FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 20, 2008
Contact: Jessica Wong
(662) 329-7119

MUW students present at Mississippi Academy of Sciences conference

COLUMBUS, Miss. – Mississippi University for Women students recently
attended the Mississippi Academy of Sciences conference. The annual
event was held in Olive Branch at the Whispering Woods Convention
Center.

The Department of Sciences and Mathematics sent 18 undergraduate
students and four faculty members to the event. Faculty members who
attended were Dr. Dionne Fortenberry, associate professor of chemistry;
Dr. Xiaoxia Li, assistant professor of chemistry; Dr. Lauren Brandon,
assistant professor of microbiology and Dr. Ross Whitwam, professor of
biology.

Dr. Brandon was the chair of the Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental
Biology section of the conference.

Seven of the 18 students had a chance to present a speech or poster at
the conference. They were: Katie Brinkman of Hattiesburg, Mary Oyeleye
of Nigeria, Jahnavi Chatterjee of Meridian, Bola Bukoye of Nigeria, Victoria Jones of Heidelberg, Lauren Thead of Macon and Kristen Chipley of Carthage.

Two of the students, Chatterjee, a chemistry and biology double-major, and Jones, a biology major, presented a research project they did with Dr. Whitwam over the summer. Two other students presented their research
project they completed under Dr. Mack, assistant professor of biology. The other three students also presented research they had done as summer
internships at other universities the previous summer.

Chatterjee and Jones won awards for their research presentations. Chatterjee received the award for best undergraduate student presentation in the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering section of the conference. Jones received the award for outstanding undergraduate student  presentation in the Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental Biology category.

Chatterjee’s summer research work was carried out at the University of Arkansas under the National Sciences Foundation – Research Experience for Undergraduates.

There, she worked under the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
and focused on the chemistry and synthesis of titananthracene, a metallobenzene.

Jones performed her summer undergraduate research at the University of
Southern Mississippi under the Mississippi Functional Genomics Network
– Research Experience Opportunity program. Her research was done
under the Department of  Biological Sciences and concentrated on the regulation of gene expression in Staphyloccoccus aureus.

Eleven other MUW students attended the conference: Erika Harmon Pratte,
Phuong Lam, Anna Oguhebe, Kristen Barnes, Brittany Seals, Francesca
Austin, Nicole Griffin, Teonte Brooks, Ngoc Dang, Khristina Guest and
Chisa Lanier.

Dr. Whitwam said, “Students who undergo research projects distinguish
themselves from the other undergraduates with whom they are competing
for positions, scholarships, and jobs, but who haven’t done research projects. They also get a feel for the excitement and headiness of scientific discovery when working on projects no one else has done before.”