UROP Leader Information Submission: Submission #257

What is your current research focus? My first two years at FSU I was researching in the Maner Lab under Jose Martinez. We examined how participants behaved in a third-party punishment task using a naturalistic group design. We also collected individual differences in personality traits, such as dominance and prestige orientation, political orientation, sibling order, and the big-5 to understand how these may contribute to the likelihood of certain participants punishing (or not punishing) wrongdoers in the group.

I am now transitioning into a new lab in the Biology Department under the guidance of Dr. Yu. Using budding yeast our research goal is to understand how chromosomes organize themselves and segregate during cell division. Recently, our research has been expanded to a new frontier focusing on determining the mechanics of the nuclear envelope involved in regulating chromosome movement, recombination, gene expression, and cellular rejuvenation. We do this through lab techniques such as yeast transformation, PCR, gel electrophoresis, and others.