“It was interesting to see all the different projects supported by RI EPSCoR on display. The meeting brought together researchers who might not cross paths except at a meeting like this.”

Al Bach, URI College of Pharmacy

RI EPSCoR event showcases research, facilities

The Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR community gathered in Providence April 12 for the 2017 Annual Research Symposium, an event that drew nearly 100 administrators, faculty, staff, and students from the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The day provided an opportunity to learn about research taking place in the Ocean State and tour the RI EPSCoR-supported and core facilities that aid research, training, and discovery. The platform also set the stage for inquiry and networking, and generated discussion across disciplines of what might be possible. Guest speaker ecotoxicology Professor Tamara Galloway, University of Exeter, UK,  discussed her research on marine microplastics, ingested by filter feeders and passed up through the food web.

“The research poster session was outstanding,” observed Oceanography Professor Lewis Rothstein, University of Rhode Island (URI) Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO). “The state of science in the EPSCoR community is excellent. These posters we saw there easily could have been presented all over the world.”

Al Bach, a NMR spectroscopist and analytical chemist working in the URI College of Pharmacy, noted, “It was interesting to see all the different projects supported by RI EPSCoR on display. The meeting brought together researchers who might not cross paths except at a meeting like this.”

Before the day’s events got underway, both Bach and Rothstein joined the Nature Lab tour at Rhode Island School of Design. As a research assistant professor who collaborates with various groups, helping to advance their science with analytical chemistry, Bach said there was not a clear connection between his work, which takes place at the atomic level, and the Nature Lab, which deals with both lifesize specimens and microscopic images.

And yet, he said, the lab visit captivated the imagination: “As a perpetual student and explorer of nature, it is an amazing place. I was struck with their use of visual technology — high speed cameras, electron and light microscopy — to expand what can be seen and then communicated.”

Rothstein and Bach also toured the NSF/EPSCoR Shared Proteomics Facility, noting that they were aware of the facility’s existence, but had not visited until the symposium offered the look. Although the facility’s area of expertise lies in proteins and his work is centers on small molecules, Bach said many of the same tools are used to understand the composition and conformation of these two classes of molecules. Now, having met the staff,  Bach said he would find it easy to send users to the facility. Rothstein cited the benefit of the shared equipment, which significantly cuts down on costs for individual institutions.

Jennifer Bissonnette, biological programs designer at the RISD Nature Lab, took advantage of the Yurt Ultimate Reality Theater (YURT) experience at Brown’s Center for Computation and Visualization (CCV). There, Tom Sgouros, virtual reality lab manager, handed out special glasses that allowed participants to interact with three dimensional experiences generated by a variety of applications.

Bissonnette said she was amazed by the prospect of walking into a diseased heart to explore valve blockages as if it was a room to be explored.

“The YURT is such an exciting opportunity in the world of 3D visualization, providing an immersive environment for groups to experience any spatial phenomena as if it were happening at the human scale and readily accessible,” she noted. “Unlike virtual reality programs geared towards the individual user, such as Occulus Rift and even Google Cardboard, the social possibilities of simultaneously experiencing the same virtual experience can potentially catalyze both transdisciplinary collaboration and novel methods of public engagement.”

Bissonnette said she could imagine designers, programmers, and scientists working to create innovative ways for scientists to more deeply explore data and creating ways of expressing their findings in ways that encourage deeper understanding by non-scientists:

“For example, I’d love to see some of the plankton assemblage information gathered by submersible flow cytometers expressed using high definition images of the organisms to show their distribution in the water column at different sites. Being able to show non-scientists the wonder of the world at that scale is key to helping encourage understanding of environmental impacts that would otherwise remain conceptually remote to most people.”

For Ed Baker, manager of the Marine Science Research Facility’s seawater facility on the URI Bay Campus, the CCV visit generated intrigue and much to think about, particularly the YURT’s 3D perspective: “The CCV holds much potential for visual instruction, education, and investigation. One area of great potential is protein folding, which I think is still very much a mysterious process, and protein binding — the intricate lock and key relationship between proteins and their match.”

He also said he found the concept of “privileged perspective” interesting; where the YURT visitors saw the perspective of the person who held the navigating hardware: “Something about the phrase privileged perspective intrigues me and has some abstract application to the real world.”

Story by Amy Dunkle

Mandar Naik, proteomics facility manager, talks about the equipment, above and below, available at the RI EPSCoR core facility. (Photos by Michael Salerno)