Two University of Mary Washington students won first place poster awards at the 15th annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciences. The symposium, held at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, on Saturday, Oct. 20, brought together more than 220 undergraduate students from 45 universities.
Junior Daniel Browne won first place in a biological sciences division for his paper “An Expansion of Nematode Phylogeny.” His project isolated more than 100 species of roundworms, expanding the body of research surrounding the species and establishing a foundation for future studies. Browne, a biology major with a minor in chemistry, is from Fairfax, Va.
Junior Sarah Marzec, of Woodbridge, Va., won first place in a biological sciences division for her paper “Phylogenetic Classification of Nematodes.” Her project examined nematodes, microscopic roundworms that often live in soil, to build a phylogenetic tree. Marzec, a biology major, used DNA sequencing to characterize more than 50 species of nematodes.
Brown and Marzec both served as secondary authors on each other’s papers, with Assistant Professor of Biology Theresa Grana as their faculty adviser.
The symposium, first held in 1998, is sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health and is hosted by UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences and the departments of chemistry, biochemistry and biological sciences.
