SURES Week of July 17

 

Map of the University of Kentucky campus.  The soil sampling sites by the SURES students are indicated by the red stars.

On Tuesday, discussed how to create professional CVs and resumes.  

 On Thursday, first met with Dr. Jason Unrine  talked  about his career journey as well as some of his research projects pertaining to heavy metals in the environment.  We learned about the work of a former SURES student, Julianna Dantzer which involved the analyses of lead levels of children and the extent to which these levels correlated with that in blood and IQ.  He also talked to us about his role as Director of the Kentucky Water Institute and its work in maintaining healthy and sustainable water for Kentucky’s communities.    He then showed us the lead levels that he had determined from the soil samples that we collected on campus.  The values ranged from 30.4 mg/kg to 55.7 mg/kg.  It appeared that the samples with the highest lead concentrations were from soil that was next to roadways.  Fortunately, all of the levels were well within the normal background levels typically found in Kentucky.

SURES Week of July 10

 

On Tuesday, we met with our Co-Director, Dr. Kevin Pearson  who discussed his career journey and his research on maternal exposure to environmental contaminants such as PCBs and the impact of exercise in modulating the effects of these exposures. 

On Wednesday, some of us attended the ice cream social hosted by UK’s Office of Undergraduate Research and got to meet students participating on other summer research programs.

 On Thursday, we met On Thursday, we met with Associate Dean Wendy Jackson who described the processes involved in admissions to UK Medical School and gave us great advice on how to improve our applications.  Afterwards, we painted depictions of our summer research projects which helped us visualize the science behind our work.