Five students take a ‘summer vacation’ in the research lab

SMU students, from left: front, Thomas Briese, Jennifer Koezly; back, Brian Kasel, Timothy McDonald and Luke Baertlein are spending their summers doing research at laboratories.

Two sophomore physics majors, two junior physics majors, and a senior biochemistry major will spend their summer doing research at laboratories in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois:

• Jennifer Koezly, a junior double major in Chemistry and Engineering Physics from Ham Lake, was accepted into the Lando/NSF Summer Research Program in the chemical sciences at the University of Minnesota;

• Brian Kasel, a junior Biophysics major from Saint Anthony, landed a position in the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center Summer Fellowship Program;

• Luke Baertlein, a sophomore Biophysics major from Mazeppa, will work at the Mayo Clinic in the Department of Health Sciences Research - Epidemiology Division, funded through Mayo’s Undergraduate Research Employment Program (UREP); and

• Timothy McDonald, a sophomore double major in Chemistry and Engineering Physics from Ham Lake, and Thomas Briese, a senior Biochemistry major from Rochester, will both be working with Paul Nienaber SJ, associate professor and chair of physics, as part of the MicroBooNE neutrino experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, IL. Funding for these students is provided by a Research at Undergraduate Institutions grant from the National Science Foundation.

“This is a singular contribution to undergraduate research in the sciences at Saint Mary’s,” noted Dr Nienaber. “These students are talented and well-motivated, and they’ve worked hard to get where they are. Placing this many students in these sorts of research projects at major universities and laboratories speaks volumes about the quality of the science program at Saint Mary’s University.”