When a high school math teacher saw a need for education reform, she ended up in the perfect position to make a difference.

Amber Simpson went back to school for her doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction in mathematics education at Clemson University. Now she’s an assistant professor of math education at Binghamton University.

“I had no idea what a PhD actually meant or required,” Simpson says. “But I started taking research classes and my world just flipped. I loved how you can contribute to the education field through research, and so that was a huge eye-opening experience for me, almost by happenstance.”

At Binghamton, Simpson says she has focused her research and coursework on changing the stigma associated with math education.

“Most students think of learning mathematics as, ‘Let me sit at my desk, listen to the teacher present procedures and do my homework,’” Simpson says. “But there’s a lot of research that supports the idea of inquiry, allowing kids to brainstorm ways to solve the problem through various approaches and having classroom discussions about their strategies.” 

In spring 2019, Simpson designed and taught a service-learning course called Making and Tinkering — an education class focused on design, physical creation and problem-solving. Students worked in groups to develop youth making programs. They implemented them in the community through a partnership with the Windsor Central School District and Your Home Public Library in Johnson City, Simpson says.

“Makerspaces provide a place for anyone to just go and make things, and tinker with things,” Simpson says. “Making can including high-tech tools such as 3D printers and laser cutters, low-tech tools such as makey-makeys and arduinos, or upcycled materials such as cardboard and yogurt containers. All of it has a huge presence within STEM education and as part of my research, I examine the role of making and tinkering for young children and educators.”

Jose A. Morales Collazo, a doctoral student in the department of teaching, learning and educational leadership, has worked with Simpson since she came to Binghamton in 2017. He attributes much of his success to her guidance.

“I was very intrigued by Dr. Simpson because she was this energetic person that was coming in with this fire,” Collazo says. “I waited a little bit, but then I just went to her office and knocked on her door and asked if I could help. … We started with just a smaller project that she was working on. And currently we are working on four projects involving STEM identity and meta-analysis.”

Simpson has published work in identity research, particularly STEM identity research, which is driven by her fascination of what people experience and their stories, she says. 

Aside from developing unique curricula, Simpson is involved in community research. She was awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant to work with families and engineers on considering the engineering design process in their own home and/or community. Simpson says families are guided by local engineers and students on how to come up with solutions or prototypes for something they see as a problem.

“The family engagement piece is sort of a newer interest of mine,” Simpson says, “and I always try to build in identity research and making and tinkering into my projects. So this particular grant has all three of my research studies coinciding.”

While drivers may be thankful for salted roads in the winter, biologist Grascen Shidemantle is determined to find out whether they’re harming animals. 

Shidemantle, a doctoral student at Binghamton University, studies how human activity and pollution affects amphibians on sublethal levels. She studies their physiology, behavior and interactions in the lab of Jessica Hua, an assistant professor of biological sciences. 

“Across the globe, we see that amphibian populations are declining,” Shidemantle says. “By trying to figure out how human activities influence these animals, we can get a better idea of why we’re seeing decreases.” 

Shidemantle grew up watching countless hours of Animal Planet in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania. While studying biology at Slippery Rock University, her love of animals attracted her to a research lab that studied the effects of pesticides on amphibians, equipping her with a range of skills in toxicology and endocrinology — the study of hormones and their associated glands.  

At Binghamton, Shidemantle is working on two studies: One explores the relationship between salt-tolerance and stress levels in wood frogs; another compares physiological differences in salt-tolerant and non-tolerant populations. 

The former project is conducted with an Onondaga Community College student through the Bridges to the Baccalaureate Program, which introduces community college students to research as they transition to four-year colleges. With guidance from Shidemantle, these undergraduates study corticosterone levels, or stress hormones, in wood frogs using equipment that Shidemantle helped purchase and taught other lab students how to use. 

“Before Grascen, my lab didn’t have the capacity of measuring corticosterone levels,” Hua says. “A lot of the chemicals that contaminate the ecosystem are endocrine disruptors. For example, there are pesticides that can cause male frogs to become female frogs when exposed at low levels. Grascen’s expertise of endocrinology helps us understand why and how these chemicals modify hormones. And how that affects an organism’s responses at a larger level.”

