Home >> News >> Announcements

UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications

Patriot Spotlight: Biology Graduate Students and Faculty

January 29, 2016

Media Contact:  Hannah Buchanan
Editor/Writer–Strategic Communications & Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.539.7196 (cell)

UT Tyler biology graduate students Mattea Allert of Minnesota, Derek Draper of Kerrville, Elyse Kite of Massachusetts, Maura Purcell of Tyler and Matt Wolkoff of Virginia assisted Bullard High School freshmen in a winning Smithsonian Air and Space Museum space project. The collaboration was part of NASA's Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, or SEEP.

Dr. Ali Azghani, professor of biology, served as the UT Tyler volunteer consultant coordinator for the event.

"Over 80 students and several of their teachers spent a 'work day' at UT Tyler and worked on their project," Azghani said.

Other UT Tyler biology faculty who assisted included Stephani Daugherty, Kate Hertweck and Riqing Yu. Azghani, Daughterty and Hertweck also served as proposal reviewers.

The winning project was titled, "The Effects of Microgravity on S. Tuberosum Resistance to P. infestans." The four students in the team and their biology teacher, Alaina Cannon, will prepare the space module and run the earth portion of the experiment in Azghani's research laboratory. This experiment will be flown to the International Space Station aboard Mission 9 in July. All finalists, winners and the UT Tyler volunteer consultants were recognized at an awards ceremony earlier this month at Bullard High School.

SSEP was launched in June 2010 by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. The program is designed to immerse and engage students and their teachers in every facet of real science.

For more information, contact Azghani, 903.566.7332 or aazghani@uttyler.edu or visit http://ssep.ncesse.org/.