UA SRC Trainees Place in Virtual SRP Summer Scientific Art/Photo Competition
Aug. 5, 2021
The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) recently hosted a Virtual SRP Summer Scientific Art/Photo Competition. This competition offered SRP Trainees who are back in the lab full time, part time, or even still teleworking a break from presenting their research, activities, and ideas via typical virtual platforms and meetings.
The University of Arizona Superfund Research Center (UA SRC) did well in this competition, with three Trainees placing! Alma Anides Morales (PI: Monica Ramirez-Andreotta) won 1st Place in the “Field Experiments” category. Kamila Murawska-Wlodarczyk (PIs: Alicja Babst-Kostecka, Raina Maier) received 2nd place in the “Laboratory Experiments” category. And JoRee LaFrance (PI: Karletta Chief) got Honorable Mention in the “Field Experiments” category.
All winners received “bragging rights” to their colleagues, friends, and family, and they can add the award to their CV! All photos will be hosted on the NIEHS SRP website, newsletters, and at the 2021 Annual Meeting! Congratulations to all the Trainees!
Description: Graduate student, Alma Anides Morales, conducting a field assessment of the study site along the Arizona-Sonora, US-Mexico border region. University of Arizona researchers were taken by local public health officials in February 2019 to the study site to document location and flows of transborder sewage overflows. Picture was taken by student's major advisor, Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta.
Description: Kamila Murawska-Wlodarczyk, Dr. Alicja Babst-Kostecka working in the “Lab”. (Photo Credentials: Tomasz Wlodarczyk.). If you cannot go to the lab, the lab must come to you! It is in this spirit that we set up a temporary growth chamber in our living room that hosted 230 experimental plants. These plants grew in so-called rhizoboxes that we filled in our backyard with different types of soils. Monitoring their root growth became our daily pandemic routine, just before dinner. In retrospect, it was a very positive experience to be able to move forward with our Superfund project and feel that the pandemic and isolation did not prevent us from getting creative and advancing with our research. And after a while we even got comfortable with spending our board game evenings illuminated by full growth-spectrum lights. This way, our life became a true experience of “Pandemic in the Lab”.
Description: JoRee LaFrance collecting samples near the headwaters of the Iisaxpúatuahcheeaashiakaate/Little Bighorn River in the Iisaxpúatahchee Isawaxaawúua/Big Horn Mountains in June 2020 for her pilot study project. This one was sample location 1 of 24 that were collected along the entire profile of the river.