In the following videos, undergraduate students at Radford University discuss the research project they have had an opportunity to be a part of during their academic careers. Enjoy!
Laken Cooper, a senior biology major, traveled to Kenya this summer with Dr. Sara O'Brien, assistant professor of biology, to research house sparrows.
Radford University faculty from physics, geology and anthropology are collaborating to better understand how Civil War forts in the Radford area were built.
Matti Hamed, a senior biology major, is working with Matt Close, assistant professor of biology, to establish a long-term population study of reptiles and amphibians at Selu Conservancy to determine current species diversity and abundance.
Associate Professor of Geology Elizabeth McClellan and undergraduate students Melissa Brett and Raymundo Balderas are mapping ancient volcanic rocks that formed about 750 million years ago in Grayson County, Virginia. In addition to mapping the area, the group is also collecting samples in hopes of dating the rocks for age comparisons of the upper and lower Mount Rogers formations.
Jarrod Hobson, a student in the five-year Special Education: General Curriculum, K-12 program, is working with Associate Professor Debbie Bays Wilbon to create lesson plans for increasing vocabulary in first and second graders.
Undergraduate biology student Daniel Metz is working with Associate Professor Jeremy Wojdak to research Echinostoma trivolvis, an intestinal parasite that lives in snails in ponds and streams locally and ultimately infects mammals that eat the snails. The research group is hoping to use this parasite as a model species to study how parasites are transmitted from one host to another.
Laken Cooper, a biology student, discusses the research opportunities she has at Radford University.
Raymond Boisvert, a senior finance major, is working with Abhay Kaushik, an associate professor of finance, to study risk-adjusted returns to determine if actively versus passively managed mutual funds are a better investment.
Caitlin Linville and Monica Kaur, junior nursing majors, are studying the effects of Vespa Amino Acid Mixture (VAAM), an amino acid mixture derived from the saliva of giant Japanese hornet larva, on house flies. The mixture in wasps enables extraordinary endurance that allows for longer foraging intervals. The research team is testing to see if those higher levels of endurance appear in flies who have been given VAAM.
Research in Chemistry
Timothy Fuhrer, assistant professor of chemistry, is currently working with undergraduate students Jacob Mace and Dylan McKnight to improve the effects of a drug used to treat cancer.
Joshua Oliver, a senior geospatial science major, is working with Assistant Professor Stockton Maxwell to study old-growth forests in the region that can provide a long record of environmental history. These old trees can show periods of drought and flooding before stream gauges and weather stations were common practice. The research team will compare their tree ring analysis to existing stream flow data in hopes of aiding water resource managers to better plan for future changes.