Tour and talk Descriptions

This tour will give you a glimpse into the life and research of a plant biologist in the School of the Environment. First, we will walk through one of the greenhouses in the Marsh Botanical Garden where will see a diverse group of plants originating from all different habitats. We will then tour the neighboring Greeley Memorial Laboratory where we will participate in an interactive demonstration of how scientists use cutting-edge 3D imaging techniques to visualize the internal structures of some of the same plants we saw in the greenhouse.

Sugar modifications on proteins can significantly impact their structure and function. However, this type of modification, termed protein glycosylation, is very difficult to study with traditional laboratory methods. The Malaker Lab, in Yale's Department of Chemistry, develops and applies specialized techniques to study protein glycosylation and its role in a variety of biological processes as well as its dysregulation in cancer and other diseases.  Participants will see the Malaker Lab space and hear about their exciting research!

Participants will tour the Sikorsky Aircraft plant in Stratford, CT. Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiery of Lockheed Martin, is a company made famous for their helicopters. You will welcomed by a group of employees and tour the assembly and manufacturing shop of this amazing engineering company and learn about the many STEM opportunities that exist in large companies such as this one. After the tour, there will be a Q and A with a panel of female professionals.

NOTE: You MUST be a US citizen to attend this tour. You must also bring documentation to prove you are a US citizen, including a US Passport or Birth Certificate. We will follow up with those who choose this option to fill out the required paperwork.

Are you interested in biology? How about chemistry? Physics? If you answered 'yes' to any of these questions, this is the tour for you! The Davis Lab is interested in understanding how to measure things inside cells. They develop new imaging techniques to help the world better understand the relationship and dynamics between proteins and RNA within living cells. In this tour, you'll get the chance to see the space, hear about ongoing process, and chat with people in the lab!

Participants get a behind-the-scenes look at the Yale Wright Laboratory (Wright Lab) and learn how Wright Lab researchers can make the invisible visible. Wright Lab is transforming our understanding of the Universe by exploring fundamental questions about the physical world through a broad research program in nuclear, particle, and astrophysics; inspiring and preparing a diverse group of future scientists; and promoting the value of science in society. Wright Lab researchers explore the frontiers of science, investigating dark matter, neutrinos, how matter is made and interacts, quantum phenomena, the beginnings of the Universe, and more! Wright Lab also houses a a unique combination of on-site state-of-the-art research facilities, technical infrastructure, and interaction spaces for Yale's research community that we invite you to explore with us while meeting some of the researchers and hearing what they do!

Ever wondered how we're able to see objects and detect motion? Take a look at how we use fruit flies to solve these types of problems and understand the neural circuitry of the visual system!

Visit a lab space where students and professors come together to conduct experiments in human-robot interaction. There might even be some demos of robots they use in their current and ongoing research projects...

National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists & Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) Yale Student Chapter will lead participants a lab tour, followed by a demo, and a Q and A! Folks will have the chance to talk with some of the chapter members about their experiences being in an active affinity group on a university campus. They will also see a Yale Chemistry lab space, then finally engage in some exciting chemistry.

Tour this computer science lab, which works to make programming languages more reliable. They've even developed a way to automatically detect bugs in programs! 

Our skin has an incredible ability to heal itself when injured. How does this process work, and how can we improve it for clinical applications? In my research, I study how the cells of the skin and the immune system work together to heal wounds effective. In this tour, we'll discuss some of the equipment scientists use to study the skin, and how we perform experiments to discover new information about how the skin heals.

Imagine the contents of your own trash can. What might someone 1000 years from now learn about how you lived, based only on what you throw away? Archaeology is the study of the human past through the remains of objects ancient people or human ancestors left behind. These can be tools they made, bones from animals they hunted, or objects of day-to-day life. After doing excavations at archaeological sites, there are many objects that must be cleaned, labelled, catalogued, and studied. Through this process, we learn about the people who left them there and the environments in which they lived. Sometimes these environments were very different from today, such as when we have archaeological sites going back into the last Ice Age. In the Paleoarchaeology Lab, you will see what kinds of stone tools and fossil animal bones are found at such sites, dating as far back as 30,000 years ago, from sites in central Africa. This tour involves showing what kinds of objects are found, how they are studied, and answering questions about what we can learn about them. If desired, the tour can also be transformed into a workshop, where participants can each have a hands-on chance to sort and identify objects themselves.

Due to the increasing demand for clean energy and the internet of things, novel semiconductor devices that are cheaper, faster, and smarter are necessary. In this presentation, I will talk about our strategies for harvesting the infrared solar spectrum to build tandem solar cells, new materials that will enable semi-transparent solar cells which can be put onto the windows, and the design of high-speed infrared sensors that enable advanced LIDARs for autonomous vehicles.

About the Speaker: Mengxia Liu, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering working in the Energy Sciences Institute. Her group works to advance the next-generation optoelectronic materials and devices for applications in energy, sensing, and information technologies.

For many animals, sight is an invaluable part of their survival and way of life. However, there are still many open questions about how brains are able to take the light that hits the eye and turn it in to useful information. To investigate these questions, there are two main approaches we can take: behavioral studies and algorithmic analysis. This presentation will cover some of these techniques and show some of the interesting similarities and differences we have found.

About the Speaker: Caitlin Gish is a Ph.D. student of Physics in the lab of Damon Clark in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University.

