RESEARCH
Presentation Days Amaze For two days each year, more than 100 students participate in Presentation Days, a celebration of student projects representing every department at the College. Faculty or staff advisors worked with student researchers throughout the year on projects that included documenting the history of the College and imagining the future of spring-loaded crutches. Here are details on those projects and a few more.
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H UMANITIES, SO CI AL S CIENCES, AN D TH E ARTS
BI O LO GY
SHA NA HA N S T U DE N T- DIR E C T E D PR O JE C T
Control of Gene Expression Profiles within the RpoS Regulon of E. coli K-12
Autonomous Campus Robot
Independent Study: History Advisor: Jeff Groves, professor of literature Student: Ali Khan ’19 Aiming to establish a historical archive for the College, Ali Khan ’19 interviewed witnesses to the founding of the College and examined how the community has upheld the mission statement throughout its history. Working with Professor Jeff Groves and Bates Collection Librarian Michael Palmer, Khan collected historical documents and recorded interviews with 33 people related to the College. HMC community members can access the archive at tinyurl.com/ MuddArchive.
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HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE
Advisor: Daniel Stoebel, associate professor of biology Student: Christopher R. Doering ’19 The E. coli sigma factor RpoS controls the bacterium’s general stress response: a wide-reaching change in gene expression to react to harmful conditions such as low pH, DNA damage and nutrient starvation. With varying concentrations of RpoS, RpoS-dependent promoters produce different patterns of response which can be generally grouped into a few categories. This project sought to characterize the causes of the observed expression profiles. Using an RNA-seq assay, Doering assessed expression across the genome of strains containing key transcription factor knockouts. These knockouts might be important to expression pattern formation, identify the causative agents of the patterns and reveal general trends behind observed expression profiles.
Advisor: Zach Dodds, Leonhard-Johnson-Rae Professor of Computer Science Students: Adrian Sanchez Arias ’19, Geneva Ecola ’19, John Lee ’19, Tianyi Ma ’19, Maxwell Maleno ’20, David Olumese ’19, Andrew Pham ’20, Aomsin Pongpiriyakarn ’20, Willis Sanchez-duPont ’19, Shiv Seetharaman ’19, Jingnan Shi ’19, Samantha Ting ’20 Autonomous systems are emerging in everyday life and transforming numerous industries. The goal of Autonomous Campus Robot is to bring this technology to students by having them build a small vehicle capable of navigating from point A to point B on campus without human control or intervention. The robot had an internal map of campus enabling it to autonomously navigate Mudd’s sidewalks while simultaneously avoiding obstacles. Students saw two potential applications for this robot: 1) delivery for the student eatery Jay’s Place, and 2) shuttle transport between the residential and academic ends of campus. The robot platform allows students to implement cutting-edge algorithms in autonomous navigation and machine learning.
