From the electrical properties of two-dimensional materials to copper modulation to effect yeast lifespan, Linfield College students presented a wide range of research Nov. 9-10 at the 27th Annual Murdock College Science Research Conference in Vancouver, Wash.
Twenty-one Linfield students presented their research at the conference, which was co-hosted by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust and Linfield College. There were 545 attendees from colleges throughout the Pacific Northwest.
The conference focused on sharing and advancing new knowledge in the natural sciences created or discovered through collaborative faculty-student research, and showcased student research from a variety of scientific disciplines.
“Undergraduate research has changed my life and my career goals,” says Fatima Falcon Ontiveros ’20, who co-presented research in “Functionalized Au/Ag Alloy Nanoparticle for Drug-Delivery Systems” in poster format. She started at Linfield as a nursing major, but because of classes and research, switched her major to chemistry. Ontiveros was recently named an ACS Scholar by the American Chemical Society.
Joseph Murphy ’21, a double major in physics and math with a minor in philosophy, co-presented a research poster on the electrical properties of two-dimensional materials.
“This is my first research experience. It’s like diving into the waters and finding out how a research operation works,” says Murphy, who also presented a poster for the first time. “I was very nervous. I was expecting it to be very formal and very uptight.”
Instead, he was pleasantly surprised. “It was more like people milling around who were genuinely interested in science, walking around and saying, ‘what’s this?’ It couldn’t have worked out better.”
Ontiveros agrees, and recalls the challenges of the research process.
“It can be frustrating when we don’t get the results we want,” she said. “It was nice to see that we weren’t failing. We were succeeding in the failure.”
