Adam Reitzel’s marine sciences lab includes three National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows (and other NSF grantees). Recipients of these fellowships are high-potential, early-career scientists and engineers, who receive funding to support graduate research training in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. In addition to covering students’ research and educational expenses, the NSF Graduate Fellows program provides access to diverse research experiences and research settings around the world.  

Here doctoral students Remi Ketchum and Tyler Carrier and master’s student Devin Clegg talk about their NSF Graduate Research Fellowship opportunities.

What is unique about the research you are conducting with NSF Graduate Research Fellowship support?

Ketchum: My research focuses mostly on how marine organisms adapt to climate change and the associated thermal stress and salinity stress. Climate change has resulted in warming of coastal aquatic habitats around the world at almost every latitude, threatening estuarine and marine ecosystems with a massive loss in biodiversity and potential collapse.

Carrier: The questions I’m exploring are rooted in fundamental evolutionary and ecological processes. They are unexplored, which leaves room to expand our understanding of how and why microbes are essential for life. Within the fields of larval biology and animal-microbial symbiosis, there is excitement as to what we can find out. This is one of the first times we’re looking at the microbiome–or microbial communities–of marine invertebrate larvae, especially in their natural environment.

Clegg: I’m looking into an organism that is not a conventional model organism –the sea anemone, a cnidarian. I’m researching a transcription factor, protein that aids in the regulation of other specific proteins that help with things ranging from normal development to antioxidant properties and more.

Why are outreach and collaboration important to your development as a scientist?

Ketchum: Key components of becoming an academic are mentoring students and education outreach. Dr. Reitzel’s laboratory is ideal for my pursuit of graduate training; not only is he at the forefront of evolutionary ecology but he is also actively involved in educational outreach. My goals are to become an independent evolutionary ecologist who studies important questions in marine life research and conservation, a professor who trains future scholars and a mentor involved in public outreach.

Carrier: Being awarded this fellowship means that the NSF and leaders in the scientific community are investing special resources in me to fuel my training as a scientist, educator and citizen of the world. This allows me to join an “elite club” of academics worldwide who are making significant pushes to answer some of the biggest and most important questions.

Clegg: One of my goals as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow is to be an influential mentor to younger individuals. Dr. Reitzel and his current graduate students present their research and create curriculum exercises to bring together new results with general concepts in biology. I will participate and lead outreach activities to provide strong influence in biology and inspire scholars to perform research.

When UNC Charlotte researchers Kirill Afonin and Ian Marriott describe their labs’ RNA nanotechnology research, they use words that might at first seem non-scientific, including alphabet, library and language.

This is because their work – on multiple levels – deals with communication. They are working collaboratively to engineer better treatments for cancers and other diseases. Their research focuses on developing novel functional RNA-based nanomaterials that can communicate with each other or with cellular machinery, or respond to various stimuli.

To maximize the benefit of these nanostructures, it is critical for the researchers to understand – and influence – how the structures prompt immune responses within the body. Some immune responses can be harmful, while others can be beneficial.

To grasp their work, a good place to start is with a basic definition of RNA. Ribonucleic acid – or RNA – is present in living cells. Its main job is to serve as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA – deoxyribonucleic acid – to control the synthesis of proteins. RNA functions as an enzyme, a powerful regulator of gene expression, and a natural molecular scaffold due to its natural versatility and structural properties.

“Some primitive organisms, like plants for instance, don’t have immune systems the way we think about it, but they use RNA, in particular RNA interference processes, to fight pathogens,” he says.

The UNC Charlotte partnership draws on the expertise of Marriott, a Department of Biological Sciences faculty member with expertise in immunology and cell biology, and Afonin, a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanoscale Science Ph.D. Program, who has expertise in computational and experimental RNA biology. Both faculty members have previously received the prestigious National Institutes of Health R01 research grants and many other funding awards.

They draw upon each other’s expertise and that of colleagues at UNC Charlotte and other universities and labs. They also hold high expectations for the postdoctoral fellows and graduate and undergraduate students in their labs, calling upon them to contribute meaningfully to the work.

