Mizzou Logo
By Sarah Kiefer A strong, stable stem is like Rachel Weber’s career in plant biology. Weber started in a research lab only a few months after she stepped onto the University of Missouri campus for the first time. “I was really excited and surprised because I didn’t expect as a freshman to have this opportunity,”…
By Sarah Kiefer It was a dark and stormy night … While this line sets an eerie scene in many mystery novels, the setting isn’t often a lab bench. For Lara Stefani, suspense bleeds over between her hobbies and work. Stefani writes and reads science fiction to activate her artistic side, but as an undergraduate…
By Sarah Kiefer On the weekends, the “tornado machine” was the highlight, one of Emily Giri’s favorite parts about her dad being a meteorologist. “I was a very weird child,” Giri said. “In kindergarten, someone gifted me an encyclopedia about horses, and that was the best thing I had at the time.” Between a tornado…
By Sarah Kiefer It all started with the glow of a blacklight. In a simple experiment in high school biology, DNA from a jellyfish was put into the bacteria E. coli demonstrating the basics of genetic engineering. Saad Raza was hooked. Science became something that would fascinate and inspire him simultaneously. “I just thought that…
By Sarah Kiefer Nylon, ribbon and cotton are just some of the materials that make up cosplay costumes that fill convention centers. Natalie Arnold often participates in these conventions, picking new, fictitious characters to bring to life in costume form. She enjoys the imaginative layers that it adds to her work. Arnold has always been a theater…
By Sarah Kiefer Summer break. For most students it’s a time to relax and unwind from school, but for Samuel Anakpeba-Dinguyella, he saw it as an opportunity to exercise his creativity in new and inventive ways. “My mom was washing dishes and I was in the living room. I was just messing around,” Anakpeba-Dinguyella said.…
By Sarah Kiefer Barriers in science can come in many different forms, whether it be through the force of a magnetic field, an experiment gone awry or communication between people. Kevin Muñoz Forti makes it a part of his daily work to break down these issues and work towards solutions. Muñoz Forti facilitates a system…
By Sarah Kiefer Musical notes once filled Maggs X’s mind, when they were preparing to be an opera singer and showcased their voice to all who would listen. Now, instead of reading sheet music, X reads the gene expression profiles collected from the organs of Mexican cavefish. But they wouldn’t have it any other way.…
By Sarah Kiefer Thousands of cells are made into gel-emulsified droplets and are quickly surrounded in a bed of oil — all in a day’s work for Grant Zane. Grant Zane is a research specialist lead at the University of Missouri Genomics Technology Core in Bond LSC where he performs these types of experiments and…
Roman Ganta, Bond LSC principal investigator and professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Sarah Kiefer Most people don’t find their area of research by contracting a disease, but Roman Ganta did. When Ganta caught malaria in graduate school, the illness plagued him…
