Alex Loomis [junior Microbiology major]: I got into research, actually, my freshman year. I got an e-mail asking if we were interested in biology research, and it was a seminar course. I started there. Professors came in and talked to us about their research, and then they gave us an opportunity to do rounds in different labs. And from there, I ended up here and I've been here since my sophomore year.

The project that I'm working on is part of Rachael's [Rachael Morgan-Kiss, Assistant Professor of Microbiology, Miami University] Antarctic algae. I'm using two Antarctic algae strains as well as an Ohio algae strain. I grow my algae. We start off in what's called a shaker flask, where it constantly spins, and then we'll transfer it to algal tubes, which we grow in the tanks behind me and from there I can run my experiments.

Today I was running an experiment on my algae, where I put different concentrations of a chemical into their growth media to induce reactive oxygen species, which will stress the organism. And my goal was to measure the reaction to these chemicals to see a difference and if they might be more resistant to the reactive oxygen species than other algae.

[February 2011]