“This is key because students have to learn the integrative nature of science,” Marriott says. “The days when you were studying one thing in an enclosed manner, or blinkered manner, is long gone. Now, science is integrated. Nobody can be an expert in everything. That is why everybody has to be working together as a team. These things are just too complex.”

These lead researchers, their lab teams, and colleagues elsewhere have published a number of academic papers documenting the research, including a paper in the journal Small, with lead author Brittany Johnson, who was a postdoctoral fellow in both labs at the time. Johnson has since moved to a research faculty position at UNC Charlotte and in November 2020, she, Afonin, Marriott, Nanoscale Science doctoral student Justin R. Halman and collaborators at Ball State University published a paper in Nucleic Acids Research.

The earlier paper in Small presented a set of 16 nanoparticle platforms that are highly configurable and that can be tuned to elicit the desired immune response or lack of response. Rationally designed programmable RNA nanostructures offer unique advantages in addressing contemporary therapeutic challenges such as distinguishing target cell types and responding to disease, the researchers found.

“Kirill has generated these therapeutic nucleic acids, and they are very novel because they overcome a lot of problems you have with these traditional nano-therapeutics,” Johnson says. “The ones he’s generated can be specifically engineered, and that’s one of the strongest things about them. You can engineer their melting temperature and their resistance to degradation in the body.” 

The researchers are measuring the physical and chemical properties of these particles, such as melting temperatures, stability in blood serum, dissociation constant, sizes, and composition. 

“All that is fed into the program,” Afonin says. “This program can be trained to recognize patterns. The program was able to find the strong connections between the physical properties and the immunological responses.”

The team is characterizing each of the nanoparticles in terms of their immunological responses.

“Kirill is putting together this library of nanoparticles, and our job with my lab is to throw those letters and words into a system to test what they do to the immune system,” Marriott says. “We know that a lot of our own cells can recognize certain shapes and forms of nucleic acids like RNA. We have these sensors inside our cells that recognize these foreign RNA molecules. Basically that’s a cue for the cell to let it know it is compromised.”

Their paper in Small documented the distinct immune responses to the RNA, which can self-assemble into different shapes or structures, as well as carry embedded functionalities, such as serving as a way to deliver therapeutics.

“We’ve got some tantalizing preliminary data that the distinct shapes themselves could be an influencing factor; rings and cubes and fibers will dictate a response,” Marriott says. “It’s not only the composition, but also the form that can actually dictate a response.”

Work is continuing on designing nanoparticles and testing them.

“I want to create an actual molecule language which can be used by these structures to communicate with the immune system,” Afonin says. “I want to make it so simple that you don’t have to be an immunologist, and you don’t have to be an RNA nanotechnologist. You will have already an alphabet. It’s like letters.”

A hurdle for all drug delivery systems, including this one, is that cells can see these RNA nanostructures as a threat.

“That’s the kind of thing that will provoke an immune response and maybe an inflammation and all that nasty, bad stuff such as a septic-type shock,” Marriott says.

“What we want to do is find the particular motifs that provoke particular responses that either are ignored by the cell, which could be good, or that are provoking not this bad inflammatory response, but maybe just certain responses that would be beneficial to fight a cancer.”

An example of a beneficial immune response would be how the body’s immune system responds to a vaccine.

Unlike chemotherapy, which is a brute-force type of treatment and targets all rapidly dividing cells, including “good” cells, the type of approach these researchers are developing is more specific and focused.

“In these therapeutics we are trying to design, we want them to be more targeted therapy,” says Justin Halman, a Ph.D. student in the nanoscale science program who is part of Afonin’s lab. “In this case, we’re looking for an immune response, and if we can generate a specific immune response, which we’re seeing as tailored by the composition, by the shape, by the structure of our nucleic acid nanoparticles, we could better combat these type of diseases.” 

The potential is enormous, Marriott says. “It will be totally transformative. It would be an unimaginably powerful tool. The idea that you could deliver whatever you wanted wherever you wanted, and engineer the host response to whatever it is you’re trying to combat, would be extraordinary.”

