Belmont Summer Scholars

Using DNA sequencing technology to catalog bacterial communities along the Cumberland River

I’m a trained cancer biologist and have, historically, worked to better understand pathways that regulate cancer cell growth.  Most recently, I’ve really enjoyed finding ways to use my molecular expertise in other biological research fields.  This summer I’ll be working collaboratively with Dr. Matt Heard, an Environmental Scientist, who plans to examine multiple aspects of water quality along the Cumberland River.  We will be using a metagenomic 16S sequencing approach to better understand the vast bacterial communities that exist in different areas of the river.  This collaborative project will help us understand how humans and other organisms might be affected by the bacterial makeup along the river, and also how various environmental factors might influence the makeup of microbial communities.

Special Skills Taught: Molecular biology, DNA sequencing, Environmental sample collection

Important Information for Participants: An Introduction to Biology (Principles I Lecture and Lab) 

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, Summer Session I, ~30 hr/week

Email me: chris.barton@belmont.edu 

Understanding The Impacts of Humans On The Environment

I'm an environmental scientist and ecologist and work to understand the impacts humans have on the environment. This summer, I'm doing a collaborative project with Dr. Chris Barton (biology) looking at the health and ecological integrity of the Cumberland River here in Nashville. For this project, we'll be combining field work and lab work and using some cutting edge molecular techniques to understand how the bacterial communities present in the Cumberland River are changing over time. This work is super exciting and has relevance to people interested in public health, ecology, environmental science, and molecular biology! 

Special Skills Taught: field work, lab work, ecology, data analysis, statistics, molecular biology, microbiology

Important Information for Participants: An Introduction to Biology (Principles I Lecture and Lab) 

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, Summer Session I, ~30 hr/week

Email me: matthew.heard@belmont.edu 

Functional Physiology of Animals

My work focuses on how animal structure (ie bones, muscles, and shape) affect their function in a given environment or under varying physiological conditions. I work on a wide range on animals including frogs, fish, turtles, lizards, and insects. In my lab, you will have the opportunity to work with local researchers at Nashville Zoo, Vanderbilt, and Metro Parks conducting lab or field based research. Previous work in my lab has studied, insect flight, infectious diseases in amphibians, muscular anatomy, and locomotor performance. Skills you can learn include advanced dissection techniques, high speed camera analysis, biomechanics, animal husbandry, and field techniques.

Special Skills Taught: Dissections, high speed camera work, animal husbandry, field collection techniques, Electromyography

Important Information for Participants: physiology classes may be helpful but not necessary!

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, June 1-July 9, ~30 hr/week

Email me: chase.kinsey@belmont.edu

Investigating retinal cell injury response and regeneration

Why do some tissues readily regenerate after injury while others, such as the retina, do not? My lab focuses on one specific retinal cell type, the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), and asks the question: can we steer these cells’ first responses to injury toward regeneration? Students will learn how to grow RPE cells in culture, create controlled “injuries” in the dish, and track how the cells respond using fluorescence microscopy and molecular biology techniques such as qPCR. Along the way, they’ll learn to communicate their science, sharing their discoveries at a poster symposium. Together, we’ll hunt for the key factors that could turn the retina into a more regeneration-friendly environment, which is a step toward one day restoring vision lost to injury or disease!

Special Skills Taught: cell culture, injury modeling qPCR, RNA extraction, immunofluorescence, fluorescent microscopy, data analysis, scientific poster preparation

Important Information for Participants: BIO 1150 essential, helpful to have some cell biology or genetics experience

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, June 1-July 9, ~30 hr/week

Email me: sara.ramirez@belmont.edu 

Cell Biology of Rare and Neglected Diseases

Our lab is investigating novel therapeutics for rare diseases. We use live cell microscopy to see changes to the cell’s response to these drugs as our main approach.

Special Skills Taught: Live cell microscopy, mammalian cell culture, drug treatments, patient advocacy

Important Information for Participants: Preferred rising junior or senior

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, Summer Session II, ~30 hr/week

Email me: felicity.sterling@belmont.edu 

1) Synthesis organic materials/monomer for proton exchange membrane; 2) Organic nanoparticles for cancer research

A series of diazonium (perfluoroalkyl)aryl sulfonylimide (PFSI) zwitterionic monomers are planned to be synthesized. These partially fluorinated monomers, containing trifluorovinyl ether and diazonium groups, are designed for polymerization and covalent bonding to carbon electrodes in proton exchange membrane fuel cells.
The 2nd project's goal is to develop theranostic nanoparticles (NPs) that enhance cancer diagnosis and targeted therapy. By combining CDs, FA, and anticancer drugs, these NPs aim to detect early-stage cancer and selectively treat tumor cells.

