of export from the human nucleus and import to the mouse nucleus, with no qualitative differences in the intracellular distribution of the acetylation, non-acetylation, and wild-type TRα1. These results suggest that TRα1 can be imported to and exported from the nucleus in both its acetylated and non-acetylated states.

Haytham Alsayed is a senior majoring in Biology at William & Mary. His primary research area is molecular genetics, and his work has been published in Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology. His thesis aims to better understand the movement of thyroid hormone receptors between the nucleus and the cytoplasm, which is crucial to their functionality.

Ellie Madigan, French & Francophone Studies

"Experimental Art of the French Enlightenment: Testing the Arts and Sciences Through Pygmalion-esque Stories"

Advisor: Dr. Giulia Pacini

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s seminal Discours sur les arts et les sciences, the philosopher argued that the arts directly opposed any notions of progress, as creativity would create a hierarchy and eventually destroy attempts at equality. A study of Pygmalion-esque works of the late eighteenth century, however, reveals the opposite to be true. As Enlightenment-era “artists” began to test the powers of the arts and sciences, they created a novel genre of experimental art that dared to question whether art was capable of embodying progressiveness, of ensuring happiness or fulfillment, and of (re)producing life. While works from the mid-eighteenth century focused on submission, perfectibility, and the creation of art, pieces from several decades later instead emphasized functionality and biology, all part of a grand shift from portrayals of the “ideal” art form as a flawless statue, to a practical machine. Such a transformation of the ideal through a constant interrogation of the arts and sciences thus reveals a country in turmoil–a country craving self-improvement to such an extent that experimentation came to dominate contemporary literature. Through a study of works ranging from André-François Deslandes’ Pigmalion (1741), Rousseau’s seminal Émile (1762), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1813), the thesis interrogates the experimental representations of art in the French tradition, and how artists' questions of progress revealed a society headed toward a transformational Revolution.

Ellie Madigan is a senior double majoring in Economics and French & Francophone Studies. Her research areas focus on literature, the Francophone world, and philosophy. Her thesis addresses French representations of experimental art in the second half of the eighteenth century. She received a Charles Center Honors Fellowship over the summer of 2024 and is ecstatic to share her research in more detail with you all!

Rachel McCarley, Biology

"HerbertWM and Beyond: A Dual Approach to Understanding and Engineering Phage Host Range"

Advisor: Dr. Margaret Saha

Bacteriophage, viruses that infect bacteria, offer attractive opportunities in the field of synthetic biology. Just one prominent example of this is phage therapy, which can provide a way to circumvent antibiotic resistance in bacteria through the use of bacteriophage to target infections in patients. However, to realize this potential, it is essential to predict, design, and engineer phage host range.

Phage must prevent unintentional targeting of “good” bacteria during deployment of phage in real-world environments and must specifically target their intended hosts, hence the term “host range.” This project aims to explore this issue through two routes: investigating and fine-tuning approaches to machine-learning based prediction of phage host range, and analysis and engineering of a novel phage/phage satellite system that was previously discovered at W&M.

To evaluate current approaches to predicting phage host range, a database was compiled of infection data and genomes for phages and hosts in Mycobacteria and E. coli; current machine-learning models from the literature were trained and tested using the database, modifying the most promising model for further testing; and infectivity assays were done to validate predictions and contribute to a more robust dataset for training predictive models. It was determined that the model correctly predicted host range in a significant number of phage, and further work in host range testing in the future will continue to increase the accuracy of these types of models for phage selection.

To engineer the phage system “HerbertWM,” bioinformatic analysis of phage tail proteins using sequence alignment-based methods, molecular visualization, and the aforementioned machine-learning program were used to design modified surface-binding proteins. The project will continue by using phage-based engineering methods to attempt to perform insertions of these proteins in the genome of HerbertWM with the goal of expanding its host range.

Rachel McCarley is a senior majoring in Chemistry and Applied Mathematics at William & Mary. Her research interests include bacteriophage and phage satellites, bioinformatics, genetic engineering and fieldability in synthetic biology. Her thesis involves a dual bioinformatic and engineering approach to predicting and expanding bacteriophage host range.

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