Words and Images: Lynn Roberson | Top Image: Kirill Afonin (left) works with doctoral student Justin Halman in his lab. | This article originally appeared in the spring 2018 issue of the CLAS print research magazine, Exchange. It was updated in early 2021 with new research information.

For their outstanding research and scholarship, Eleonora Dávalos of Public Policy and Britney Phippen of Biological Sciences are recipients of the 2018 Dean’s Distinguished Dissertation Award, presented by the UNC Charlotte Graduate School.

Dávalos’ dissertation focused on the effects of the strategies used to control illicit new coca crops in Colombia. Dávalos’ says her interest in social policy research is rooted in her fieldwork experience with vulnerable communities and local government officials in developing countries. She has been involved in the design and implementation of social development projects aiming to reduce poverty and promote social equity in several municipalities in Colombia.

“Our judges thought that your findings were surprising,” said Tom Reynolds, associate provost and dean of the Graduate School. The judges, he noted, “pointed out that your topic has been rarely studied and adds a great deal to the discipline.”

Phippen researches the bacterium Vibrio vulnificus. Often found in shellfish, it is described as the most fatal seafood borne pathogen in the world. The award judges called Phippen’s work “an impressive bit of multidisciplinary work,” and “a solid and important contribution,” Reynolds said.

Phippen’s research on the opportunistic human pathogen Vibrio vulnificus is focused on a bacterium that carries a 50% mortality rate and causes 95% of all seafood related deaths in the United States each year, primarily after consumption of raw or undercooked seafood. Her research is considering how the bacterium strains differ and also how they respond to conditions around them, including climate change.

Each scholar will be entered in a national dissertation competition at the Council of Graduate Schools. That competition includes a $2,000 honorarium.

The pain can be excruciating – a stabbing sensation in the side, abdomen or back. It can start in one spot in the intestinal tract, then spread. The agony can bring people to tears – and, often, to the hospital emergency room.

This suffering is caused by stones, the pebble-like lumps of minerals and salts that can form in a person’s urinary tract. While the stones themselves can be as small as grains of sand, their impact can extend beyond the initial diagnosis and discomfort.

“Most North Carolinians have known someone who has had kidney or bladder stones,” says UNC Charlotte student Luke Hardy, who is pursuing a doctoral degree in optical science and engineering. “We’re in what is called the Stone Belt. The Southeastern part of the United States, including North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, has more kidney stone occurrences than other places, about a 50% greater prevalence of stone disease.”

Stone Incidence, And The Costs, Increase

With the incidence of stones increasing not only in the Southeast but elsewhere too, due to increasing obesity, diabetes, dietary factors, and even climate change, Nathaniel Fried’s research lab in the Department of Physics and Optical Science at UNC Charlotte is working to transform treatment options. Hardy is an integral member of the research team.

“Luke is a highly accelerated student by all measures,” Fried says. “One of his greatest strengths is that he works extremely hard. He’s very focused and a very serious student. It’s his curiosity, his heart, his work ethic, and his productivity. He’s just done so much. He’s really a role model for other students.”

Hardy first joined Fried’s lab as an undergraduate physics student participating in the Charlotte Research Scholars program in the summer of 2013. Since then, he has been a co-author on over a dozen peer-reviewed papers and a similar number of conference proceedings. He also received a 2017 Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.

“I like learning things and figuring things out, and I’ve always wanted to use that interest in helping people in some way,” Hardy says. “I felt like this work was a good way to do that.”

The specific area of research is called biomedical optics and laser-tissue interactions, mostly occurring in the therapeutic realm. “You can think about it as minimally invasive surgery using lasers, optics and/or fiber optics,” Fried says. “We do a little bit of optical imaging and what I would call diagnostics, diagnosing disease or characterizing abnormalities. But most of the work is on the therapy side for treatment.”

The research is exploring less invasive surgical options, seeking to speed recovery time, decrease complications and time spent in surgery, and reduce costs for patients and the health care system. That is where the innovative devices that Fried’s lab develops come in.