Special Skills Taught: organic lab synthesis skills, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Infrared Spectroscopy，Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, Fluorometer

Important Information for Participants: Organic lecture and lab is required

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, June 1-July 9, ~20-30 hr/week

Email me: hua.mei@belmont.edu

Planets Beyond our Solar System: Astrophysics Observation and Analysis

From earth, we can observe planets outside of our own solar system, called exoplanets, orbiting their host star. When they pass in front of their star, they block an amount of light traveling to us from the star. Are you interested in exploring how planetary radii, orbital distances, and host star types affect these transit depths and durations? Take part in a NASA Citizen Science program known as Exoplanet Watch! You will gain experience working with a Meade LX200-ACF reflector telescope to record quality datasets to submit to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) repository. We will then analyze our data in addition to the community's available datasets, which can lead to intriguing publications in Astrophysics: such as discovering and/or confirming new exoplanets and monitoring stellar variability. Connect with a community of like-minded scientists interested in exploring planetary diversity!

Special Skills Taught: organic lab synthesis skills, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Infrared Spectroscopy，Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, Fluorometer

Important Information for Participants: Organic lecture and lab is required

Time commitment:4 hours credit, June 1-July 9, ~30 hr/week 

Email me: beverly.warner@belmont.edu 

How Does Generative AI Affect Undergraduate Students’ Learning and Problem-Solving Skills? An Empirical Data Science Study

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming how college students learn, solve problems, and develop technical skills, yet its impact on actual student learning remains an important empirical question. This project will investigate how undergraduate students use generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, and examine whether different patterns of AI use are associated with improvements in programming, problem-solving, and learning outcomes. Using a combination of surveys, pre- and post-assessments, student performance data, and quantitative data analytics, the research team will examine the relationships among AI use, AI literacy, self-regulated learning, and student performance. Undergraduate researchers will gain hands-on experience in research design, data collection, Python-based data analysis, statistical modeling, and visualization while contributing to an emerging area of AI and education research. The project has the potential to generate actionable insights for educators seeking to integrate generative AI into undergraduate education in ways that enhance—not replace—students' learning and independent problem-solving abilities.

Special Skills Taught: Students will develop a combination of technical, analytical, research, and professional skills that are increasingly valuable in an AI-driven workplace. On the technical side, students will gain hands-on experience with Python, pandas, data cleaning, exploratory data analysis, statistical analysis, data visualization, and potentially machine learning techniques. They will also learn how to design research questions and hypotheses, develop and administer surveys, analyze real-world educational data, interpret empirical findings, and communicate results through research papers and presentations. Equally important, students will strengthen soft skills including critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, collaboration, communication, project management, and responsible use of generative AI. By the end of the summer, students will have a tangible research project they can showcase in graduate school applications, internships, portfolios, professional interviews, and potentially a scholarly conference or publication.

Important Information for Students: No prior research experience is required. Students should have basic computer literacy and an interest in data, technology, education, or artificial intelligence. Familiarity with introductory statistics, programming, or data analytics is helpful but not required; students will receive hands-on training throughout the project. Most importantly, participants should be curious, willing to learn, able to work collaboratively, and committed to completing research activities throughout the summer.

Time commitment:4 hours credit, June 1-July 9, ~30 hr/week

Email me: rudy.bedeley@belmont.edu 

Fluid-Structure Interaction Simulations of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement Using IBAMR

This project will involve computational modeling and simulation of transcatheter aortic valve replacement using IBAMR (http://ibamr.github.io/), an open-source distributed-memory parallel implementation of the immersed boundary (IB) method with support for Cartesian grid adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). These computationally intensive simulations will be run on the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, & Data Science’s compute server, which runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and utilizes 128 processor cores and 1 TB of RAM for high-performance parallel computing. The project will involve building the software and its dependencies via the terminal, writing C++ code that utilizes the IBAMR library to perform the simulations, and utilizing VisIt, an open-source visualization and data analysis software maintained by the Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), to post-process and visualize the results. These simulations will allow for cutting-edge investigation of artificial heart valve design and performance, and this project provides an opportunity to apply mathematics, computer science, high performance computing, and foundational research and communication skills to biomedical engineering.

Special Skills Taught: Mathematical modeling and simulation, numerical methods, high performance computing, coding in C++, building open-source software in the terminal, academic research foundations, interdisciplinary project skills, professional scientific communication - both formal writing and oral presentation

Important Information for Students: CSC-1120: Programming 2 and MTH-1210: Calculus I are required for this project. MTH/CSC-4170: Modeling and Simulation and experience in upper-level CS electives would be excellent preparation for this project, though not strictly required.

