undergraduate

A RAPID Response to Hurricane Matthew

In the months following one of the most destructive hurricanes of the past decade, UNC researchers had to act fast. Using a unique grant from the NSF, they’re testing water quality in Lumberton — one of the hardest-hit places during the storm.

Marielle Bond

Junior Marielle Bond is an undergraduate researcher in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences double-majoring in biology and philosophy. Her research focuses on how signaling proteins involved in cell division can cause cancer and how those protein pathways can aid cancer treatments.

Adrienne Bonar

Junior Adrienne Bonar is an undergraduate research assistant at the Carolina Affective Science Lab who is double-majoring in psychology and women’s and gender studies. Her research focuses on how people’s body states and knowledge about emotions shape their emotional experiences.

Destinee Grove

Senior Destinee Grove is an undergraduate researcher in the UNC College of Arts & Sciences, majoring in exercise and sport science and psychology. Her research focuses on a collection of concussion measures like cognitive function, eye movement, and posture ability for athletes. She is a Morehead-Cain Scholar and also a research assistant at the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center.

Pranavi Sanka

Senior Pranavi Sanka is an undergraduate researcher in the UNC College of Arts & Sciences, majoring in biology and computer science, with a minor in chemistry. Her research focuses on developing new therapies for a subset of breast cancer. After graduation, she plans to attend medical school with the goal to become a primary care physician.

Meaghan Nazareth

Rising senior Meaghan Nazareth is a biostatistics major and chemistry minor within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She conducts research with the UNC STARx Program, which seeks to understand self-management and transition from pediatric to adult-focused health care.

Rukmini Deva

Senior Rukmini Deva is a SURF recipient and undergraduate researcher in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences majoring in biology, with a minor in religious studies. Her research focuses on monastic silence — a lifetime of voluntary commitment to silence and/or “stillness.” Last summer, she traveled to a Trappist monastery in South Carolina and a Yogoda ashram in India to explore why silence is used as a vehicle of deeper thought and spiritual experience.

Molly Fisher

Senior Molly Fisher is an undergraduate researcher in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Geophysics and Climatology Lab. Over the past three years, Fisher has modeled renewable energy sources across North America based off of energy production and cost. She is currently studying the potential of biomass as an energy resource in northeastern North Carolina.

Blake Hauser

Senior Blake Hauser is double-majoring in environmental health sciences and biology, with a minor in chemistry. In January, she received the Churchill Scholarship, a research-focused award that provides funding to American students for a year of master’s study in science, mathematics, and engineering at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the continuum of care for mothers diagnosed with HIV during pregnancy and the implementation of antiretroviral drugs that can help suppress the virus.

Kaitlyn Tsai

Senior Kaitlyn Tsai is an undergraduate researcher in the College of Arts & Sciences majoring in chemistry with a biochemistry focus and minoring in medical anthropology and biology. Her research involves conducting complex chemical reactions to better understand the chemistry behind biological processes such as cancer. After graduation this May, she will pursue a PhD at the University of California, San Francisco.