“There has been little or no evolution in laser technology for treating kidney stones in the last 30 years or so,” Fried says. “We are one of only a few academic labs that I know of in the world that is trying to introduce new laser technology for breaking up kidney stones. The conventional technology has been around for almost 30 years. The technology that Luke is working on in the lab as part of his project allows us to miniaturize the optical fiber delivery system, and perhaps the endoscope as well, that goes inside the body.”

Hardy counts his work with the Thulium fiber laser for breaking up kidney stones as some of his most productive.

“One of the major issues with the laser we are researching now is that it operates at very low pulse energy,” he says. “We were limited by that. We were able to show that what you need to do is pulse it faster, to increase the average power. You can ablate the kidney stones faster, and there’s also a reduction in the movement of the stone compared to the current lasers in use. Then, later on, we were able to show by using a fast camera why there was a reduction in the movement of the stone. There are a lot of reasons why reducing the movement of the stone is important.”

The Pinball Phenomenon

When a stone breaks up, it can bounce around, much like a pinball in a pinball machine. Pieces can be missed, requiring more surgery, or the patient has to let the fragment pass while the urinary tract is still healing. If a stone moves around during the procedure, the surgery also can take longer, which is costly and potentially more risky for the patient.

While much of his work has focused on the actual lasers and probes, Hardy also has branched into computer simulations. With this work, the team is researching treatment options that use non-invasive lasers and their thermal effect to remodel subsurface tissues to treat female stress urinary incontinence. Currently, women either learn to live with the condition or turn to more extensive surgical options, such as mesh slings.  One of the major themes in the lab’s research is developing options for the use of lasers in urology, with implications for quality of life issues.

“We currently have an NIH grant to look at female incontinence, which is a big problem,” Fried says. “Millions of women suffer from female incontinence after childbirth and in aging.”

Hardy also took a six-month turn in space exploration as an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, starting last summer. “There’s the kid part of me that was drawn to this lab, and then there’s the practical side, in that I wanted to expand my research beyond what I had done at UNC Charlotte,” he says.

He is exploring whether he wants to pursue a post-doctoral research position in academia or a post in industry. Either way, the work continues to fascinate him, particularly when he stops to reflect on the power of light.

“Using light to break up a kidney stone is so cool,” he says. “We are used to ambient light – very low level light – and we don’t really think of light interacting to heat something up and then break it apart. It’s amazing. The fact that we can create enough coherent light to melt something is a testament to innovation.”

As president of UNC Charlotte’s SPIE/OSA student chapter, Hardy works with his peers in volunteer projects, such as the university’s Science and Technology Expo and visits to schools. He remembers wanting to be a sound engineer, as a high school student at the Middle College at GTCC-High Point, and he still plays bass in a band. When he came to UNC Charlotte to study physics, he realized the parallels between sound waves and light waves, and his mind opened to other possibilities.

Now, he wants to open up that understanding of the expansive nature of science for others. “I think outreach helps with the public image of science, and it helps to recruit more scientists,” he says. “It’s also fun because you show science to younger students.”

Words and Image: Lynn Roberson

Shan Yan, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at UNC Charlotte, has received a $1.7 million R01 research grant from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Findings are expected to offer insight into how cancers develop and to open avenues to new therapeutic strategies, especially with pancreatic cancers.

Yan’s lab researches DNA damage that human cells sustain each day from internal and environmental assaults. Oxidative DNA damage and single-strand breaks, or SSBs, in the DNA duplex are critical challenges to genomic stability and can lead to the formation of tumors when the body does not repair the damage quickly or properly.

An elaborate network called DNA damage response pathway detects these abnormal DNA structures through a process called checkpoint signaling, and coordinates the repair and activation.

Yet, the processes by which this signaling and DNA repair take place are still only partly understood because of their complexity and speed, and the difficulty of studying complex interactions within living cells. Additionally, little is known about how cells sense the unrepaired oxidatively-damaged DNA in the first place.

