Sciences – Wheaton Quarterly

Family matters

Spring 2013 by Andrew Faught

Joseph Lee ’08 brings leading-edge science to infertility research

As Superstorm Sandy chased tens of thousands of New Yorkers from Lower Manhattan in October, Joseph Lee ’08 played a role in an altogether different human drama less than two miles from surging floodwaters.

At the Midtown offices of Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York (RMA), where Lee is research project manager, live incubated embryos awaiting uterine implantation suddenly were at risk when much of the island lost power. So were the childbearing hopes of as many as 10 women scheduled for fertility treatments that had to be performed within a 48-hour window. In the end, the power held, even as stress levels spiked.

“There was a lot of confusion and nerves were high. The phones were ringing off the hook,” says Lee, who was unable to return to his Queens home because of the storm. “We tried to answer everyone’s questions, and we were on 24/7 alert to make sure everything was OK.”

There was good reason for vigilance. Sixty blocks south, NYU Fertility Center not only lost power, but its basement flooded and generators failed, forcing frenzied staff to safeguard embryos in liquid nitrogen. No embryos were lost at either center, and RMA of New York was able to provide transportation and lodging to patients with scheduled appointments.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: Sciences

Biology major sails into academic adventure

Spring 2013 by Ted Nesi '07

Betsy Meyer ’14 in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Only a year ago, Elizabeth “Betsy” Meyer ’14 had never traveled far from the Boston suburb where she grew up, let alone flown on a plane or set out to sea for days on end.

What a difference a semester makes—particularly if the semester is spent enrolled in the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport, which has been giving undergraduates a hands-on interdisciplinary experience learning about the sea since 1977.

Meyer, a 21-year-old biology major, spent last fall living in a historic house on the grounds of the seaport in Stonington, Conn., and studying in nontraditional classrooms like a sailing vessel along the coast of California. Quoting Woody Guthrie, Meyer said she “literally got to see America ‘from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters,’ accompanied by fantastically intelligent people who related everything I saw to our academic studies.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Around the Dimple, People Tagged With: Sciences

Creating learning opportunities from research grants

Winter 2013 by Michael Graca

Professor Matthew Evans and four Wheaton students will spend the next three summers above the Arctic Circle seeking to better understand how the melting of Greenland’s glaciers will contribute to rising sea levels.

“The big question is how the Disko Bay system has responded to temperature changes in the recent past,” Professor Evans said. “The hope is that we can better predict how warming will impact the system in the future. It’s an important system, with one of the fastest-advancing and iceberg-producing glaciers on Earth.”

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $139,104 grant to Evans for the research effort, which will also take the Wheaton team to the National Ice Core Lab in Denver, Colo., to analyze the 100-meter ice cores they will collect in Greenland. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features, Go Beyond Tagged With: Sciences

A minute with . . . Samuel Neill ’13

Winter 2013 by Quarterly

Biology major Samuel Neill ’13 is used to challenges: He’s a biology major, on the men’s swimming and diving team, a Wheaton Athletic Mentor, and a member of the Tri-Beta Biological Honors Society. But he really had his hands full in unexplored territory last summer working as a Balfour Scholar intern for the Musk Ox Development Corporation on a farm in Palmer, Alaska. Just how do you get a baby musk ox to drink milk from a bottle? Ask him; he knows. [Read more...]