Science Department Flourishing This Summer

For the Wesley College Science Department, summer doesn’t necessarily mean vacation. During these summer months Wesley College undergrads are taking the time away from classes to get ahead for the upcoming fall semester.

Sophomore Aaron Givens (B.S. Biology), is a prime example. This summer, Givens was competitively selected to receive one of just eight 2010-2011 $3,000 undergraduate tuition scholarships through NASA’s Delaware Space Grant Consortium (DESGC). This award requires Givens to complete an undergraduate research project that is within the confines of the NASA Mission Directorates. He will be presented with a certificate recognizing his success in obtaining this cash award, and he is expected to present his research outcomes as a poster at the annual fall symposium of the DESGC.  Givens has decided to complete a research project, under the direction of Professor of Chemistry Dr. Malcolm J. D'Souza, that seeks to build a database containing a variety of useful parameters of the fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides used in the state of Delaware.  

Stefan M. Hailey ’09, now a graduate student in biology at the University of Delaware, is also taking advantage of the break. He is taking the time to have his undergraduate research in chemistry published. Hailey’s full research article can be found in the peer-reviewed open access journal entitled International Journal of Molecular Science.  Hailey completed this work as an undergraduate researcher under the direction of D'Souza and supported by the National Institutes of Health and National Center for Research Resources’  IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (NIH-NCRR-INBRE) program. The focus of this study is to provide physical evidence for describing the mode of reaction in a variety of solvents for the biochemically important thioesters.  Thioesters are a group of molecules that are claimed to be the possible precursors to life.