New Work Can Help Us Understand Cancer Development

A better understanding of how the body senses oxidative stress signals for a checkpoint response could offer insights into how cancers and neurodegenerative disorders develop following oxidative stress. This knowledge could ultimately lead to new treatments via modulation of the underlying molecular mechanism.

The 5-year grant (NIH R01CA225637) Yan’s lab has received will support the continuation of the lab’s study of the mechanism of a repair protein called APE1 in DNA damage response. While APE1 is known for its critical functions in base excision repair and transcriptional regulation, it is currently unknown whether APE1 plays an essential role in DNA damage response pathway.

“In particular, this support from the NIH will drive the new direction my lab has started, to look at single-strand breaks and repair, and signaling, as we try to figure out the molecular details of how that works,” Yan said. “We hope we can come up with new methods for cancer treatment or the treatment of aging-related neurodegenerative diseases in the future.”

Using innovative biochemical and structure-function analysis in egg extracts from Xenopus – a genus of highly aquatic frogs – and mammalian cells, the Yan lab intends to demonstrate how the damage is recognized and processed. Target proteins found in Xenopus are correlated with those found in cancer patients. The researchers will also validate the findings from the Xenopus system in mammalian cells, including pancreatic cancer cells.

Yan and other researchers from his lab, including students and post-doctoral fellows, have published several peer-reviewed papers documenting earlier findings. One of the most recent papers, “APE2 promotes DNA damage response pathway from a single-strand break,” was published in January 2018 in the journal Nucleic Acids Research (Oxford University Press).

The Research Project Grant (R01) is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by NIH, providing support for health-related research and development. The Yan lab also has been supported, in part, by grants from the NIH/NIGMS (R15GM101571 and R15GM114713) and funds from UNC Charlotte (Duke Energy Endowment Special Initiatives Fund and Faculty Research Grants).

Previous stories about Yan’s lab can be found here and here.

Words and Image: Lynn Roberson, CLAS Communications Director

This summer, dozens of College of Liberal Arts & Sciences undergraduate students from varied majors and disciplines will gain experience in research through UNC Charlotte initiatives that emphasize learn-by-doing models. They also will benefit from professional development opportunities, mentoring and interactions with each other.

Over 30 College of Liberal Arts & Sciences undergraduate students who are part of the Charlotte Research Scholars Program will conduct research projects on diverse topics, including cystic fibrosis characteristics, attitudes toward immigration, body self-image, air quality, pancreatic cancer, the future of conservation through a Victorian lens, and other subjects.

As student scholars, they will join with students from across the university in this in-depth research experience. Along with the students, a similar number of CLAS faculty are serving as one-to-one mentors for students in the program.

The summer program started in 2012 for high-achieving undergraduate students to gain experience in research and professional development in their field of interest. These opportunities are not always available in the undergraduate classroom. This learn-by-doing model places an emphasis on graduate education and allows the scholars to put their experiential learning into practice, preparing them to excel in their future studies and research.

In addition to mentored research activities, scholars participate in weekly professional development training to build skills critical to professional success.  Topics include responsible conduct of research, developing a competitive research fellowship application, preparing an academic resume, professional communication tools, and a session on preparing for graduate school.

Other summer research activities also are going on in 2018 that will involve college students and faculty, including several Research Experience for Undergraduates Programs and the Charlotte Community Scholars Program, which began in 2015 as a sister program to the Charlotte Research Scholars Program. Students work directly with a faculty mentor and a community partner on an engaged scholarship project, participate in weekly professional development meetings with other undergraduate research students, and present their research findings at the annual Charlotte Research Symposium, the capstone event for all of the undergraduate research programs.

Images show students presenting at a previous Charlotte Research Symposium.

Mukulika Bose, a doctoral student in biological sciences, has received a 2018 P.E.O. International Scholarship from the P.E.O. Sisterhood, an organization focused on helping women around the world participate in graduate study in the U.S. and Canada.

Bose is a member of Pinku Mukherjee’s lab in the Department of Biological Sciences. She describes herself as being full of enthusiasm and keen about science. Her goal is to use her curiosity and knowledge to seek answers that can contribute to the welfare of society, she says.