Modern software verification technologies inherently depend on the availability of formal specifications, yet they are extremely labor intensive to create and maintain. This is especially the case for configuration files, which rarely have any documentation, even in written English form. Configurations are the values of system parameter settings; Incorrect configurations often lead to system misbehaviours such as exceptions, error code return, crashing or even core dump. I will discuss ConfigV, the first tool that can automatically detect complex errors involving multiple variables. We used machine learning techniques to uncover the source of errors within these files to make our software more robust.

About the Speaker: Jialu Zhang is a Computer Science graduate student in the Rigorous Software Engineering (ROSE) Lab which focuses on using formal methods to improve software reliability.

With this talk, students will be introduced to the world of epidemiology and public health. We will discuss the significance of the field, and critical issues in the modern world. We will discuss the breadth of scientific disciplines that are needed to promote the health of populations. We will use vaccination as an example to highlight key themes.

About the Speaker: Linda Niccolai, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale's School of Public Health. Her research primarily focuses on sexually transmitted infections and current work include a focus on human papillomavirus (HPV).

Come hear how the Yale University Art Gallery uses x-ray and other STEM imaging techniques to answer questions! Yale Art Gallery has several of Jain illuminated manuscripts, four of which date to the golden age of manuscript production in Western India (14th to 16th centuries). Currently, detailed descriptions of artists’ materials and workshop methodologies used in India at this time are lacking. Scientific investigation of the manuscripts has been implemented to fill this gap in knowledge. The exploration of these materials in our Jain manuscripts can provided comparison points for other Jain and Indian artwork from this time period to better understand the methodology being practiced, which reflects on their importance in art historical, religious, and social contexts.

About the Speaker: Marcie Wiggins, Ph.D. has made her career bridging her love of science and art. She is currently an Assistant Conservation Scientist in the Technical Studies Lab working on material characterization for all of Yale’s collections.

Robots don't inherently understand the social signals of interactions like many people do - someone has to teach them. These social signals include behavior like which group of people someone is talking with, what someone is paying attention to, or what someone is walking towards. In my work, I make predictions about these social signals, which help robots make better decisions about their own actions. I create these predictions by using a type of machine learning model called a graph neural network, which uses information about spatial relationships between people to infer social signals.

About the Speaker: Sydney Thompson is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Yale Univerisity. Her research interests are mainly in the area of social robots, specifically creating emotionally aware and responsive robots. She is also interested in exploring graph-based deep learning methods.

Sugar modifications on proteins can significantly impact their structure and function. However, this type of modification, termed protein glycosylation, is very difficult to study with traditional laboratory methods. In this presentation, I will discuss our lab's efforts to develop and apply specialized techniques to study protein glycosylation and its role in a variety of biological processes as well as its dysregulation in cancer and other diseases. Come hear what it is like to work in a research lab and how to get started in research from a current graduate student who also worked in clinical research and pharmaceutical R&D before starting her PhD at Yale.

About the Speakers: Sarah Lowery ane Alexandra Steigmeyer are Ph.D. students in the Department of Chemistry. They work together in the lab of Dr. Stacy Malaker.

Did you know your body is home to trillions of microorganisms? These microorganisms, including bacteria, participate in tasks, influence one another, and directly communicate. In the lab, chemical biologists are tasked with figuring out what these bacteria are doing, how they impact human health, and how they can be used in unique ways. Come learn about some of the metabolites and mechanisms the Crawford lab has discovered as well as remaining mysteries yet to be solved.

About the Speaker: Tayah Turocy is a Ph.D. student of Chemistry. She works in the lab of Jason Crawford in the Departments of Chemistry and Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale University.

Just like paperclips can’t hold papers together if you unfold them, proteins must be folded into the correct 3-dimensional shape to function properly. Misfolding of proteins is implicated in diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Mad Cow Disease. In this talk, I will discuss my group's experimental approach to make connections between molecular mechanism and cellular function through time-resolved spectral imaging at multiple scales, from in vitro to single cell to whole organism in zebrafish.

About the Speaker: Dr. Caitlin Davis is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. She is a first-generation Ph.D. student with a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Emory University. Dr. Davis received a B.S. in Chemistry and Mathematics from University of Michigan, where she entered undecided with a general interest in STEM. She grew up in a small town of 4,000 and spent her time in college exploring research in engineering, dentistry, and analytical chemistry before discovering a passion for biophysical chemistry.

How can we create robots that are more effectively able to help people? In this talk, I will present my current research exploring techniques to understand feedback humans provide naturally during interactions, such as facial expressions and body movements. I will also discuss my research investigating how and when a robot should remind a human to provide feedback in a collaborative task. In the future, I want to explore how to use these findings together in order to create better robot collaborators.

About the Speaker: Kate Candon is a second-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Yale University. She works with Professor Marynel Vázquez in the Interactive Machines Group and Professor Brian Scassellati in the Social Robotics Lab.

I study how stress and trauma affect brain development and mental health during childhood and adolescence. We will discuss 1) how we can use neuroscience and psychology to answer questions about the developing brain and mental health outcomes, 2) how magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) works and allows us to see brain structure and function, and 3) how we can use knowledge from these types of studies to improve mental health and well-being for children.

About the Speaker: Alexis Brieant, Ph.D. is a developmental psychologist and postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Dylan Gee in the Department of Psychology at Yale University

I study cancer cell biology using the model organism, C. elegans - a small, transparent worm typically found in the soil. Using the eggs of the worm, I observe cell division and how abnormal cell division can lead to DNA damage. In my typical day at work, I use molecular biology techniques and light microscopy. This talk will discuss my work and my path to studying cancer biology.

About the Speaker: Sarah Barger, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University.