Interdisciplinary – Page 3 – UROP Summer Symposium 2021

Interdisciplinary

Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccine-associated Blood Clot Adverse Event Case Reports

Background: While COVID-19 vaccines are generally safe, they are occasionally associated with various adverse events (AEs). Recently the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine (i.e Johnson and Johnson vaccine) has been reported to be significantly associated with blood clot, or thrombosis. The CDC/FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has continuously collected various vaccine adverse events reported from the USA.

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Studying the effect of insulin gene mutation in proinsulin folding in pancreatic beta cells

Diabetes affects 27.8% of the US population. The disease alters the synthesis of insulin hormone that regulates glucose homeostasis. Pancreatic beta cells play a major role in the biosynthesis of insulin. There is a need to understand the biochemical pathway that permits the survivability of beta cells and their secretory pathway. Our laboratory studies how the misfolding of insulin precursor protein—“proinsulin” in beta cells affects insulin biosynthesis.

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Investigating the role of glucose metabolism in oncogenic STAT3 signaling in colorectal carcinoma

Via the article Colorectal cancer statistics, 2020, approximately 147,950 individuals were diagnosed with Colorectal Carcinoma (CRC) and 53,200 died from the disease in 2020. CRC, like many other cancers, activates signaling pathways to become more aggressive and deadly. STAT3 (signal transducer and activator of transcription) is a signaling pathway that promotes cell growth during normal development and cancer. The Shah lab has previously discovered that the STAT3 pathway plays a major role in promoting CRC growth. Interestingly, some CRC cell lines, like SW480 and HCT116, have high levels of p-STAT3 (a marker of STAT3 pathway activation) at baseline (without ligand stimulation). The Shah lab also found that glucose deprivation, but not the removal of amino acids or serum, decreased the activation of the STAT3 pathway in HCT116 and SW480 cells. We wanted to further explore the STAT3 signaling pathway in CRC cells and the interactions between signaling and metabolites in the CRC environment.

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Student Parents in Postsecondary Education: Relevant Policies and Practices

Student parents are a growing percentage of the college student population (Roy et al., 2018). For this group of nontraditional students, resources such as on-campus childcare, lactation spaces, and family housing are pertinent to balancing the demands of parenthood and school. However, recent studies (e.g., Kensinger & Minnick, 2018) have alluded to student parent invisibility in institutional policy and practice. In this study I examined inclusion of student parents in official university statements (i.e., policy), and access to information about, and availability of, student parent resources (i.e., practice). The study addresses three research questions: 1. Do public four-year universities & colleges include student parents in their non-discrimination &/or diversity statements? 2. For students who are parents, how easy is it for prospective and new university students to identify relevant resources? 3. Is the number of relevant resources related to inclusion of student parents in non-discrimination &/or diversity statements?

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The experiences of rheumatic disease patients when deciding to get the COVID-19 vaccine: a qualitative analysis

Background: Little is known about how the COVID-19 vaccine affects people with rheumatic diseases. Though rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) are relatively common, patients with RMDs were not included in randomized controlled trials for COVID-19 vaccines. People that live with rheumatic conditions must consider how to handle immunomodulatory medications during the vaccine cycle and the tradeoffs they may be making between their condition, immune response, and possible side effects. We aim to describe the factors considered by this population when deciding to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

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Assessing the Affective, Cognitive, and Behavioral Consequences of Men Recognizing Subtle Gender Bias Against Women in STEM

Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) frequently encounter gender bias (e.g., questioning of their STEM ability, assignment to secretarial roles). Given the subtle and ambiguous nature of contemporary sexism, people vary in their likelihood of recognizing subtly sexist interactions. Past research demonstrates that women are more sensitive to gender bias and more likely to perceive it. However, there remains a dearth of research related to men’s experiences in witnessing bias. In the present research, we ask: what are the (1) affective, (2) cognitive, and (3) behavioral consequences of perceiving subtle gender bias during group tasks?

