The Advanced Science Investigations (ASI) course will host its second annual poster symposium tomorrow, May 24. The event, which will take place in the cafeteria from 4:30 to 6:30 pm, will allow ASI students to showcase the products of their year-long research projects.

The Talon talked to two ASI students about their projects, featured below.

Senior Barbara Shvareva

“My project is focused on finding a way to regrow brain cells that have been damaged due to trauma to the central nervous system,” Barbara said. “The way I’m doing this is I’m focusing on a specific protein, spastin, which is mainly present during embryonic development. So my experiment involves culturing cancerous brain cells which I use as a model for actual neuron, and then introducing this protein through a plasmid to them, and then seeing whether or not it forces them to grow.”

Senior Anisha Palasumudrum:

“I was researching Vitamin E and how it could help inhibit cancer,” Anisha said. “In order to do that, I was making compounds that are similar in structure to Vitamin E, and I plan on testing their effect in inhibiting angiogenesis. In order to do that, it has to bind to a certain receptor called VEGFR, which is a receptor protein on cells. When VEGF, a growth factor protein, binds to it, the cells grow and blood vessels form. There’s an increased amount of cell growth, and Vitamin E is supposed to decrease the cell growth.”