UROP Research Mentor Project Submission Portal: Submission #609

Submission information
Submission Number: 609
Submission ID: 9321
Submission UUID: 29af3f7f-fda5-47ca-aea8-4d6cc2a1404c

Created: Fri, 08/25/2023 - 09:39 PM
Completed: Fri, 08/25/2023 - 10:23 PM
Changed: Wed, 10/11/2023 - 07:11 PM

Remote IP address: 128.186.63.52
Submitted by: Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No
Primary Research Mentor Name Christopher Solis
Research Mentor Preferred Pronouns His/him
When potential research assistants are reaching out via email, what is your preferred honorific? Dr.
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated) csolis@fsu.edu
Position Title Faculty
FSU College (if applicable) Education
FSU Department or Non-FSU Organization Affiliation Health, Food and Nutrition (aka Nutrition and Integrative Physiology)
Headshot (optional) Screenshot 2023-08-25 at 9.38.44 PM.png
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from above)
Research Assistant Supervisor Preferred Pronouns
Research Assistant Supervisor Preferred Honorific?
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated)
Name of Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) (if applicable)
Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) Preferred Pronouns
Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) Preferred Honorific?
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated)
Title of the Project Developing an AI-based particle-tracking algorithm for video-based monitoring of cardiac thin filament motion
Project Keywords cardiac, thin filament, in vitro motility assay, biochemistry, biophysics, AI, computer vision, semantic segmentation
Are you currently looking for research assistants? No
Number of Research Assistants Needed 3
Relevant Research Assistant Major(s) Biology/biological sciences, computer and information sciences, Exercise physiology, Information technology, Health services/allied health/health sciences, Mechanical engineering, Entrepreneurship/entrepreneurial studies, Mathematics, Statistics, Chemical engineering, Neuroscience, Biochemistry, Electrical and electronics engineering, Computer engineering, Clinical nutrition/nutritionist, Chemistry, Physics, Bioengineering and biomedical engineering, Computational science, Computational biology.
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
If the project location is off campus, does the research assistant(s) need to provide their own transportation?
Please select the choice that most accurately describes your expectations for the research assistant(s): Partially Remote
Approximately how many hours a week would the research assistant(s) need to work? 8
Roughly what time frame do you expect research assistant(s) to work? Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Overall Research Project Description At its innermost level, the heart is composed of miniature machines that enable heart contraction. The essential elements of this machinery include the proteins actin and myosin. When the heart muscle contracts, myosin works as the motor, implying ATP as fuel to crawl on actin, which serves as the scaffold where myosin crawls. This motion leads to the pulling of organized structures in cardiac muscle cells called sarcomeres that specialized on creating shortening in muscle cells. In the laboratory, we can purify actin and myosin and study their interactions via the in vitro motility assay. If you Google "in vitro motility assay GIF" you will see colored stripes that move around erratically. These colored stripes are the actin filaments that are being pulled around by "invisible" myosin proteins. By recording videos, we can then measure the gliding speed of these filaments to quantify the speed of reaction of myosin when pulls actin around. This readout allows us to quantify if a particular drug affects myosin and hence determine the specificity of the drug. We can also modify the actin and myosin proteins and see if this modification affects their function. It turns out that the video software to analyze these proteins is not too efficient. As such, it would be very desirable to build a new software that takes advantages of AI to use strategies such as semantic segmentation to identify the gliding filaments and estimate their motion properties. We already have the videos collected. The next step is to develop the software that will aide in analyzing these videos.
Research Tasks The research tasks for this project include the following
1) Select the appropriate compiles (MATLAB, PyLab/Python, CellProfiler) to build the algorithm.
2) "Label videos" implying techniques such as semantic segmentation to train algorithm
3) Train algorithm to identify objects
3) Estimate the efficiency of the algorithm
Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Experience in coding (e.g MATLAB, Python, R, JavaScript). Some experience in biochemistry is nice to have but not required.
Mentoring Philosophy My mentoring philosophy is simple: you can reach the stars if you are in a supportive environment. My goal as a mentor is to provide the right conditions for my mentees to thrive. Examples of how I achieve this are by first and foremost, being available for my mentees to ask questions and get help at the earliest possible. Second, I provide the motivation and the key information for trainees to understand what is the main problem and why it must be solved. Third, I provide my trainees with the career advice they need to that from day one they can start getting feedback of where they can go with their careers. I am cognizant that motivation is an important driver of success because without the right catalyst the smallest challenge ahead will become daunting.
Please provide a link to your publications, a video clip, or a website for your research project (if applicable): https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vAoAMrwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Please add any additional information here (if applicable):
Roundtable times and Zoom links Wed, Sept. 6: any 30-min block between 1:00 pm and 8:00 pm.
Fri, Sept. 8: any 30-min block between 10:00 am and 12:30 pm.
https://fsu.zoom.us/j/6263906254
Mentor Handbook, FAQs, and Communication Yes
UROP Performance Evaluation Yes
Materials Grant Yes
UROP Poster Presentation Yes
Year 2023
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