Shidemantle and her mentee’s corticosterone research is expected to be published before the end of the year. 

“Now all of a sudden everybody in my lab wants to do hormone research,” Hua jokes. “But what really makes Grascen so impressive is her genuine desire to do good for the world.”

Shidemantle recently received a 2019 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP), as well as grants from the NYS Wetlands Forum, the Society for Freshwater Science and the Pymatuning Lab of Ecology run by the University of Pittsburgh. 

She will soon visit with a collaborator in Spain to learn techniques to measure another form of stress — oxidative stress — that occurs when there is an imbalance of harmful free radicals and antioxidants that act as neutralizers. This study involves two other graduate students in Hua’s lab.

“I feel like science is changing in a really positive way,” Shidemantle says. “It used to be that if you didn’t know something you weren’t a good scientist. Now I feel that scientists are more open about having questions or hardships, whether it’s in terms of your research and experiments or like personal issues that come up by being in this field.”

There are two common methods of teaching sex education in public schools: one based in science and another based on morals. At one point, however, the two weren’t much different, a Binghamton University researcher says.

“I look at events that happened in the 1920s, such as immigration reform and education reform, and observe why sex education shifted from a morally focused approach to a science-based approach during the progressive era,” says Julia Devin, a doctoral student.

Devin, a Los Angeles native, studied history at Seattle Pacific University before earning master’s degrees in educational foundations from California State University, Los Angeles, and in history from Binghamton. Though she was initially interested in standardization in public schools, women’s history grabbed her curiosity.

“There’s a belief that education is an equalizer,” Devin says, “but when I started teaching at a low-income, high immigrant-populated school in east LA, I realized schools fail students in a lot of ways, and I wanted to understand why.”

By examining the records of school boards and community organizations in major cities during the progressive era, Devin found that some schools encouraged certain groups to reproduce — and encouraged other groups not to reproduce — based on racial assumptions.

In its early practice, science-based sex education was tied to eugenics, or the science of improving a human population through controlled breeding, says Devin, recipient of a 2018 American Association of University Women fellowship.

Eugenics was considered by many to be a legitimate academic subject in the 1920s. Schools had the power to diagnose female students with “sex delinquency,” and could deem them unfit to reproduce. These young women, often immigrants, were sent to institutions and forcibly sterilized based on the results of IQ tests. Individuals who scored relatively well but were, nevertheless, identified as inferior in some way, were subjected to an emerging form of this science-based sex education that discussed racial fitness and eugenics, Devin says.

“Reproductive rights is different from reproductive justice,” Devin says. “Today, women of color have higher rates of complications during pregnancy and childbirth than white women. So there have been injustices related to race and reproduction going all the way back to slavery.”

She will be collaborating with Family Planning of South Central New York in Binghamton throughout the 2018-2019 academic year to create educational events on reproductive justice. That work is supported through another fellowship for public history from Binghamton’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities (IASH) and Humanities New York.  

“Julia’s research intersects with her background in education,” says Leigh Ann Wheeler, Devin’s advisor and professor of history at Binghamton. Wheeler believes Devin’s passion stems from her experience working with immigrant and low-income students and colleagues in Los Angeles.

“She’s a fantastic teacher, and she gets energized by interacting with students,” Wheeler says. “She finds that she’s more efficient in her research when she is teaching.”

Devin says she hopes to encourage dialogue among historians, health leaders and individuals in the community through her research.

“There’s a wide variety of people who have looked at the history of sex education, but not a lot of people have connected it to this larger time period with immigration, race and standardization,” Devin says. “I’m trying to show that they’re a lot more connected than we thought.”

Mclauchlin, a rising senior at Binghamton University, grabbed the attention of Jessica Hua, an assistant professor of biological sciences, not only with his scientific background but also with his art portfolio.

With guidance from Hua, Mclauchlin created an interactive art exhibit with 20 pieces ranging from a painting of tadpoles to a papier-mâché organism. The project explored art’s influence on perception of research.

