Research News

Summer finds UB researchers on land, in labs and by the sea

Irus Braverman.

Irus Braverman joins coral researchers in Hawaii.

By SUZANNE CHAMBERLAIN

Published July 25, 2016 This content is archived.

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School’s out for the summer for many UB students and faculty. But just because they’ve left campus for the season doesn’t mean they’re not working. Numerous students and faculty find that summer vacation is the perfect time to pursue research in the field. Here are a few examples.

Among the coral reefs

Where might you find a distinguished UB researcher when she’s not teaching about the law? In the ocean, if it’s Professor Irus Braverman, a 2016 recipient of the university’s Exceptional Scholar and Teaching Innovation Award.

Braverman studies the scientists who study coral. And after completing more than 80 interviews, she decided it was time to join some of her subjects near the protected coral reefs where they’re working in Hawaii.

“Observing them at work makes a difference in my understanding. I like to watch the scientists interacting with the physical elements in the realities of field research,” she says, adding that she swallowed a lot of sea water from incoming waves as the researchers looked for their test thermometers set among the coral reefs.

Braverman, a professor in the School of Law, was in Hawaii to attend the International Coral Reef Symposium, which takes place every four years and attracts as many as 3,000 delegates. Adding a few weeks to the trip gave her the opportunity to attend conference sessions, as well as interview scientists and observe them in their element.

“I’m asking the questions in a different way, looking for the underlying tensions, considering the changes in the conservation narratives and how people perceive nature,” says Braverman, whose current focus is climate change and how it affects coral reefs, and the work of coral reef scientists. She says that while there might be agreement about some of the challenges facing corals in the future, conservation scientists adopt very different emotional stances to the prospect of their survival that oscillate between hope and despair.

Braverman’s previous work focused on zoos, conservation and captive breeding. Her interest shifted to coral reef management when she returned to scuba diving after a 20-year hiatus and was shocked by the changes she saw.

Although she’s deep in the tedious process of transcribing interviews, Braverman says she still has plans for one more summer field trip: to observe coral spawning. At the conference, she met some coral nursery farmers who are planning to research, document and manipulate coral reproduction — on the one night a year that it happens, just after the August full moon.

Hobnobbing with leading researchers

Satpal Singh, professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, chose to spend his summer in England, mentoring UB students through the Cambridge Undergraduate Scholars Program. It’s a supreme opportunity for the students, he says.

“A summer-long immersion in the scientific environment at an institution like Cambridge and working shoulder to shoulder with some of the top scientists in the world provide an unparalleled inspirational and heady experience to a student aspiring to be a scientist,” he says.

Singh first conceived of the program a few years ago and officially launched it in 2015. He says it was a transformative experience for those first five students, noting their subsequent selection to prestigious doctoral and other research programs, a nomination for a Goldwater Scholarship and receipt of a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence.

The competitive program matches four or five UB students annually with researchers in England. In addition to time spent on their projects and in lectures, the students visit other premier institutions, such as Oxford University, Medical Research Council labs and an international mouse functional genomic facility, while also taking time to meet leading researchers.

Four students are taking part in the program this year, working in such areas as gene expression, neurodegenerative disorders, chromosome biology and computational genomics, and, as Singh says, “finding it an exciting and intoxicating scientific environment.”

Antara Majumdar, who expects to receive a BS next spring, agrees. “It truly means a lot to me that I can feel included in the lab’s conversation about research that involves thinking in different ways about existing pathways for disease formation,” she says.

She spends a lot of time with beakers and tubes, investigating the role of a protein called Fbxo7 in regulating the proteasome in the cell. She wants to know more about genetic factors controlling the development of the nervous system, with the goal of becoming a physician adept in the treatment of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease.

The students also find time to visit local landmarks like Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Canterbury Cathedral and Harry Potter Studio. Majumdar has made time for walks and water. “My lab recently took me punting down the River Cam and I can actually punt as well,” she says.

Vacant lots as sponges?

Sean Burkholder and his students do their traveling within the Buffalo city limits. They are evaluating vacant lots to help the Buffalo Sewer Authority with its storm water runoff plans.

Two student teams are surveying the lots — vacant since their structures were demolished between 2000 and 2010 — to determine how well they absorb rain and storm water. “Every parcel functions very differently, even if they look alike,” explains Burkholder, assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Planning. “How the sites are left by the contractor really affects their performance.”

It’s critical knowledge for an older city like Buffalo, whose storm water and toilet water merge into one system. Too much water at once taxes the system and can cause an overflow into local rivers and lakes. Buffalo is believed to be the first city in the nation where the Environmental Protection Agency has specifically approved the use of demolitions as part of its larger plan to dramatically reduce these combined sewer problems.

The sewer authority believes that vacant land has some useful functions with respect to storm water management and that a better understanding of the 5,500 lots in the study area could make a big difference in the authority’s plan. The students are trying to determine how many of these vacant lots function as sponges, and at what rate. They have assessed about 1,500 sites to date in the project’s second summer using a tablet-based program that Burkholder helped write.

The program focuses on questions about infiltration, soil compaction, slope and elevation change, and vegetation coverage. Burkholder says the program allows for rapid assessment of the sites and assures objectivity by eliminating observer bias. It’s also useful for sharing data with other environmental researchers at UB who are working on the calibration of a storm water model.  

These students — one from engineering and the rest from architecture and planning — received a week’s training before heading outdoors. Many seem to enjoy the experience and learning more about the environmental science behind their project. They also like being tourists in their university’s city, visiting neighborhoods unfamiliar to them.

Katie Little, a master’s degree candidate in environmental engineering, says what interests her most “is the opportunity we have to potentially influence policy decisions.”

She also appreciates being able to apply green, or sustainable infrastructure to storm water management. “I wanted my master’s project research to reflect what I had learned from my classes,” she says, “while also using my skills for a meaningful cause in our community.”