13th Annual QU Sigma Xi Conference (2024)

April 21st Abstract submission deadline https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SigmaXiQU2024

• Posters are 4' long by 3' high. You can either :
• print the poster as a  large document (Staples or Kinkos Fedex North Haven) and clip it (clips provided) to the trifold
• template1
• template2
• OR print 8.5x11 inch sheets and bring thumb tacks and come early and tack the sheets to your board.

April 24th -- Distinguished Speaker and Student Poster Public Viewing

• Poster Hours: 3:00-5:00 pm 
• Students present posters with public attendance (students will be at their poster either 3:00-4:00 or 4:00-5:00, they can visit other posters during the other hour) 
• TBA # of posters
• View the abstracts here: https://tinyurl.com/SigmaXiQU2024 (not live yet)

• Poster Session 3:00 – 5:00 PM on Burt Kahn Court in the Recreation and Wellness Center (students assigned first or second hour to attend to their poster).  To help out judging, contact Neil Schultes (Neil.Schultes@ct.gov) or me (james.kirby@quinnipiac.edu).

• Distinguished Speaker: 5:15pm, followed by Student Awards 
• Sigma Xi Tour Speaker:  5:15 PM also on Burt Kahn Court:  Dr. David Bader, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (title and abstract to follow in our next e-mail; information below Dr. Bader’s website: https://davidbader.net/).
• David A. Bader is a Distinguished Professor and founder of the Department of Data Science in the Ying Wu College of Computing and Director of the Institute for Data Science at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Prior to this, he served as founding Professor and Chair of the School of Computational Science and Engineering, College of Computing, at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, AAAS, and SIAM; a recipient of the IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award; and the 2022 Innovation Hall of Fame inductee of the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering. The Computer History Museum recognizes Bader for developing the first Linux-based supercomputer which became the predominant architecture for all major supercomputers in the world.

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society Seminar Series presents Dr. Scott Davies

 Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society

Seminar Series presents

Dr. Scott Davies

Associate Professor of Biology, Quinnipiac University

“Coping with environmental change:

Reproductive adjustments of songbirds to urban living”

 

Monday, April 1 at 2:00 PM in Student Center 119

Urbanization profoundly alters the environment and forces urban organisms to adjust to the new conditions. Since urban areas are one of the most rapidly expanding habitat types worldwide, the potential impact of urbanization on biodiversity is substantial. There is, therefore, an urgent need to understand the mechanisms responsible for adjustment to these new habitats.

Like most wild animals, birds have distinct seasonal breeding periods that are synchronized with optimal environmental conditions to maximize reproductive success. Hence, it may be advantageous for urban birds to adjust the timing of reproductive activity to local environmental conditions. This presentation will describe how wild songbirds adjust their reproductive activity to live in urban areas and explore the mechanisms responsible for these adjustments.

Dr. Scott Davies is originally from the United Kingdom and got his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Wales, Bangor. He moved to the USA to complete his PhD at Arizona State University studying the reproductive endocrinology of urban birds. He then continued his work on the physiology of urban living as a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech and the University of Nevada, Reno.  He has been at Quinnipiac since 2017.

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society Seminar Series presents Dr. Neil Schultes

 Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society

Seminar Series presents

Dr. Neil Schultes

Associate Agricultural Scientist,

The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station

“Fire blight – a bacterial scourge of apple production”

Tuesday, March 5 at 3:30 PM in Buckman Theater

Fire blight is a devastating disease affecting apple and pear production.  The pathogen is a Gram-negative bacterium called Erwinia amylovora that is native to North America but readily infects apple and pear trees that originated in the old world.  This disease was first described in 1787 and due to modern cultivation practices has become a major problem in apple production.  This talk will give an introduction into the biology of this plant pathogen, describe current control practices and present some current lab based research into future disease management strategies.

 

Dr. Schultes received his Ph.D. in Genetics at Harvard Medical School and did postdoctoral research at Yale University before joining CAES in 1994, where he has advanced from Assistant Scientist to his current position.

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society Seminar Series presents Dr. Rebekah Stein

 Wednesday, November 8 at 1:00 PM in Student Center 120

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society Seminar Series 

presents Dr. Rebekah Stein, 

Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Quinnipiac University 

“Environmental Controls on Plant ‘Isotope Biogeochemistry’”

The topics of this talk primarily center on carbon and its bonds with other elements in common organic compounds within plants. Namely, plants change their isotope biogeochemistry as a result of changed physiological behavior in times of stress (often related to environmental stressors). This includes factors such as atmospheric composition (e.g., carbon dioxide, oxygen), water availability (e.g., precipitation), temperature, and more. These changes can be measured in the laboratory and can be used as tools to examine the impacts of climate change on our biological carbon sink as well as feeding behaviors (in agriculture and humans, microbes, pollinators, and more). The breadth of uses for isotope biogeochemistry is wide; this talk will demonstrate several potential uses, including those going on at QU.

