Students in the 2024 Joint Science and Technology Institute will take part in research projects in a variety of scientific disciplines. Below are a couple examples of the projects that will be executed this summer.

Climate Warriors: Microbes at Work

Climate change is a serious issue that our planet is facing, and it's important to address its impacts, especially in saline environments. One effective way to combat this is by using beneficial microbes to enhance soil quality and crop production. In this workshop, we will educate students about the different types of microbes and their role in improving crop health. We will also delve into how climate change affects agriculture and the environment and explore ways to reduce its effects. Through lab experiments, we will investigate how salinity affects plants and microalgae and how we can utilize these tiny microbes to create more sustainable and resilient agricultural systems that can better withstand the challenges brought about by climate change. This workshop will help students to understand the challenges of climate change and the potential of microbes to fight them. We also welcome early career scientists and postdocs from LANL to share their research interests and help discuss career prospects. Our aim with this workshop is to engage the younger generation in meaningful discussions to create a brighter and more sustainable future.

Mentors: Sangeeta Negi, Buck Hanson

Assistants: Eric Moore, Leah Johnson, Emily Boak, Shounak Banerjee, Joe Sanchez, Daniel Trettel, La Verne Gallegos-Graves, Erika Quezada, Miriam Hernandez-Romero

Agency: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Division: Bioscience (I-BIOME)

 

Emergency Response to Chemical, Biological, Radiation, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Incidents

The goal of the project is to provide the student with an introduction to how the areas of study for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are associated and can be applied in theory and practice to the world of emergency response to Chemical, Biologic, Radiation, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) incidents. CBRNE materials can potentially be used as a type of weapon that have the ability to create both mass casualties as well as mass disruption of society. The mentors will provide both practical application, exercises, and experiments to help build the foundation for the student to understand the methods of mitigating a CBRNE incident. The foundation will incorporate analyzing the incident, planning the response, implementing the planned response, evaluating the progress, and incident termination.

Mentor: Jason Martinez and Chris Barondeau

Assistants: Chris Rittner, Kevin Brake, Gaylon Holder, Brandon Williams, Aaron Waller, Jessica Bishop, Lawrence Holterman, Isaiah Valdez, Ryan Berg, Pedro Hernandez

Agency: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Division: Emergency Response

 

From Classical Microbiology to Next-Generation Sequencing: Physiological and Genomic Characterizations of Bacterial Isolates

Bacteria are considered one of the oldest and most diverse forms of life in Earth’s total history, having thrived in nearly every known ecological niche and co-evolved with every plant, animal, fungi, and human. Yet, we have only begun to fully reveal the critical functions and contributions of bacteria in the environment or host they inhabit. To emphasize a fundamental understanding of bacteria and their implications to human health, national and energy securities, mentors from LANL Bioscience will guide select high school students in classical micro- and molecular- biological techniques which, in turn, will lead to next-gen sequencing technologies and hands-on bioinformatics practices. We will apply these techniques on an unknown mix of bacterial species typically found in soil environments. The goals of this mentorship are to provide promising high school students the real-world experience needed to characterize bacteria – from both the physiological and genomic perspectives – and to help prepare them to be our nation’s future scientists.

Mentor: Armand Dichosa

Assistants: Aaron Robinson, Earl Middlebrook, Julia Kelliher, Mark Flynn, Anand Kumar, Andrew Bartlow, Migun Shakya, T. Buck Hanson, Aaron Waller, Cheryl Gleasner

Agency: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Division: Bioscience

 

Why do you love Stanley water bottles so much, anyways?

It seems that the world is going crazy about Stanley water bottles right now. But what is up with the hype? Is it really superior to other water bottles? Is it even worth the price? Well, in this project we are going to try to answer those questions by dissecting the water bottle from many different angles. This is something engineers do all the time. We are going to put the scientific method into action by answering the why, what, and how questions about the product. We will develop methods to identify materials from magnifications you can see with your eyes all the way down to magnifications that you cannot! We will perform simple strength tests from standards that scientists use every day to determine if what the manufacturer is saying is true. Finally, using all this information we will figure out if the product could be made better given the manufacturing trade-offs that exist for any consumer good. We will talk about sustainability, quality assurance, and the importance of qualitative data in the scientific process. And finally, we will even model and simulate heat flow through the material using a powerful tool known as finite element analysis…say that 10 times fast! Short, twenty-minute lectures on materials engineering will be sprinkled in throughout the two-week research experience. Get ready to never look at materials ever the same after this research experience!

Mentor: Ben Derby

Assistants:Franziska Schmidt, Dean Morales, Kyungtae Kim, Adi Shivprasad, Bernard Gaskey, Jesse Callanan

Agency: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Division: MPA-CINT

 

Improving Radiological Hand-held Detector Training Devices

DTRA is developing a virtual reality (VR) training device for responders, operators, and military personnel to characterize potential radiological sites.   This enables the operators to develop techniques and tactics for future use. To do this, additional data must be collected with various hand-held detectors in various scenarios to enhance and validate models utilized in the VR training devices.   Students will work with mentors to develop scenarios and then collect the data in the lab and at a training site on Kirtland Air Force Base utilizing low level radiological sources and implementing highest safety standards.    

Mentor: Allison Hedrick

Assistants: Anthony Ryd, Kristina Durham, James Ray, MAJ Steven Buhler, LT Michael Holguin

Agency: DTRA

Division: Research and Development Directorate, Test and Assessment Department

Automating experimental procedures

This project aims to design, build, test, and present a prototype mechanism that automates the process of aligning specimens on a testing platform, thereby significantly reducing the experimentation time for large batches of samples. Focused on handling 1”x 1”x1” cubic specimens, the mechanism will be developed to securely grip and lift the specimen at least 6 inches above its initial position, and, subsequently, place it on a designated spot on the platform. All of which is expected to be completed without direct user contact of the specimen or the lifting mechanism. The project includes: creating detailed design documentation, constructing a functional prototype, conducting tests to ensure reliability and precision, and culminating a comprehensive presentation that showcases the prototype’s capability to enhance laboratory efficiency and experiment consistency.

Mentors: Nha Uyen Huynh

Assistants: Melissa Louie and Kim Haulenbeek

Agency: Sandia National Lab  

 

Spam Detection Using Machine Learning

Spam emails are a major problem for individuals and organizations alike. They can cause a loss of productivity, security breaches, and financial losses. Machine learning methods have been proven to be effective in detecting and filtering spam emails. This project aims to implement and evaluate different machine learning methods for spam filtering.

Mentors: Meifan Chen

Assistants: Bryan Arguello, Carol Chen, Brian Gaume, Tian Ma, Doug McGeehan, Anton Sumali

Agency: Sandia National Lab  

 

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