University of Missouri

June 23, 2023

Cherng Scholar Rachel Weber

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,” Weber said. Weber began by studying lignin with Jaime Barros-Rios, an assistant professor in the Division of Plant Science & Technology at MU. Now, she is continuing her lab experience as one of fourteen Cherng Summer Scholarship recipients for…

June 16, 2023

Cherng Scholar Lara Stefani

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 researcher in the Lloyd Sumner lab at Bond LSC she recently received a Cherng Summer Scholarship to be a detective of sorts on her own research project. “Mystery enables me to explore the human depths with different ways of…

June 2, 2023

#IAmScience Emily Giri

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 simulation and an encyclopedia, Giri identifies these memories as foundational moments in her life that helped her down a path toward science. But, she still had to choose which specialty to devote her time and energy towards. Giri tussled with…

May 26, 2023

#IAmScience Saad Raza

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 was the coolest thing in the world, and that was what got me into science,” Raza said. Raza, a member of the Bing Yang lab, sharpens his skills in the lab using various techniques to edit the genetic…

May 19, 2023

#IAmScience Natalie Arnold

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 kid, more interested in fine arts than math and science. She realized much later that science might be an option for her. “I especially found earth science and atmospheric science extremely fascinating when I was younger,” Arnold said.

May 5, 2023

#IAmScience Samuel Anakpeba-Dinguyella

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. “I remember holding a pair of dividers and a compass just trying to take apart the radio in the living room and that’s when I was like, I want to be a scientist. But, that started the angle…

April 28, 2023

#IAmScience Kevin Muñoz Forti

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 of communication and outreach in more ways than one through his work at Bond LSC as a Ph.D. candidate. He works in the Gary Weisman lab where he researches nucleotide receptors and how they change the inflammatory…

April 21, 2023

#IAmScience Maggs X

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. “I wanted to be an opera singer, but when I got there I was like, this doesn’t really suit me because I wanted to use my mind more intellectually,” said X, a postdoctoral fellow in the Wes Warren…

April 14, 2023

#IAmScience Grant Zane

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 more. “What made research really fun is essentially not knowing and then being the first one who gets to figure it out,” Zane said. “There’s a question that’s not yet answered.” From researchers on campus to scientists around the country,…

April 12, 2023

MizzouForward hire Ganta paves way for new research on tick-borne diseases at Bond LSC

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 with recurring symptoms for six to seven months. The mosquito-borne disease wasn’t uncommon at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, in New Delhi, India, where he was earning his Ph.D. in Biochemistry, and he experienced symptoms every month. Going through this illness…

April 11, 2023

Yang uses CRISPR-Cas9 technology to fight bacterial infections in plants

Bing Yang, a Bond Life Sciences Center researcher and MU professor of plant sciences. | Photo by Josie Heimsoth By Josie Heimsoth | Bond LSC When it comes to making better crops, CRISPR-Cas9 based gene editing have revolutionized plant science with its ability to more precisely and quickly alter plant DNA. But the technology can also aid researchers in finding weaknesses in the enemies of crops like rice. Bing Yang, a Bond Life Sciences Center researcher and MU professor of plant sciences, recently used the genome editing tool to modify bacteria responsible for rice blight, and it…

April 7, 2023

#IAmScience Clement Bagaza

By Sarah Kiefer  Arabidopsis may just look like a small, kelly-green weed to the naked eye, but this plant holds a particular importance in the lab. For first-generation college student, Clement Bagaza, it’s part of why he moved to the United States. Coming from Rwanda, Africa, he found an opportunity to study plants and experience a different lifestyle than the one he would have had back home. He now studies seed amino acid regulation in the Ruthie Angelovici lab at Bond LSC. “When I came here, I didn’t know where to go. I thought working…