Before joining the doctoral program at UNC Charlotte, Bose completed her master’s degree in biotechnology and was the recipient of a Chancellor’s Gold medal at Presidency University in Kolkata, West Bengal. There, she gained hands-on experience in cell biology, plant biotechnology, genetics, immunology and biochemistry. She completed her bachelor’s of science in microbiology with honors at Asutosh College, affiliated under University of Calcutta.

The International Peace Scholarship Fund is one of six philanthropies that include ownership of an all-women’s college, Cottey College, and five projects that provide higher educational assistance. Established in 1949, this specific fund provides financial support for women from other countries to participate in graduate study in the United States and Canada. The philosophy of the P.E.O. (Philanthropic Educational Organization) is that education is fundamental to world peace and understanding. The P.E.O. Sisterhood is an international women’s organization of about 230,000 members, with a primary focus on providing educational opportunities for female students worldwide.

Bose participated in the Graduate School’s Fellowship Application Incentive Program, which provides a cash incentive and assistance for students to seek out and apply for financial support.

For more information on the Fellowship Application Incentive, please visit the Graduate School’s How Graduate Student Funding Works page.

UNC Charlotte’s Devin Clegg sees a strong linkage between his selection for a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and lessons he learned when conducting biological sciences research and playing football with the Charlotte 49ers.

Clegg, who completed his bachelor’s degree in exercise science at UNC Charlotte in 2016, is pursuing a master’s degree in biology at UNC Charlotte. With the fellowship, he will receive three years of financial support over a five-year fellowship period – a $34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution. Clegg is among 2,000 awardees chosen this year from over 13,000 applicants.

Clegg is affiliated with two research labs in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences – the labs of marine biologist Adam Reitzel and molecular and cell biologist Richard Chi. Clegg’s research combines molecular biology and protein biochemistry to uncover how genomes evolve in animals.

“I am looking into an organism that is not a conventional model organism to use for my project,” he said. “I am going to use the sea anemone, a cnidarian, and since it’s not a very well known model, I think that was a big aspect of my selection for the fellowship. What I am researching is a transcription factor. It’s a protein that aids in the regulation of other specific proteins that help with things ranging from normal development to antioxidant properties and many other things.”

He joins two other NSF Graduate Research Fellows in Reitzel’s lab, which boasts three of the six GRFs currently at UNC Charlotte. Tyler Carrier, a Ph.D. student, joined the lab in September 2015, and Remi Ketchum, a Ph.D. student, joined the lab in January 2017.

Clegg first was exposed to molecular biology when Chi served a turn as the UNC Charlotte 49ers Football Faculty Coach. At a players’ meeting, Chi described his research and tossed out an offer to mentor players interested in the life sciences.

“I sat down with him when we had the team dinner, and talked with him,” Clegg said. “He was a little skeptical. I understand why. Coming from a kinesiology background, I knew pretty much nothing about molecular biology techniques and working in a lab setting, but it all worked out.”

Through hard work and determination, Clegg obtained an internship with Chi’s lab, which employs molecular biology, protein chemistry, live cell imaging and yeast genetics to study proteins involved in membrane trafficking.

Devin Clegg (left) works with UNC Charlotte Biological Sciences researchers Adam Reitzel and Richard Chi.

“When I first met Devin and saw his determination and his desire to learn, I believed he would be a strong addition to the research team in my lab,” Chi said. “He has proven that true in his time with us, as he has grown as a researcher. His research holds potential not only for him, but also for his particular field of study. I know, too, that he will continue to evolve as a scholar and also as a mentor for students who are coming behind him, which is important not only in my lab but also in modern research generally.”

As he gained confidence in the lab, Clegg felt like he had found his place. “It felt natural to me,” he said. “Everything really flowed, and it felt natural, like I was supposed to be doing this.”

The direction his research took led to him working also in the Reitzel lab, which employs evolution ecology, genetics, molecular biology, and field studies to answer questions about the evolution of proteins in marine invertebrates, such as sea anemones, jellyfishes and corals.

