Daisy Alvarado and Dalia Hasan, former Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Research Scholars and recent graduates of St. John's University, presented their individual research at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting this spring. The conference gave the two chemistry majors the opportunity to learn about new research techniques, careers in STEM, and strategies for applying to graduate school.
Seeking to enhance their learning experiences outside of the classroom, two St. John’s chemistry majors joined an estimated 6,000 scientists at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD, during the spring semester and presented their individual research on the alpha-synuclein protein.
The students, Daisy Alvarado ’19C and Dalia Hasan ’19C, were both Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Research Scholars at St. John’s last summer.
“It was an amazing opportunity to showcase our research alongside our mentor, Professor Frank X. Vazquez, Ph.D.,” said Ms. Hasan. “We were also introduced to research that was very similar to ours, and we learned research techniques that we could implement in our work.”
“Daisy and Dalia are amazing students who did impressive work in my research group,” said Dr. Vazquez, Assistant Professor of Chemistry in St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “They are both extremely intelligent and hard-working students and have done a great job learning how to use computational chemistry to study protein systems. Their work will lead to a new understanding of how proteins interact with each other inside of the cell.”
