Three 2022 biology graduates have had the research they completed at Dominican University New York published in Microbiology Resource Announcements, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Bernadette Connors, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, said students Madison Newman, Darlenys Sanchez and Anna Acosta studied the impacts of pollution in our local waterways and the persistence of potentially harmful bacteria in the water. The students worked in summer 2021 and throughout the 2021-2022 academic year on the research. The work was supported by a National Science Foundation grant to Connors (award #1950018).
Connors said students who work on research projects at Dominican University have a unique opportunity to understand science from the perspective of research scientists. It is particularly impressive that the students had two articles published. “Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal means that other scientists in the field have recognized the quality and value of this work,” she said. “These publications not only promote science but are necessary to advance students in the STEM field, be it the workforce or graduate school.”
Two of the students, Newman and Acosta, will start their Ph.D. in fall 2023. Newman presented the work at the Beta Beta Beta NE1 regional convention at Elmira College in 2022, earning second place in the poster category. She also presented the work at a joint lab meeting at UMass Amherst with the Ma Lab. The papers published were titled “Taxonomic Profiling of Microbes in Glyphosate-Treated Sediment Microcosms” and “Amplicons, Metagenomes, and Metatranscriptomes from Sediment and Water.”