“It was a combination of two studies actually,” says Mclauchlin, an environmental studies and graphic design major. “We not only tested for perception of research, but also for comprehension and retention of information in the exhibit.”

Perception of research was measured by a pre-quiz and follow-up quiz. In total there were around 80 participants from both scientific and non-scientific backgrounds. Participants without scientific backgrounds had a 20 percent increase in research interest after attending the exhibit, and scientifically inclined participants had a 10 percent increase.

On the other hand, Hua’s ecology students experienced no change in perception of scientific research. The students even decreased in retention of information in a follow-up quiz one week later. Most students retained information better after reading scientific abstracts instead.

“This suggests that art can facilitate scientific appreciation and is most influential for individuals with non-scientific backgrounds,” Mclauchlin says. “I can see this information being used for science museums, exhibits or by scientists who want to communicate their research to the public.”

Mclauchlin aims to create a larger, more cohesive exhibit in the future, with more diversified participants in the study. For the learning and retention aspect of the exhibit, he plans to administer more follow-up quizzes to the ecology classes, in order to analyze memory at varying times of the day and amounts of time after the exhibit.

Understanding the influence of different mediums could be important for the future of science communication, especially in a time where there is a divide between the scientific and non-scientific world.

Vanessa Wuerthner, a doctoral student in Hua’s lab, says Mclauchlin brings something to the lab that no other student does: He turns research from the lab into art. “Ben puts in an immense amount of time and effort in making art pieces that he then brings together at art shows that are open to the public,” she says. “All of his artistic efforts allow the lab to really bridge the gap between the science community and the local community.”

Mclauchlin received a Summer Scholars and Artists fellowship to conduct research on marine debris and plastics in Binghamton this summer. He spends his time outside of the lab volunteering in the Nature Preserve, attending Ballroom Dance Club and participating in the Hinman Production Company, a student-run theater group.

Mclauchlin says he tries to balance his workload each semester with half science courses and half art courses.

Hua says she was impressed by Mclauchlin’s range of skills. “Ben is very creative, and his willingness to help others makes him an asset to the lab,” Hua says. “It could be 1 a.m., and he’ll be the first person to offer help to another student in the lab.”

The Binghamton University senior wants to see if an environmental cue associated with intoxication, such as a scent, could alter the immune response.

Research shows that our immune system can learn to respond to a stimulus that didn’t initially cause a response, a process known as immune conditioning. These stimuli can either blunt the immune response or enhance it, which has several applications such as suppression of the immune response after organ transplant surgery.

“Immuno-conditioning has been shown for other drugs like heroin, but it is uncommon to see studies involving conditioning of the alcohol response,” says Mondello, an integrative neuroscience major.

Alcohol is the most commonly used drug in the U.S., with 71 percent of Americans saying they consumed alcohol in 2014.  Alcohol addiction affects millions of people worldwide. How does the body adapt in the presence of alcohol, and what makes it so hard to abstain?

Mondello says small amounts of alcohol have been shown to suppress the immune response. This makes ethanol (alcohol) an unconditioned stimulus (US). In her research, she uses a lemon-scented substrate as an environmental stimulus, which may function as a conditioned stimulus (CS). Successful immuno-conditioning, meaning the immune response would be suppressed by the lemon-scented substrate alone, would reveal major insights about alcohol cravings.

Intrigued by a class on drugs and behavior during her sophomore year, Mondello leaped at an opportunity to work with Terry Deak, professor of psychology at Binghamton. His is one of the few research labs looking into the physiological effects of drug conditioning as opposed to the more studied area of behavioral conditioning.

Mondello says she attributes much of her growth as a scientist to Anny Gano, who recently completed her doctorate in integrative neuroscience, and Andrew Vore, a doctoral student in behavioral neuroscience, also in Deak’s lab.

“Jamie loves science and she loves learning, and that kind of attitude benefits everyone in the lab,” Vore says. “She has contributed in the design of a study from the ground up, both in the logic justifying the hypotheses and also in crafting an effective design to answer the questions she set forth.”

