Mohra: It is bittersweet to be writing this farewell blog post. I have enjoyed being a part of the Locomotion Lab for the past two and a half years, and hope to keep in touch with everyone after I graduate in May. I am so grateful for the feedback and support from the lab throughout my first research experience this year. For those of you who do not know, I researched shoulder muscle activity in string musicians for my senior comprehensive. Next year, I will be pursuing a master's degree and staying in the midwest. I hope to get my personal training certification soon and pursue PT school sometime in the future. With that, I will sign off. Wishing everyone a happy end to the semester and a great summer!
Hannah: A lot has been happening as senior year is coming to an end. After applying to veterinary school I, unfortunately, was not offered admission this year. Not the best news, but veterinary school admission is tough and I will be applying again next year so fingers crossed! In the meantime, I plan on getting more experience and potentially broadening my experience to include large animals as well. I have started applying for different jobs, but my main goal is to focus on this last semester to end on a good note in addition to getting my research ready for publication. I’m so excited to see what the future holds and am so thankful for my time at Saint Mary’s, especially my time in Dr. Young’s lab. Valerie: My time here at Saint Mary’s is quickly coming to an end. As the last few weeks are approaching, I have found myself reflecting on the experiences that Saint Mary’s that have prepared me for my next steps. My fieldwork experience last summer collecting data on squirrel morphology and acoustic behavior with Dr. Young and Dr. Kloepper reaffirmed my desire to pursue a career in biological research. This coming August, I will be attending graduate school at the University of New Hampshire where I will be pursuing my Master’s in Biology. I will be working with Dr. Kloepper on a research project using acoustics to estimate the population size of bats, penguins, and frogs! I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Young and the Locomotion Lab for adopting me for my last semester at Saint Mary’s and for supporting me through these last few months at Saint Mary’s. Adrienne: Hi everyone! Graduation feels especially bittersweet as I'm having to say goodbye to two amazing schools and groups of people at once. I'm so honored and grateful to have been adopted into the Young and Kloepper Labs last year; it has been such a wonderful and rewarding experience. I never could have imagined that my summer at Saint Mary's would have given me the opportunity to work on three separate wildlife projects, present a poster at SICB, potentially publish my research (stay tuned!), and meet some of the best people I've had the pleasure of working with. I learned about the realities of field work - good and bad, the importance of being adaptable, what goes into developing and executing a research project, and so much more. I am also forever grateful to this experience for helping me realize that my true passion lies in wildlife research, although engineering will always have a special place in my heart. Next year, I'll be attending the University of Michigan to pursue my Master's in Ecosystem Science and Management and continue along the path of wildlife and conservation research. I'm incredibly excited for this next stage, and I also have several amazing opportunities in the next few months before I start up school again. As I'm writing this I'm getting ready to head off to Greece for a month to study dolphins in the Aegean Sea, and over the summer I'll be studying abroad in Tanzania with a carnivore conservation program! Thank you so much to Dr. Young, Dr. Kloepper, Hannah and Valerie, and everyone else that made Saint Mary's feel like home. I truly couldn't have asked for a better team or a better undergraduate research experience. Much love to all! Lucy: I have been very busy lately working to prepare next year for my senior comp project which will be looking at how different surfaces, specifically sand and hardwood, impact knee angle flexion and the ACL. I recently gave an oral presentation on my project proposal - it was a bit daunting but very good practice! Also, my IRB proposal was approved last week so I can begin data collection as soon as the fall semester begins! As the end of the semester approaches, I am nervous to see what comes next, however I can’t wait to be doing my own research.
Hi everyone! We are just coming back from a much needed Spring Break, and are ready to finish out the semester!
Mohra: I recently gave an oral presentation about my research on trapezius and deltoid muscle activity in string musicians at Belle Biology Day with my fellow Locomotion Lab seniors. We also each presented an academic poster to faculty and students on the same weekend! Now that presentations are finished, I am finalizing my comprehensive research paper. In about a week, it will be ready to send to my committee and my senior comprehensive work will officially be done! I really enjoyed working with the Locomotion Lab members on this project throughout the past year and will cherish this valuable research experience! I am super excited that Jenna will be continuing research on sports-related muscle activity this upcoming year. For the rest of the semester, I will contemplate my next step. I am considering pursuing Movement Science research after graduation and eventually Physical Therapy school. I hope to become knowledgeable and qualified to prevent and rehabilitate performing arts based injuries. We'll see what life has in store for these next few months! Until next time! Jenna: I have been very busy the last couple weeks working on my proposal for my senior comprehensive research. I am excited to say that my research will focus on back muscle activation in bilateral and unilateral squats. I am looking at whether or not the unilateral squat has less back muscle activation than the bilateral squat, while still producing the same muscle activation in the leg. I am looking forward to working with Dr. Young and other members of the Locomotion Lab to tackle this new research idea! Hi all! As we are approaching spring, I have some exciting updates since my last post!
