Biochemistry majors and rising juniors Whitney Zayas and Marissa Johnson spent the summer monitoring air quality in DC’s Brentwood neighborhood under the mentorship of Dr. Shizuka Hsieh, Professor of Chemistry. Whitney compared three air quality monitors — low-cost metal-oxide sensors against a commercial photoionization detector — and found that accuracy shifts with humidity, temperature, and sensor type, work aimed at giving residents an affordable, understandable way to read their own air. Marissa used handheld monitors and GC-MS analysis to measure volatile organic compounds; while levels fell within typical EPA ambient ranges, she flagged long-term resident exposure to benzene, a known carcinogen, as an ongoing concern.

Favour Clifford, a Biology and Psychology major and rising junior, investigated whether the chemicals coating thermal paper receipts interfere with DNA analysis, mentored by Dr. Jason Davinson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Catholic University of America. She analyzed more than 200 receipts with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on the Keratin 19 gene marker to show that both the paper and its chemical coatings inhibit cell amplification. Favour plans to become a physician and expects to use PCR, gel electrophoresis, and FTIR throughout her career.

Esther Joseph, a Biology major and rising junior, and Laressa Hernandez, a rising senior, tested whether vitamin D2 protects yeast cells under stress — UV exposure in Esther’s work, acetic acid in Laressa’s — under the mentorship of Dr. Cynthia Deboy, Clare Boothe Luce Professor of Biology. By treating cells with varying vitamin D2 concentrations, they found that the vitamin did not significantly improve cell viability as hypothesized, but did support cell cycle progression. Both students came away fluent in cell culture, stress-response protocols, and microscopy-based cell cycle analysis.

“This is not something that I was able to get outside of Trinity, and Trinity made it possible for me to do something that I really love in science.” — Esther Joseph

Nursing major and second-semester junior Margot Malumbu examined whether experimental treatments can restore the shape of oligodendrocytes — cells damaged in multiple sclerosis that are critical for signal transmission in the brain. Mentored by Dr. Paheli Desai-Chowdry, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Margot used Python and machine learning classification to test whether treated and untreated cells could be reliably distinguished by morphology alone. Remarkably, she learned both skills from scratch, having had no background in mathematics or programming before this summer.

Biology major and rising junior Nila Smartt researched whether tampons alter the pH of vaginal fluid and whether they release chemicals or particles that could affect women’s health, mentored by Drs. Wellens and Casiano-Negroni. Using pH monitoring, microscopy, and GC-MS analysis, she found no significant pH change — but did discover that tampons shed fibers into the surrounding fluid and produced unexpected bubbling suggestive of detergent-like compounds. The findings point toward better-informed product choices and open questions in women’s reproductive health.