Creating Tomorrow’s Scientists: Bryn Mawr’s Summer Science Research 2025

Each summer, Bryn Mawr provides 35-plus students with 10-week research stipends to conduct independent research under the guidance of ��ҵ��faculty members in the sciences and mathematics. Below are just a few of the opportunities students had to do research this summer.

Impact of Childhood Adversity

Students working with Assistant Professor of Psychology Cora Mukerji as part of the DEER lab are researching how childhood adversity leads to different developmental outcomes.

Psychology major Clare Hann ’27

“I learned far more doing the hands-on work than I would have just hearing about it in a classroom.”

Students working with Assistant Professor of Psychology Cora Mukerji as part of the lab are researching how childhood adversity leads to different developmental outcomes. This summer, they’re doing literature searches, practicing collecting electroencephalogram data, and doing individual research projects.

“There are a lot of steps in the research process that I knew of in theory but I’d never done them,” says psychology major Clare Hann ’27. “I learned far more doing the hands-on work than I would have just hearing about it in a classroom. You run into a lot of problems, but eventually you solve them.”

Who Ate the Lanternflies?

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Seba De Bona and students set out paper and clay dummy models of the invasive spotted lanternfly across campus to record attacks by birds. While initially the spotted lanternfly had no natural predators in the United States, anecdotal evidence has now shown that other insects and birds are consuming this species and might help control its population size and reduce its harmful effects. The data they collect will help them build mathematical models of spread that incorporate predator-prey dynamics.

Cellular Security Guards

Bacterial cells, like E. coli, are surrounded by a membrane that acts like a security gate. There are proteins embedded within this membrane that act as security guards to allow different types of molecules to enter or exit the cell. Assistant Professor of Chemistry Ashlee M. Plummer-Medeiros and her Summer Science students use both computational and biochemical studies to understand how membrane proteins work and how they interact with the membrane, or gate, itself. By understanding how these security guards work, scientists can design better antibiotic drugs to target them and the bacteria that they protect.

“In the Plummer Lab, I get to exercise both my ability to plan achievable research goals while also developing technical skills,” says Jenna Mackenroth ’26.

Jenna Mackenroth ’26

“In the Plummer Lab, I get to exercise both my ability to plan achievable research goals while also developing technical skills.”

The Memory of a Fly

Assistant Professor Hannah Shoenhard’s lab uses the powerful and precise genetic tools available in the fruit fly to discover the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which sleep facilitates long-term memory consolidation.

hands of a student conducting an expirement

The brain is the most energy-hungry organ in the body, burning 20 percent or more of the calories people consume. When we do something that requires extra “brainpower,” like forming a long-term memory, that energy has to come from somewhere—the question is, where? The Shoenhard lab uses fruit flies as a model to investigate how memory-consolidating neurons source their energy at multiple levels: from their own reserves, from other brain cells, and even from the energy reserves of the whole organism.

“In particular, because sleep plays an important role in supporting long-term memory, we’re testing the hypothesis that these memory-supporting energetic processes are more efficient during sleep,” says Assistant Professor of Biology Hannah Shoenhard. “Our work sheds light on the fundamental energy-sourcing mechanisms by which memory functions.”

More Photos from the Labs

Plummer-Medeiros Lab

Sonja Neve-Hoversten ’27 at work in the lab.

Plummer-Medeiros Lab

Jenna Mackenroth ’26 inspects a simulated membrane protein.

Plummer-Medeiros Lab

Virginia Durcan ’26 purifies a protein from bacteria.

Mukerji Lab

Masa Hasegawa ’26 fits an electroencephalogram cap onto Arisha Dolwani ’26. The students are learning to use an EEG and collect data for an in-person study this fall.

Mukerji Lab

Ariel Zhao ’26 (right) and Clare Hann ’27 help Hasegawa adjust the EEG cap.

Mukerji Lab

The students make sure the electrodes have a good connection.

Shoenhard Lab

Bianca Perez Ouhirra ’27, Assistant Professor Hannah Shoenhard, and Emelyn Cook ’27 in the lab. The red light cannot be seen by the flies they are studying and is used to keep them on a scheduled light-dark cycle for their sleep experiments.

student putting test tubes into a freezer

Shoenhard Lab

Bianca Perez Ouhirra ’27 places test tubes into an incubator. Kept at 25° Celsius, the flies go from egg to adult in 10 days, which allows the researchers to time their experiments precisely.

Shoenhard Lab

Test tubes of fly pupae.

The Summer Science Research program also includes professional development workshops and a poster session where students present their research to the college community. Each faculty member guiding full-time summer research experiences receives a stipend, acknowledging the time and energy required to provide close, high-impact mentorship.

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