The Sci-Files on Impact 89FM

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Jenna Walters. Jenna is a M.S. student studying the influence of extreme heat conditions on blueberry pollination and bee nutrition. Her work draws from an applied ecology background as she studies the entire blueberry crop system- pollen physiology and chemistry, fruit yield and quality, and bee health and diet preference. Jenna...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Lauren Collier-Spruel. Lauren is a doctoral candidate in the Michigan State Organizational Psychology program whose research focuses on the effectiveness of diversity interventions at work. Specifically, she has completed a variety of projects on ally intervention and ally effectiveness. There are a lot of people who say they are...

On this week of The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny speak with Kevin Kraef, a Junior at MSU's James Madison College and Eli Broad School of Business majoring in International Relations and Supply Chain Management. Kevin conducted his research on behalf of MSU's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) directed by Dr. Matthew Grossman. In the past year, he investigated the ef...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Jeremy Gingrich from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology . There are over 300 million tons of plastics produced globally every year. Since plastics break down poorly in the environment, this number compounds yearly and has led to ubiquitous human consumption of plastics through food, water, and airborne dust. One main c...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kathleen Rhoades. Kathleen is a third-year Ph. D. student in the Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology program studying tart cherry breeding and genetics with Dr. Amy Iezzoni , the Tart Cherry Breeder at MSU. The goal of the breeding program is to create new varieties of tart cherry that are better-adapted to Michigan’s cli...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Harnoor Kaur. Harnoor is an undergraduate student at MSU majoring in Criminal Justice with an additional major in Political Science and a minor in Peace and Justice Studies . She is extremely interested in research involving civil liberties and human rights. During her freshman year at MSU, she started undergrad research under Pr...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Leigh Anne Tiffany. Leigh Anne is a second-year doctoral student in the Information & Media Program with a dual major in Environmental Science and Policy. She works jointly with John Besley, Ph. D ., in the Department of Advertising + Public Relations , and Bruno Takahashi, Ph. D. , with the Knight Center for Environmental Jo...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kyle Whitehouse. Kyle is an undergraduate student at the MSU Residental College of Arts and Humanities (RCAH) . Purpose and adversity go hand in hand. If you have purpose and goals in life, there is going to be adversity along the way. For Kyle, racism has been one of the primary adversities affecting him for a long time that he...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Adam Kawash. Adam is a Ph. D. candidate in the MSU Department of Physics and Astronomy . The main research question he is trying to answer is what is the nova rate of the Milky Way? A nova occurs in a double star system when the core of a dead star steals matter from its companion star. If enough matter is accumulated the outside...

Located in the Department of Anthropology , the Michigan State University Forensic Anthropology Laboratory (MSUFAL) works to uncover stories in human bones. The graduate students, Amber, Kelly and Micayla at the MSUFAL are trained by lab director, Dr. Joseph T Hefner , a board-certified forensic anthropologist, and Dr. Carolyn Isaac in the study of the human skeleton. Forensic anthropologists do m...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Dhaval Gandhi. Dhaval is an undergraduate student at MSU in the departments of Neuroscience (College of Natural Science) and History Philosophy & Sociology of Science ( Lyman Briggs College ). He examines how neuroscience has slowly crept its way into various fields like marketing, philosophy, and law. Chiefly, Dhaval focused...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Zachary Morehouse. Zach is a 3rd-year osteopathic medical student at Michigan State’s College of Osteopathic Medicine . When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Zach was looking for a way to use his background in molecular virology and drug development, in conjunction with the knowledge he has gained from medical school thus far, to do hi...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Megan Miller. Megan is a registered nurse and is graduating from the MSU College of Nursing Ph. D. program in Spring 2020. Her experiences in palliative and hospice care have led to a mixed-methods dissertation project focused on holistic (mind, body, spirit) approaches to pain for people with advanced cancer. With a majority of...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Hamid Karimi. Hamid is a 5th year Ph. D. student in the MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a member of the Data Science and Engineering Lab . His research is generally focused on data science and machine learning where he seeks to extract insightful patterns in data that can then be used to both understand/ana...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Nick Ivanov. Nick is a second-year graduate student, pursuing his Ph. D. in Computer Science at Michigan State University (MSU). His major research area lies at the intersection of blockchain and the security of the Internet of Things (IoT). He conducts his research as part of the MSU SEIT (SEcure and Intelligent Things) lab led...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview 2nd-year medical students at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine , Brittany Ladson, Christian Rohl, and Basma Al Masraf. Since 2017, there have been over 70,000 opiate-related deaths, namely in the 18-25 year old group. It has been shown that implementing educational and Naloxone distribution programs can re...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Bridget Walker. Bridget is a third-year student in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) at MSU. She began working at the Potter Park Zoo as a summer student under Dr. Ronan Eustace , the staff veterinarian and Director of Animal Health at Potter Park Zoo (PPZ), where she conducted a research project and zoo medical cases. She...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Pranshu Bajpai. Pranshu is a final year Ph. D. candidate researching information security in the Security Research Lab headed by Dr. Richard Enbody in the MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering . His research interests lie in computer and network security, malware analysis, digital forensics, and cybercrimes. A specia...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Zoe Hansen. Zoe is a third-year Ph. D. student in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the human gut microbiome. Specifically, she is investigating how foodborne infection (for example, a Salmonella infection) influences antibiotic resistance in our gut. Antib...

In early April, The Sci-Files hosted its first Q&A session hosted by Chelsie and Danny with guests from past interviews on The Sci-Files. The guests gave small talks about their research. The audience had children of all ages and they have the opportunity to ask the scientists questions about their research. Here are the slides that the speakers used during their presentations. Mike's research...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Victoria Toomajian. Victoria is a third-year Ph. D. candidate in the MSU Biomedical Engineering department, in the Contag Lab . She studies the use of extracellular vesicles as a delivery tool, focusing on the heart post-myocardial infarction as a therapeutic target.   Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small, membrane-bound partic...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Kaitlyn Daza. Kaitlyn is a Ph. D. Candidate in the Animal Breeding and Genetics Group at the MSU Department of Animal Science . You may have heard the statistic that by the year 2050, the global population is projected to hit 9 billion people, and we will need to vastly increase our food production to meet that demand and feed th...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Funmi Ayeni. Funmi is a doctoral student in Ecological/Community Psychology at Michigan State University . Her areas of research expertise include mixed-methods evaluations of community interventions for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, improving the community response to sexual and gender-based violence, evaluating...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Jose Rodrigues. Jose is a DO-PhD candidate in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics through the College of Osteopathic Medicine.   Jose is training as a third-year medical student and completing his dissertation work which focuses on antibiotic resistance, evolution and molecular epidemiology of the bacterial path...

On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Courtney Harrison. Courtney is a second-year master’s student in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at the Michigan State University Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory. Her research investigates the effects infectious diseases have on lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) and their subsequent recruitment to the Great Lakes....