Mondello, who completed a summer internship at the National Institutes of Health in 2016, says she is carrying over the lab techniques and planning skills she learned from watching an experiment from beginning to end.

Gano says it is Mondello’s reliability, good humor and willingness to do any work that has made her stand out from other undergraduates. “She is now at a high level of technical proficiency on many lab techniques, and is in the process of learning many more,” Gano says.

In her free time, Mondello loves cooking and trying new recipes. “I noticed I was setting up my kitchen like I would set up my lab for PCR,” she says, laughing.

Growing up on Hastings-on-Hudson, Mondello always loved science. She plans to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, who has a doctorate in psychology.

“There are a lot of strong women figures in my family,” she says, “and that always inspired me.”

Matthew Wersebe studies the effect of antibiotics on wetland ecosystems. “I realized no one was really looking at the effects of antibiotics as a contaminant, so that’s where we started,” says Wersebe, a biology major.

Antibiotics kill or inhibit the growth of microorganisms. Agricultural companies treat animals with antibiotics for a variety of reasons, such as the reduction of pain or suffering, or to ensure their health or survival.

Wersebe studies sulfadimethoxine (SDM), an antibiotic used to treat dairy cows, chickens and other animals.

Antibiotics, which are present at low levels in the environment, are considered “practically non-toxic” by the EPA. However, Wersebe found low levels of antibiotics do have an environmental impact. SDM, for instance, had a negative effect on zooplankton, which is an important or “keystone” consumer for the proper functioning of an aquatic ecosystem. Green algae is a main source of energy for zooplankton, whereas blue-green algae (BGA) is toxic or unpalatable to zooplankton. Blue-green algae populations increase in the presence of SDM.

“We should expand the assessment of chemical toxicity to include community interactions, so that we can better determine the impacts of antibiotic pollution on natural systems,” Wersebe says.

According to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S. livestock producers use an estimated 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics annually. Considering the variety of antibiotics in use, as well as their varying methods of disrupting the growth of microorganisms, it is important to consider their effect on the environment even at low levels, Wersebe says.

SDM is just one antibiotic chemical used by agricultural companies; there are many more. “That’s what makes the research complicated,” Wersebe says. “Antibiotics are a diverse group of chemicals with different modes of action.”

Wersebe began his research after receiving a 2016 Summer Scholars and Artists grant. He works in the lab of Jessica Hua, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Binghamton.

“One clear example of his leadership is his work with the Friends of Recreation, Conservation and Environmental Stewardship (FORCES),” Hua says. “This organization aims to develop relationships between faculty and students that lead to a mutually beneficial relation with state park units. Matt has been working to develop a FORCES chapter here on campus and has taken the initiative to involve my lab in his efforts.”

While many undergraduates put in a lot of time and effort in the lab, Wersebe extends beyond that and is very independent, says Vanessa Wuerthner, a doctoral student in Hua’s lab. “He spends much of his time in the lab and is continuously coming up with new research ideas that he carries through from start to finish,” she says. “He is currently working closely with another graduate student in the lab to publish his first manuscript.”

Next, Wersebe wants to see how zooplankton affected by antibiotics interact with other chemicals in agricultural runoff, such as insecticides that get sprayed on crops. He wants to know if antibiotics make zooplankton more or less resistant to insecticides, using antibiotics and algae that will be cultured in the lab. Wersebe’s work this summer is funded by the Garden Club of America.

“As consumers, we vote with our dollars,” Wersebe says. “Seeing firsthand how antibiotics have an environmental impact, I’ve become more conscious of what I consume and where it is sourced from. I try to have the smallest impact on the environment.”

You don’t have to be deep in the backwoods to be at high risk for Lyme disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that about 300,000 people are infected with Lyme disease each year, yet only 30,000 incidences are reported.

The disease spreads from a pathogen — a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi — to a blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis, also known as the “deer tick.” Ticks are in the nymphal stage of their life cycle during the late spring and summer, the stage in which they are most likely to infect humans with Lyme disease.

