Mentoring undergraduate students is an exciting part in the life of a researcher. It gives us the opportunity to expose and re-evaluate fundamental assumptions in our work, face the responsibility of explaining our research to others, and place work in a bigger and motivating context. Some of the undergraduate students mentored through the years include:
Bin Li . Bin and I worked together during spring 2006. Bin's work was important in demonstrating the viability of a method I have developed for computing protein structures at equilibrium in modeling the effect of point mutations on the native state of a protein. Bin is now a Ph.D. student in Prof. Pettitt's lab at University of Houston.
Jessica Wu. Jessica and I worked together during the summer of 2005. Jessica was supported by the CRA-W Distributed Mentor Project. We worked on applying one of the methods I have developed for modeling equilibrium fluctuations of loops in proteins to capture the motions of the HIV protease flaps. Jessica's progress was documented in her regular research journal . Jessica and I had the opportunity to present the results of her summer work in the 2005 Poster Competition of the Rice Corporate Affiliates Meeting . Jessica's poster won first place.
Marina Kogan. Marina and I worked during the summer of 2004 on an automated tool for detecting critical events in the folding landscape of proteins. Marina was supported by the CRA-W Distributed Mentor Project. As part of this project Marina kept a regular research journal.
Lin Kuang. I mentored Lin during the summer of 2004 as part of the CRA-W Distributed Mentor Project. Lin was a major driving force behind the design of an automated tool to detect different types of bends in a 3D protein structure as a protein folds. Lin's idea was to analyze changes in contact maps (that keep track of inter-atomic distances) to determine critical events such as an additional bend forming in a protein chain. Lin paid particular attention to filtering out noise. She kept a detailed research journal .