I recently finalized by analyses for my senior comp and my results indicate that strictly aquatic pleurodires and semi-aquatic emydids scaled with more geometrically similarity than softshells (trionychids). This was a very interesting (and unexpected) outcome, given the ecological differences between these groups. However, my results aligned with earlier results from SMC graduate Megan Saunders' (class of 2021) scaling work, which were conducted last year using a different method! There are still a couple loose ends to wrap up this project, which junior lab member Hana Larkins will be taking on for her senior comp work this coming year, so stay tuned for more to come! This past weekend, my fellow Locomotion Lab seniors and I were then able to present our research at Belle Biology Day. Seeing all of the support from friends, family, and faculty this weekend was awesome, and this experience not only helped strengthen my public speaking, but allowed me to share these great findings as well! I am now in the process of wrapping up the finishing touches on my comp paper and will hopefully have that completed soon. Once Hana's part of project is finished, we'll be putting all the pieces together for publication! I have learned so much valuable information about biomechanics overall, and turtle locomotion specifically, from joining this research project. I look forward to the upcoming work that rising seniors are doing to continue and complete this project!
We are happy to announce that we are continuing to work on expanding the ACL project that we started implementing last semester. We have expanded our research parameters to include college-age students from Holy Cross College and the University of Notre Dame as well as students at Saint Mary’s. It is our hope that adding these participants will allow us to compare the effects of ACL injuries on knee flexion in athletes of different sexes. In the future, we hope that the data collected in this project will be used by college-aged athletes to aid in recovery from ACL injuries and give athletes everywhere a greater understanding of how to treat and prevent these injuries. We are very excited to be working with Dr. Young, the human kinematics team, and the other new members of the Locomotion Lab to take our research in a new and exciting direction.
Valerie:
Hello everyone! Earlier this month Hannah, Adrienne, and I had a chance to attend SICB in Phoenix, Arizona. This was an exciting opportunity to go learn about research from every field of biology imaginable and I was able to present my research at the poster session. Prior to making the trip out to Phoenix, I was definitely feeling some nerves regarding my poster presentation and unsure of how more seasoned biologists would respond to my presentation; this was especially true since my presentation was the first of the three of us presenting in Phoenix. However, as soon as the poster presentation session began my nerves subsided. There were over a hundred posters presented at each poster session which means the people who chose to stop and listen to my talk were engaged and excited to hear about my research. This made presenting my research that much more enjoyable for myself. I especially enjoyed hearing other peoples ideas for how I could continue this research. As someone who is pursuing a career in academia, this was a very meaningful experience for me as it was my first in-person conference. I am definitely hoping I am able to return to SICB in the future to present my research and connect with like-minded people. Hannah: Hello! I also attended SICB in Phoenix, AZ. I presented my research on squirrel tail morphology. Being able to attend in person with Adrienne,Valerie, Dr. Young, and Dr. Kloepper was such an amazing experience. As this was my first conference I was super excited. Everyone at SICB was extremely welcoming and it was so cool to talk with so many different people with various research topics. I thought I was going to be more nervous presenting but the interest people showed, as well as the welcoming atmosphere of the conference, made presenting really enjoyable. I got some really good questions and had great conversations with a few people who also research arboreal locomotion. Apart from presenting, there were so many interesting talks on a wide variety of topics in biology. I learned a lot and really enjoyed my first conference experience. Although I am currently applying to vet school, I am excited to hopefully attend future SICB conferences! Adrienne: Hi everyone! It's been an amazing experience to be able to conduct and present research alongside Valerie and Hannah over the past several months. When I first reached out to Dr. Kloepper to see if I could help out on any projects at SMC over the summer, I never imagined I would end up presenting my own poster at SICB and spending a week in Phoenix with such a great team! It was my first conference experience, and although it felt a little daunting and overwhelming at first, I had a really good time and I'm so glad I was able to go. We listened to so many interesting talks and even got to explore the area a little bit between trips to the convention center. I also had way more fun than I expected presenting my work during the poster session; it makes a huge difference when everyone is genuinely interested and excited about what you're talking about! It was very cool to get feedback and suggestions from people with different perspectives, and I'm excited to apply some of those ideas as I continue my research. I can't wait for more opportunities like this one, and I definitely plan to return to SICB in the future. Hana: Unfortunately, due to the pandemic