inFOCUS Newsletter

Learn about FOCUS student’s involvement at Washburn High school.

Learn about Kayla Toney ’17, a special major in Optics and Photography, and what she has been doing in the last year.

On May 28th, 2018, the FOCUS cohorts gathered in Weitz 138 for the second annual FOCUS Research Gala. At this event, the first and second year cohorts presented the work they were doing this academic year.

Get to know Reina Desrouleaux and hear about her experience as a research assistant at Yale School of Medicine!

Although Vayu wasn’t a part of FOCUS, he was a summer science fellow and has gone to do things that FOCUS tries to emphasize. His involvement with the Young Chefs Program during his time Carleton is particularly relevant to FOCUS.

Could you please introduce yourself and tell us of your academic journey?
 I discovered science through cooking. I was born in Stockholm, Sweden to a Kenyan-Indian mother and a Cuban-Norwegian father. When I was growing up with my single mother, cooking was a necessity but never felt like a chore. The kitchen inspired my creativity and connected me to my cultural heritage, and more broadly, to the natural world. I vividly remember one of my first science experiments, adding lemon juice to red cabbage and observing the color change due to the decreased pH. 

Sonia Moreno ’19 and Lon Hutchinson ’19 came back from Copenhagen and Madrid respectively, and they share with us their experiences and how they chose they program they did! 

       The Fall FOCUS 2020 cohort took an A&I seminar called “Viruses: Invisible Invaders,” in which they spent time discussing mosquito-borne diseases. As a continuation, they studied the impact of exposure to mosquito repellent on embryonic development in Zebrafish, a model organism used in developmental research, during the winter of their first year.   

        From this initial project, two FOCUS students – Samantha Cooke and Kevin Tran – were interested in continuing the research project throughout the year. They realized, however, that they needed more people to collect the data if they were to continue the project. In addition, a project for FOCUS 2021 had to be designed for this year. To kill two birds with one stone, as it were, Sam and Kevin collaborated with Dani Kohen and Eric Egge – the faculty advisors for the FOCUS First-Years – to design an experiment for FOCUS 2021 that would further their research.

Thanks to a generous NSF grant, FOCUS has been able to expand by recruiting a winter start cohort since the beginning of last year. The second iteration of this expansion is being mentored by Math Professor Eric Egge.

Winter FOCUS 2021 shared a skill, interest, or hobby they want to connect to others about!

Welcome to this year’s edition of the FOCUS Newsletter, inFOCUS!

During the Spring of 2016, FOCUS was awarded an S-STEM grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program for a whopping $1,000,000. This new grant funds the expansion of the FOCUS program, providing scholarship funds for twice as many participants and the continuing enhancement of the FOCUS co-curricular course, including enhanced teaching as learning opportunities.