Welcoming and saying farewell

(April 12) L to R: Tyler Liu, Charlie Diaz, Rob Rhew, Gigi Porter, Ella Dvorchak, Selena Shen, Sarah Ryu

This semester was a big one for our undergraduate researchers. First, two new talented students and promising researchers joined the group this semester: Ella Dvorchak (Environmental Earth Sciences) and Sarah Ryu (Environmental Sciences). They jumped right into the lab, advancing multiple projects throughout the semester and bringing in a new burst of energy.

Second, two of our hard-working and accomlished URAP members are graduating this May: Tyler Liu (Chemistry and Music) and Gigi Porter (Environmental Earth Science and French). We give our congratulations and wish them the best on their future ventures, which includes graduate school for Tyler.

As a team, we made major progress on several research goals, including: FRISC, MAGMA, Soil CO2 Flux with low-cost sensors, GC-MS cryotrap modifications, Flask Evacuation Line, and an April campus air sampling project. Students learned much more than how to use instruments - they learned how to test them, their limitations, hardware modifications, and how to build various components. The team presented on two of these projects at the BASC symposium in March, and we expect further outputs as we conduct more experiments this summer.

Congratulations on a productive and collaborative year!