The ten Wabash College students presented their research results from summer internships done at Wabash College, Purdue University, and the National Institute of Health. Many chemistry majors work with faculty on research projects during the academic year or in the summer as part of the summer research intern program. The summer program provides for eight weeks of full-time research with a chemistry faculty person.
The students participating includes:
• Steven G. Foster, a senior, of Mooresville, Ind. He presented “Developing Quantitative Competitive-PCR Techniques for Exploring Gene Expression in Soy Plants.”
• Isaiah C. Sumner, a junior, of Cedar Lake, Ind. He presented “Kinetics of GMKP2 and GMKP1, Soybean Phosphatases.”
• Mark E. Sherer, a senior, of Valparaiso, Ind. He presented “b-Oxidation of Germinating Rape Seed.”
• Nickolas A. Steffen, a junior, of Bluffton, Ind. He presented “Development of NRG2 Alpha/Beta Mutants for Exploration of ErbB4 Binding Domain.”
• Adam T. Moser, a senior, of Bluffton. He presented “How Oxygen Affects Torsional Energy: A Computational Study of Ethers.”
• John M. Dustman, a sophomore, of Bluffton. He presented “Calculating Viscosities and Related Properties of Alkanes and Alcohols From Molecular Dynamics Simulations.”
• Damon R. Carl, a senior, of Wadesville, Ind. He presented “Calculating Free Energies of Transferring a Single Water Molecule Through Bulk Layers of Sixteen-Carbon Chains: A Study of Increasing Levels of Unsaturation in Hexadecane Molecules.”
• Joshua L. Wilson, a senior, of Fort Branch, Ind. He presented “UV-Visible Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy of TS-1 Zeolites.”
• Barry A. Steinkamp, a senior, of Evansville, Ind. He presented “Synthesis of Tamoxifen Metabolites.”
• Joseph D. Scanlon, a senior, of Lafayette, Ind. He presented “Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Human N-Ras Protein in a Dimyristoylphosatidylcholine (DMPC) Bilayer.”
Wabash College is a private liberal arts college for men located in Crawfordsville, Indiana and was founded in 1832. Long known as one of the nation's finest liberal arts colleges, Wabash is home to the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts. Wabash also is included in Loren Pope's book, Colleges That Change Lives, and is ranked among the nation's best colleges by U.S. News and World Report.