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Characterization of the Tumor Immune Microenvironment in Sarcoma

Intro: In recent years, the advancement of technology and science has led to better cancer treatments, which subsequently has resulted in increasing the chance of cancer patient survival. Immunotherapy, one of the more recent promising treatment options, works by enhancing one own’s immune system to fight cancer. Immunotherapy using anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4 checkpoint blockade has been very successful in treating patients with some malignant tumors such as melanoma, which previously did not have a clear effective systemic treatment option. Sarcoma is an overarching category of rare tumors that originates from soft tissues or bones at various parts of the body. Liposarcoma is one of the most common types of sarcoma, with the most common biological type being well-differentiated and dedifferentiated liposarcoma (WDLPS and DDLPS respectively). WDLPS and DDLPS are most effectively treated by surgery, yet even after a complete resection of DDLPS, 60% of patients develop local recurrence and 25% develop distant metastasis (secondary phase of malignant growth) within 5 years of diagnosis. The response rate to conventional chemotherapy is low so that 60% of patients with DDLPS eventually die from the disease. Despite the promising developments in immunotherapy, research focusing on the immune biology of sarcoma has been slower than other tumor types. Recently, there have been some promising reports of response to immunotherapy in a small number of liposarcoma patients, hence, there is an unmet need to better understand the tumor immune microenvironment in liposarcoma.

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S.T.E.A.M. Education

Introduced in 2016, STEAM is a new pedagogical approach that has been on the rise in many different countries. STEAM is the abbreviation for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. The integration of “Arts” within STEM has shown a significant increase in the motivation of children’s ability to be creative, problem solvers, and critical thinkers. Throughout the process of this literature review my goal was to answer the research question “How do STEAM, in contrast to STEM, approaches develop creativity, critical thinking, and agency among children?” To answer this question I reviewed 40 sources of qualitative and quantitative literature and of those, more than half provided strong support to the view that STEAM is very effective in developing 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking and problem solving. According to Hadinugrahaningsiha, “the term 21st-century skills is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in globalisation world” (Hadinugrahaningsiha, 2017, p.1). STEAM effectiveness is measured by the behaviors of students after the curriculum is implemented. Studies indicate that even children at an early age demonstrated interest and academic growth (Awang, 2020). Considering this pedagogy is fairly new, there remains much ambiguity on the teaching styles, definition of “art”, and how the arts in STEAM will be implemented in lesson plans.

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Progression of Cancers Driven by Liver Metastasis

Adedoyin Adebayo Pronouns: She/Her/Hers UROP Fellowship: CCSFP, Oakland Community College Research Mentor(s): Michael Green, MD, PhD and Amanda Huber, PhD Research Mentor Institution/Department: Michigan Medicine and Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs, Department of Radiation Oncology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology Department of Radiation Oncology Presentation Date: Wednesday, August 4th Session: Session 2 (4pm-4:50pm EDT) Breakout Room:

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African Futurist Greenhouse

Colonialism may be in the past, but its legacies live on today, with populations still marginalized by income and still “primitivized” by the colonial view. New movements like AfroFuturism resist these stereotypes by combining technological sophistication with an anti-primitivist view of Black culture. In the book African Fractals, Dr. Eglash makes the case for scaling geometries–the nonlinear shapes found in nature–as a tradition in African design. Together with professor Audrey Bennett at UM’s Stamps School of Art and Design, and Olayami Dabls, the owner of Dabls’ MBAD African Bead Museum, they have developed a proposal to create an African Futurist greenhouse that will utilize the scaling geometry traditional to African homes, jewelry, and sculptures. Funded by Stamps and Poverty Solutions, this greenhouse will grow plants that furnish seeds for Dabls’s beadwork, food for local consumption, and more generally embody a decolonial approach that combines the circular economy of Indigenous traditions with the beauty and utility of culture-technology hybrids.

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