and being concerned for my family’s health, I had to step away from attending the SICB 2022 conference in person, but I was given the opportunity to present via SICB+! Though I wish I could have attended talks in person, it was still nice to be able to keep track of the conference on the SICB app. Switching to SICB+ was a little overwhelming with having to learn the ins and outs of the website, to filming a video to go alongside my poster presentation, it was a lot! (The video itself took about 50 takes) A lot happened with the pathable website and the SICB+ launch was unfortunately delayed, but it should be up now! I believe that if you’re a member you should be able to access it and you can check out the poster. It’s also hanging up in the science hall so feel free to check it out in person, if you are local. I am a little bummed that I wasn’t able to add in my basal y data so far, but it’s a work in progress so maybe I can present it soon! Now that SICB has passed, I have more time to focus on getting the basal y analysis up and running. Fingers crossed R Studio works this time! As of now, I’m working on the bias study with Dr. Young. I joined and worked on data collection for this project over break through the start of January, so that we could get the data analysis running. Now it’s time to get a rough draft composed so we can get the results published soon! Keep an eye out for updates! Hi everyone! My name is Hana Larkins and I am so excited to be able to finally introduce myself. I’m a junior biology major and I’ve been researching limb bone scaling and shape in pleurodire and semi-aquatic cryptodire turtles since spring of 2021 with Dr. Young. It’s been a lot of data analysis on a phylogenetic tree containing three different types of turtles - Pleurodires, Tryonychids, and Emydids, but it’s been very interesting so far! I was very interested in studying animals, specifically biomechanics, and getting involved in research at SMC and was thankfully referred to Dr. Young. We haven’t made much progress since a lot of this research involves data analysis via Mesquite and running code on RStudio, both of which never fail to give me a headache. We were having trouble running the code for a while now, but I believe we may have cracked the case! If all goes well, we can finally move on to the next step. Besides that, most of this semester has been trying to get prepared for my first SICB conference in January and I’m so excited! Stay tuned for a SICB update in the spring!
Hello everyone! My name is Jenna Bowman and I am a junior biology major who has been recently added to the locomotion lab at Saint Mary's College this semester. I am very excited to be working with Dr. Young and Mohra Anderson on the project regarding the shoulder study, which is looking at the muscle activity of the shoulder in string musicians. I have been helping Mohra with data collection and learning the ropes of the electromyography with a few bumps in the road here and there. Most importantly, working on this project has gotten me interested in other ways upper extremity injuries can be prevented such as the common ulnar collateral ligament tear seen in baseball pitchers. I hope to aim my own research at this idea and learn more about the ways young pitchers can prevent this injury.
Hello everyone! My name is Emily Sierakowski and I am a sophomore biology major with hopes of going to medical school and eventually becoming an orthopedic surgeon. I have been working in Dr. Young's Locomotion Lab for two years now. Both of these years I have been on the ACL project. In the future, I am hoping to find a less invasive way to repair ACLs and other ligaments. This lab is helping me fuel my passion more and more because you can see how poor surgical experiences can lead to difficulties in people's everyday lives.
I am very excited to continue data collection this year! We are broadening our study to the tri-campus community so we can compare males' and females' knee function. We look at people that have previously injured their knees or people that have perfectly healthy knees! I love working with the Locomotion Team and I cannot wait to see where this study takes us! Hello, everyone! I hope that your week has been going well and you and your families have been remaining healthy. My name is Caroline Kopack and I am a junior at Saint Mary’s College. I have been working in Dr. Young’s Locomotion Lab for almost three years now, and I am so happy to be taking over the ACL research project this semester. As a former athlete that suffered from several ankle, knee, and hip injuries, the ACL project and the research conducted by the Locomotion Lab encouraged me to get involved in research as a freshman. I am currently working towards a major in biology with an emphasis on molecular biology. I am also working towards a double minor in Spanish and chemistry. After Saint Mary’s, I plan to go to medical school to study internal medicine and specialize in sports medicine.
There are several exciting changes coming to the ACL project that we have started implementing this semester. We are expanding our research parameters to include college-age male and female students from Holy Cross College and Notre Dame University (in addition to new Saint Mary's College participants). It is our hope that adding these participants will allow us to compare knee function across men and women with and without a history of ACL injury. I am excited to be working with Dr. Young, the ACL team, and the other members of the Locomotion Lab to take our research in a new and exciting direction. |
AuthorsAlok Agwick Archives
February 2024
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