Rebekah Stein graduated with a PhD in Environmental Geochemistry & Paleoclimatology from the University of Michigan in 2020, where she focused on how modern and ancient plants and soils were impacted by carbon dioxide and water availability. She continued this work in more complex plant compounds during a postdoctoral fellowship at University of California, Berkeley until she joined the faculty at Quinnipiac University. She teaches environmental science and chemistry courses from her role in the Department of Chemistry & Physical Sciences.

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society Seminar Series presents Dr. Hany Dweck

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society

Seminar Series presents Dr. Hany Dweck, Assistant Scientist II, Department of Entomology, CT Agricultural Experiment Station

“How Does Spotted Lanternfly Smell its Chemical World?”

Tuesday, December 5 at 10:00 AM in Student Center 120

The spotted lanternfly (SLF), first found in North America in Pennsylvania in late 2014, is a serious invasive pest. It possesses piercing-sucking mouthparts that puncture plant stems, leaves, and fruit to feed on the sap, affecting over 70 different plant species, including economically important ones such as grapevines, maple trees, black walnut, birch, willow, and others. This feeding activity weakens and stresses plants, making them more susceptible to diseases and environmental stressors, potentially leading to decreased health and tree mortality. Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) reports that approximately half of the state's trees are threatened by the SLF invasion. SLF, like numerous other insects, primarily relies on olfactory cues to locate its host trees. Additionally, olfaction plays a crucial role for the SLF in predator avoidance, aggregation, mate selection, and identifying suitable sites for feeding and depositing its egg masses. In this seminar, we will delve into the olfactory mechanisms and their pivotal role in an interaction that holds both economic urgency and fundamental biological significance: the interaction between SLF and Connecticut's trees. Through a comprehensive exploration of the olfactory mechanisms underlying the SLF-Connecticut's trees interaction, we aspire to make significant contributions to our understanding of this ecological relationship and uncover novel strategies for effective pest control.

Dr. Dweck has been a Chemical ecologist and Assistant Scientist II in the department of Entomology at the Connecticut Agricultural Station since January 2023. He earned a B.Sc. and M.Sc. at Cairo University, Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, and conducted postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. John Carlson at Yale University.  He was born in Giza, Egypt, and has lived in Sweden, Germany, and the United States.  He is also a proud husband and father of two boys. His laboratory studies how crop pests find their host plants, communicate, and avoid danger using tools and techniques from various fields, including behavior, electrophysiology, analytical chemistry, molecular biology, and genetics.

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society Seminar Series presents Dr. Marta Clepper,

Quinnipiac Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society

Seminar Series presents

 Dr. Marta Clepper, Assistant Teaching Professor of Physical Science at Quinnipiac University

“Is a Category 6 Hurricane on the Horizon?”

Monday, October 2 at 3:00 PM in Buckman Theater (BC 150)

This talk will include discussion on hurricanes, understanding why and where they form, and a look at some historical hurricanes. Past and present trends on numbers of hurricanes and links to changes in the Earth’s climate will be examined. Finally, a look at the impacts hurricanes have on coastal communities and environments and what can be done to protect them from the dual threat of rising sea levels and increasing strengths of these storms. 

Dr. Clepper is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Physical Sciences who has been at Quinnipiac University for six years. She earned a BS in Geology at Columbus State University (Columbus, GA), as MS in Geology at the University of Texas El Paso (El Paso, TX), and a PhD in Geology at the University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY). She teaches Earth Sciences and Natural Disasters at Quinnipiac. She has done research on the origins of zircon minerals in the Southern Appalachians, paleoclimate from 12 million years ago in western Texas, and the lithology and sedimentary depositional history of the 450-million-year-old Lexington Limestone Formation of central Kentucky. 

12th Annual QU Sigma Xi Conference (2023)

12th Annual QU Sigma Xi Conference (2023)

12th Annual QU Sigma Xi Conference (2023)

April 21st Abstract submission deadline https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SigmaXiQU2023

April 26th -- Distinguished Speaker and Student Poster Public Viewing

• Poster Hours: 3:30-5:30 pm 
• Students present posters with public attendance (students will be at their poster either 3:30-4:30 or 4:30-5:30, they can visit other posters during the other hour) 
• TBA # of posters, view the abstracts here: https://tinyurl.com/SigmaXiQU2023 (not live yet)
• 5:30
• Student Awards
• Induction Ceremony for new members
• Paper of the Year Award
• Distinguished Speaker: 5:45pm 
• Speaker name: M. S. Shur, Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180
• Program name: Ultraviolet Light Emitting Diodes Save Lives