Time commitment:4 hours credit, May 11 to June 17 (but please contact if other times are better), ~30 hr/week

Email me: jordan.brown@belmont.edu 

Uncovering how and why AI agents fail

This project will investigate the characteristics of Agentic Pull Requests (Agentic-PRs) authored by AI coding agents across thousands of real-world GitHub repositories. Using the AIDev dataset, which encompasses over 930,000 PRs generated by tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, Devin, GitHub Copilot, and OpenAI Codex, we will examine how these AI systems modify code, the nature of their contributions, and their consistency with accompanying descriptions. The analysis aims to uncover whether AI-generated patches tend to reuse or create new code and what this means for long-term maintainability. Ultimately, the study provides an empirical foundation for understanding how AI agents shape modern software development practices at scale.

Special Skills Taught: Natural Language processing, statistics, code writing, paper writing

Important Information for Students: Programing 2 prefered, minimal Programming I

Time commitment:4 hours credit, June 1-July 9, ~30 hr/week

Email me: esteban.parrarodriguez@belmont.edu 

Social and Individual Determinants of Psychological and Physical Health

The specific project conducted will depend on the interests of the Summer Scholars students. We will use survey research to examine the influence of social/environmental (e.g., relationships, stress) and individual (e.g., personality, sense of self) factors on psychological and/or physical health outcomes (e.g., sleep quality, anxiety, depression, life satisfaction). Students will create a study and develop surveys, collect data from participants, and conduct statistical analyses to test their hypotheses.

Special Skills Taught: Survey construction (using Qualtrics), data collection (using Prolific online platform), running and interpreting results of statistical analyses (using SPSS)

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, Ideal dates would be SURFS dates (June 1-July 9), but I'm open to being flexible as students may have different needs., ~30 hr/week

Email me: abigail.heller@belmont.edu

Psychology of Body Image, Objectification, and Gender

This project will involve designing and conducting an online data collection examining how body image, objectification, identity, and gender influence the educational, physical, and social/emotional outcomes of adults (18+ year olds). Students will learn to develop research questions and hypotheses related to variables that interest them and design/conduct a study testing these hypotheses. After data collection is complete, students will learn how to select the appropriate statistical analyses and how to conduct them in SPSS or R. Finally, students will learn how to present their research for a conference-type setting. This project is flexible and easily adaptable to students’ specific interests!

Special Skills Taught: Literature review, study/hypothesis development, Data collection using Qualtrics/Prolific, Data Analysis in SPSS and R, presenting research

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (June 1-July 9), ~30 hr/week

Email me: jessica.hocking@belmont.edu

Special Skills Taught: understanding research, understanding motivation drives, survey design and analysis

Important Information for Participants: Reserach Methods required

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (June 1-July 9), ~30 hr/week

Email me: dustin.keller@belmont.edu 

Do leaders always feel as confident as they appear? Join this Summer Scholars project as an undergraduate researcher to explore insecurity and imposter syndrome in leadership across workplaces and organizations. We’ll examine how fears of inadequacy, self-doubt, and pressure to appear competent relate to how people lead, make decisions, and connect with others. Students who join will gain hands-on research experience while investigating what happens behind the confident exterior of leaders—and what helps them navigate uncertainty.

Special Skills Taught: Understanding research, survey design and analysis, and data analysis and interpretation

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, 6 weeks (June 1st to July 9th), ~30 hr/week

Email me: tammy.mattison@belmont.edu 

Brain wave Activity and Cognitive Performance

In this work, we will explore the neurophysiological underpinnings of individual differences in cognitive performance. We will use electroencephalography (EEG) to assess brain wave activity in response to various cognitive stimuli. Cognitive domains explored include: memory, attention, language, visuospatial navigation, and more.

Special Skills Taught: EEG net application, EEG experiment setup, ERP data processing, coding, etc.

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, June 1-July 9, ~30 hr/week

Email me: michael.oliver@belmont.edu

Effects of dexamethasone and MK-801 on zebrafish development, cardiac function, and stress-related behavior

Special Skills Taught: Zebrafish embryo handling and staging, solution preparation and drug dilution, microscopy, behavioral observation, imaging, and data analysis

Important Information for Participants: Gen Bio I and Intro Neuro are required, Neurobiology is optional but helpful.

Time commitment: 4 hours credit, June 1-July 9, ~30 hr/week

Email me: jinhee.park@belmont.edu