When COVID-19 upended summer opportunities, Colgate students devised creative strategies.
Jumping worm invasions shoot through forests, devastating local ecologies. Determined to better understand these volatile animals, biology major Kaleigh Gale ’21 researched the impact of jumping worms in the Northeast. She focused on the effect they have on soil, plants, and other earthworm species. After developing and sending a survey to master gardener programs across the Northeast, she discovered that jumping worms are more prevalent than had been previously thought. Realizing the importance of spreading awareness, she submitted her results for publication.
In Aztec Mexico, cotton was spun, woven, and embellished to construct textiles for clothing. Anna Brown ’21 embarked on an intensive study of Aztec cotton cloth production, drawing on her experiences as an anthropology and Spanish double major. Homing in on late post-classic Mexico, she reviewed archaeological data and the pertinent literature on the subject. She plans to expand on her research by studying 3D images of late post-classic spindle whorls at Colgate.
For Vani Kanoria ’22, the intersection of biology and technology presented an exciting chance to study an organic regulatory network. Putting her applied mathematics major to work, she practiced innovative methods of mathematical modeling to recreate real-life processes in cells. Using probability and differential equations in lines of code, she was able to mimic natural biological behavior. Her endeavors culminated in new knowledge surrounding gene expression variation.