Following graduation in 2016, he pursued a post baccalaureate to complete courses for a biology degree and to grow his research experience and obtain a better understanding of cellular and molecular biology.

Like Chi, Reitzel quickly saw Clegg’s potential.

“I have been impressed with Devin’s curiosity and his desire to learn new skills and explore new questions,” Reitzel said. “His commitment also to mentoring others and helping them experience opportunities that may be new for them also has impressed me and fits in well with the collaborative focus among the team members in my lab. I am confident he will continue to be a strong contributor to the research and outreach we are doing, and I’m also excited about the growing collaboration he can help us foster with Dr. Chi’s lab.”

Clegg hopes others can draw lessons from his story. He will continue to join other members of the Chi and the Reitzel labs in engaging with the broader community, specifically through mentoring and encouraging younger students. He intends particularly to focus on a stereotype he perceives.

“With graduate studies I want to remove the stereotype of student-athletes and researchers,” he wrote in his application. “Being a former student-athlete, I have experienced classmates talking down as if I was incompetent.”

In his application, Clegg included details about playing football. “I think the reviewers felt I could be a good person for the fellowship because of my work ethic,” he said. “Research is like football in that you practice and practice, and then you have to be ready to deal with issues that come up.”

He already knows one important lesson he will share with others.

“If you don’t try, you’ll never know what could have happened,” he said. “That’s what my mother always told me when I was little, such as trying out for baseball. She said, “You might be scared you’re not going to make it. But don’t be afraid of the rejection. If you don’t try, it’s definitely a no. If you do put that effort forward, you might end up with a yes.” ”

Words and Images: Lynn Roberson, CLAS Communications Director
— The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based Master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.

UNC Charlotte biology alumna and Cabarrus County teacher Jessie L. Enlow stood at the front of the UNC Charlotte Biological Sciences laboratory, holding up slips of paper that were marked to represent DNA sequences. As part of the NC Science Festival series of events at UNC Charlotte, Enlow was a member of a team presenting ways for public school teachers to incorporate biotechnology concepts and tools in their classrooms.

In collaboration with UNC Charlotte biological sciences faculty members Sharon Bullock, Michelle Pass and Tonya Bates, Enlow was an instructor in the free biotechnology workshop, particularly geared for high school biology teachers. The Cox Mill High School teacher was back on familiar turf, since as a North Carolina Teaching Fellow she had earned bachelor’s degrees in biology and a master’s degree in science education at UNC Charlotte. She also was a finalist for Teacher of the Year in Cabarrus County in 2015-16. 

The UNC Charlotte Biological Sciences faculty organized the workshop and invited Enlow to join them, extending a partnership they have developed with Enlow and other teachers at Cox Mill High School. Faculty in the science departments in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at UNC Charlotte have developed strong partnerships with secondary education institutions throughout the region. View more photos on the College’s flickr.

Meanwhile, on this same spring day, faculty and students in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanoscale Science Ph.D. Program were exploring chemistry concepts with children aged 7 to 14 and their parents. With the “Colors of Chemistry” workshop, participants learned about dyes, pigments, and other colorful chemicals by making their own chromatic concoctions. Young people let loose their scientific creativity with bright tie-dye and lather printing experiments. They also learned about atoms and polymers, how scientists study these materials, and how people use these materials daily.

Nanoscale Science Ph.D. student Margaret Kocherga, who is part of the Schmedake Research Group, showed students how various elements react, inviting the young scholars to participate in some experiments. View more photos on the College’s flickr.

CLAS involvement in the North Carolina Science Festival activities also has included the 6th annual UNC Charlotte Statewide Star Party on April 20 at the UNC Charlotte Observatory, as part of North Carolina’s annual statewide star party. Even more science activities presented by CLAS faculty, students and staff — along with many others from across the university — are planned for Sunday, April 29, as UNC Charlotte closes out the North Carolina Science Festival with its UNC Charlotte Science and Technology Expo.