Rani Schoenhaus, a junior at Binghamton University, spent last summer alongside three other students collecting and testing ticks from the Susquehanna River Basin area, a nearby six-county region. “Dragging” is the process of pulling material, in this case a 1-square-meter piece of white corduroy, along terrain in order to collect ticks.

“It was a really great experience,” says Schoenhaus, a biology major from Slingerlands, N.Y. “We camped for about half of the week. We would pack into one car and hike all day, dragging different trails in a bunch of state parks and places that have high foot traffic.”

The project, which began in 2011, is headed by Ralph Garruto, a professor of anthropology at Binghamton. Garruto’s lab aims to find the rate of infected ticks, compile the demographics of people encountered in these areas and spread awareness to improve reporting rates.

“The Susquehanna River Basin area that we have been collecting ticks from has the second highest infectivity of ticks per density of ticks in the entire United States,” Schoenhaus says. “The infectivity rates of ticks with Lyme disease is actually the same as in the Hudson Valley, which has the highest infectivity rates in the U.S. They just have more reported cases.”

Results show an overall infectivity rate of 34.3 percent, meaning that about one in three ticks encountered in areas with high foot traffic were carrying the bacterium. “We’re looking at campus, neighborhood backyards, parks, places where people don’t often realize they’re at risk,” Garruto says.

Schoenhaus works on this project with doctoral student Amanda Roome, senior Zara Shah and sophomore Erik Pecina. They presented their collaborative poster and abstract at the prestigious Human Biology Association conference in April in New Orleans.

“Rani is very committed. She has worked on several teams, specifically our collection team, working more than 20 hours a week over the summer,” Garruto says. “All of the students are part of each step of the project, from collection to the DNA analysis.”

Schoenhaus’ longtime interest in epidemiology — the study of disease states and how they affect different groups of people — and other facets of public health brought her attention to this research. As part of the demographic and behavioral team, she played a critical role in collecting demographic information related to people putting themselves at risk. She looked at behavior such as who was running by, whether their arms and legs were exposed and other factors. Even areas with small green patches revealed a high density of infected ticks.

“This project is so important for public health outreach,” says Schoenhaus, who hopes to attend veterinary school. “Awareness can prevent diseases. I think people would be surprised by the density of ticks in this area first off, but the amount of ticks infected with Lyme disease is even more surprising.”

The Binghamton University senior received a prestigious National Science Foundation grant to live with a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in Syracuse last summer.

“It was such an amazing project,” says Shaw, a double major in psychology and human development. “Too often I think researchers are separate from the population they are studying. It was great to hear the perspective of the veterans and to collaborate with them.”

The NSF funds intensive summer programs where students live at other universities to conduct research. Shaw was with four other students and five veterans, and says that her roommate was one of the strongest people she’s ever met. Shaw says the veteran, who is in her late 20s, had been on tour for about six years and has faced a multitude of hardships not obvious to others.

“Due to sandstorms, the air quality is deemed unlivable in some of the countries our veterans are deployed,” Shaw says. On top of the trauma caused by war itself, there is a whole different struggle of being a woman in the military, she says.

Right after her graduation this week, Shaw will present her research in Boston at the Association for Psychological Science conference. Her project focuses on attachment and the effect of social support on veterans who have PTSD.

“Everyone always makes fun of me because I pick the dark stuff, but I’m really interested in trauma and human resilience,” Shaw says.

Shaw, who grew up in North Babylon, N.Y., studies in two research labs at Binghamton. She works in a sex and gender lab under the supervision of Ann Merriwether, lecturer in psychology and human development, and Sean Massey, associate professor in women, gender and sexuality studies. She conducts both independent and group projects there. Shaw also works in the Couples Adjustment to Stress and Trauma Lab (CAST) under the supervision of Christina Balderrama-Durbin, assistant professor in psychology.

In the sex and gender lab, Shaw says, she had a lot of freedom to explore her interests and pick her own research topic. Her honors thesis focuses on intoxicated hookups and confidence in consent.

