{"id":7994,"date":"2015-06-16T07:41:35","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T11:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/?p=7994"},"modified":"2015-06-16T07:41:35","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T11:41:35","slug":"surfs-up-rhode-island-undergrads-in-research-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/2015\/06\/16\/surfs-up-rhode-island-undergrads-in-research-3\/","title":{"rendered":"SURF&#8217;s up 2015: Rhode Island undergrads in research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Research fellow: <\/strong>Amanda McCabe<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-7995\" title=\"Amanda McCabe\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/848\/DSC_0025.jpg\" alt=\"Amanda McCabe\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" \/><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Hometown:<\/strong> Portsmouth, RI<br \/>\n<strong>Major: <\/strong>Biology; minor, Chemistry<br \/>\n<strong>School: <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rwu.edu\">Roger Williams University<\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Faculty mentor: <\/strong>Clifford Murphy<br \/>\n<strong>Project:<\/strong> Development of metalloporphyrin functionalized transmissive conducting electrodes for photo- and electrochemical detection of thiocyanate in marine environments<\/p>\n<p>Amanda McCabe, heading into her senior year, knew that if she wanted to go to graduate school, she needed to gain research experience.<\/p>\n<p>She applied to Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/surf\/\">Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program<\/a> and now is two weeks into a 10-week intensive research experience in the RWU lab of Clifford Murphy, assistant professor of chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the work in the lab, McCabe and her SURF peers will participate in program activities on the science and industry of biofuels, science communication and dealing with data, scientific poster design, and aquaculture and oyster restoration in the Ocean State.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the 10-week experience, the undergraduate fellows will present their findings at the <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/surfconference\/\">8<sup>th<\/sup> Annual RI SURF Conference <\/a>held at the University of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n<p>One recent day found McCabe wearing goggles and gloves, working at a piece of equipment, the VersaSTAT 4 by Princeton Applied Research, and using electrochemistry to apply a dye to a surface at a constant voltage as part of a procedure.<\/p>\n<p>Looking up from her work, she explained cyanide fishing, the illegal practice commonly used in the aquarium industry to capture live fish.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey spray cyanide and it stuns the fish, and make it easy to catch them,\u201d McCabe said. \u201cBut, it also seeps into the coral and destroys the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although the procedure is illegal, there is no way to determine the use of the chemical, so the SURF project seeks to create a detector.<\/p>\n<p>McCabe said she was still unsure of her exact path, but wanted to do research: \u201cI like working with my hands, and I\u2019ve been learning a lot of new techniques. A lot of these skills are going to be really useful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\"><em>Story and photo by Amy Dunkle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Research fellow: Amanda McCabe Hometown: Portsmouth, RI Major: Biology; minor, Chemistry School: Roger Williams University Faculty mentor: Clifford Murphy Project: Development of metalloporphyrin functionalized transmissive conducting electrodes for photo- and electrochemical detection of thiocyanate in marine environments Amanda McCabe, heading into her senior year, knew that if she wanted to go to graduate school, she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21,51,1],"tags":[582,597,699,735],"class_list":["post-7994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-surfsup","category-uncategorized","tag-ri-nsf-epscor","tag-roger-williams-university","tag-surfri2015","tag-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}