“It’s really interesting to look at consent on a scale because most studies on consent have a black-or-white answer,” Shaw says. “But there is a gray area. Only about 21 percent of people were absolutely confident that they gave consent in their last hookup in which alcohol was involved. A lot of people fall in the 2 to 5 range on a scale from 1 to 7.”

Shaw became interested in trauma when she interned for the Interpersonal Violence Prevention Program during her first year at Binghamton. She was an educator on campus about sexual assault and bystander intervention, as well as serving as an advocate for those who were sexually assaulted. Now she is an intern at Rise – Comprehensive Domestic Violence Services, in Endicott, N.Y.

“My goal for the future is to understand how we foster resilience,” Shaw says. “Some people have the ability to overcome such intense trauma and it motivates me to want to help others do the same.”

As lead tutor for the University Tutoring Services, president of the Psi Chi International Honor Society, and business manager for the Student Association Ink, Shaw knows a lot about balancing a busy schedule. She says she gets joy out of being surrounded by people and learning from them.

“A lot of being a leader is clearly communicating with people all the time,” Shaw says. “You have to trust that you have a good team. Organization is so important in every aspect of life, especially if you want to be a leader.”

Shaw plans to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University at Buffalo, where she will study alcohol and PTSD.

She says she’s grateful for the great friendships she made in Binghamton.

“I’ll always remember just sitting in my kitchen with my friends,” Shaw says. “We started this thing where we record each other randomly, like a cooking fail or something, and we call the videos #everydaymoments so that we’ll always have them.”

Thanks to Project Lead The Way, an initiative that introduces students to STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — subjects at an early age, Hays chose to research tissue engineering, the process of combining scaffolds, cells and biologically active molecules into functional tissues.

“It was science fiction come to life,” he says.

Now a senior biomedical engineering major at Binghamton University, Hays has a 4.0 average and a place working in the laboratory of Kaiming Ye, a professor and chair of the biomedical engineering department. “He’s a very smart and dedicated researcher,” Ye says. “He works hard, and he can solve a problem very quickly. His interests and his career goals are what made him stand out.”

Binghamton is one of the few universities working on 3D printing as a method of tissue engineering. Essentially, biocompatible material is “printed” in droplets that are then overlapped, eventually creating a bulky organ. This method allows for a lot more control over the “printing landscape,” Hays says.

Other schools, such as Harvard and Stony Brook University, are looking into a barrier in 3D printing known as the oxygen-diffusion limit, which says that a cell can’t survive outside of 100-200 microns from a vessel. “That’s like 1/10th of a millimeter,” Hays says. That’s why certain tissues, like skin and cartilage, lend themselves to the “printing” process more easily. They are relatively avascular, meaning they do not contain blood vessels.

Hays believes that in the next decade tissue engineering will make it possible to 3D print a fully functional organ created with a patient’s own cells or stem cells. For example, beta-islet cells — cells that produce, store and release the insulin hormone — are attacked and destroyed by the body’s immune system in Type 1 Diabetics. Tissue engineering may allow scientists to create beta-islet cells and produce a new artificial pancreas for these patients.

“Hopefully 3D printing will make something like the organ donor list obsolete in the near future,” Hays says.

In the meantime, Hays has found a way to save lives in the present day. He’s an emergency medical technician with the campus ambulance squad, Harpur’s Ferry. In the fall, he administered patient care and CPR that resuscitated someone in cardiac arrest.

“I was happy with how I responded,” Hays says. “It registered, but not emotionally. You realize you have a team. And if you learn how to work with your team, you’re never going to feel alone.”

Hays has been accepted into medical school for the fall, and he also looks forward to the possibility of using his engineering degree to become a biomedical consultant. He says he will always look at problems with an engineering mindset.

Hays and Rushi Shah, a fellow biomedical engineering student and Harpur’s Ferry EMT, realized there was not a device at the basic life support level to monitor respiratory heart rates automatically. They created an invention that they called a “respiratory quantifier,” which can measure and report respiratory rate in real time.

“I thought I would have to choose between biomedical engineering and medical school,” Hays says, “but in the end you don’t have to choose. You can do both.”