The invasion of Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans) throughout the western Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean has led to declines in the biodiversity, biomass, and abundance of native coral reef fishes. These ecological consequences have been thoroughly documented in shallow zones of the reef; however, little is currently known about how lionfish interact with deep-reef ecosystems, and which native fish are the most vulnerable to predation. Deep-reefs may serve as refuges for lionfish, as they would avoid being speared by SCUBA divers in the top 30 meters. Thus, deep lionfish populations could potentially serve as a near-infinite source of replenishment for shallow populations. The microchemistry of calcium carbonate fish otoliths has emerged as a powerful tool in examining fish ecology, including their vertical movement. The elemental compositions of these “ear stones” reflect the chemistry of the water in the fish’s environment, ultimately providing insight into natal origin and dispersal events. I am analyzing the oxygen isotopic signatures in a sample of 10 lionfish otoliths collected across the entire depth range of reefs in Curaçao using micromilling and isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS). Specifically, variations in δ18O from the core to the rim of the otolith indicate changes in water temperature, and presumably depth, from settlement to adulthood. This approach provides insight into whether lionfish migrate between deep and shallow reefs throughout their lives or remain in their deep refuge, how frequent and long these migrations are, and ultimately whether they are susceptible to surface removal by spearfishing. Effective management plans will require a holistic understanding of this invasive predator’s vertical migration patterns and where they are on the reef at various life history stages, and a deepened understanding of the connectivity between deep and shallow populations can inform future research to control mesophotic populations.

Music interventions are gaining attention due to the evidence they improve health and cognition in elders. In the US, there is an increasing number of Mandarin-speaking elders whose cultural background affects their aging experience. After English and Spanish, Chinese is the third most spoken language in the US. Three and a half million households in the U.S speak Mandarin or Cantonese. However, there is little information regarding specific music choices or culturally-tailored music interventions for Mandarin-speaking elders to improve their health and aging experience. The purpose of this study was to gain insights into Mandarin-speaking elders’ views of aging, ageism, and the relationship between music and health. We conducted a qualitative study that involved interviewing Mandarin-speaking elders in Mandarin. The interview consisted of questions related to their cultural perspectives on aging, experience with ageism in the US, and the impact of music on their health. The participants selected music to play during the interview and discussed what the music meant to them and their thoughts on how music affects their health. Four interviews in Mandarin have been conducted to date. Initial findings reveal that filial piety and respect are recurring cultural themes that influence participants’ perspective and experience of aging. Internal ageism was identified in one of the interviews while the participant discussed their experience with ageism. Participants expressed that music benefits their health by providing emotional support and outlet, motivation, reminiscence of the past, brain activity, and stimulation through physical movement such as dance. The findings increase our understanding about the role of culture in the aging experience and music’s role in enhancing health for Mandarin-speaking elders. Future studies can use this information to develop music-based interventions tailored for Mandarin-speaking elders to improve their health.

Gender identity has become a central issue in ongoing political debates regarding cultural shifts in America. For many, nonbinary and other gender-variant identities seem new and confusing, but there is evidence of these identities stretching back to classical antiquity. The god of wine, madness, and theater, Dionysus, emerges as a consistently gender-variant figure in ancient literature and art. For this project, I examine the construction and performance of Dionysus' gender in antiquity by performing a close nonbinary reading of Euripides' tragic play, the Bacchae, in conversation with current scholarship on gender and sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. My research seeks to interrogate the appropriateness of applying modern gender-variant labels to antiquity, investigate the ways in which Dionysus both resists and subverts binary gender categorization, and consider what meaning modern nonbinary and gender-variant people can extract from ancient representation. I argue that applying modern gender labels to antiquity aligns with current practices in scholarship regarding binary gender identities. Through a nonbinary lens, I reveal the image of a clearly nonbinary Dionysus who cannot be contained by either ancient or modern gender binaries -- a force of gender chaos. With my critical analysis of the Bacchae, I shed light on new considerations of the motivations behind Dionysus' display of divine wrath and the cultural implications of gender construction and performance in the play. My project finds that nonbinary and gender-variant identities have long existed even in societies that seemingly embrace a gender binary.

This global change study examines the multiple-stressor impacts of heat and plastic leachates on a symbiotic clonal cnidarian, the aggregating anemone, Anthopleura elegantissima. Marine heatwaves and ocean plastics are two forms of anthropogenic pollution that are increasing and predicted to rise in future ocean conditions. In Puget Sound, intertidal marine organisms are most at risk of exposure to these combined stressors. In summer, low tides at noon leave intertidal organisms in stagnant warming water or fully exposed to desiccation. Marine heatwaves, like the one that occurred in June 2021, caused water temperatures to spike along Puget Sound coasts. Concurrently, road run-off and sewage likely expose intertidal organisms to higher concentrations of plastic leachates. Leachates are derived from machine-washed polyester clothing microplastics, polyvinyl chloride sewage pipes, and non-source point pollution that is swept through watersheds toward the coasts. Plastic pollution in the form of leachates is understudied in coastal ecosystems, compared to thermal stress. Plastic-derived leachates are the complex cocktail of chemicals that leach from plastics into the environment and are considered pollutants of emerging concern. We do not fully understand the impacts they have on the physiology of marine organisms, and even fewer studies address their impacts in the context of marine heatwaves. We will test physiological and photophysiological responses of aggregating anemones to thermal stress and plastic leachates, separately and combined. We will develop respirometry and light response curves for each of the treatment conditions and a control. We hypothesize that the cnidarian host will show increased metabolic activity indicating stress under both types of pollution, and that photosynthetic efficiency in the algal symbiont will increase with leachate exposure. We hope to use the results of this study to better understand how anemones and other cnidarians like corals are affected by the threats of plastic pollution and global warming.

International students are an essential part of the UW community as they are able to bring in a unique set of lenses and perspectives to perceive, approach, and solve problems. The UW International Student Service (ISS) is a place that provides information and guidance for the international students to legally live and study in the U.S. After encountering difficulties using the ISS system as an international student and a design researcher, I started to wonder how the ISS might improve to create a better user experience of their website and services. I began exploring this question in HCDE 417 in Autumn 2023. This application supports the continuation of that work, motivated by the following two research questions: 1) How well does the UW ISS website navigation work in terms of guiding international students to complete the correct tasks? 2) How might we improve the ISS system to better support the needs of the international students? My research is a usability study focused on understanding three attributes of usability for the UW ISS system: the usefulness, discoverability, and satisfaction. By carrying out initial usability testing sessions in HCDE 417 with international students and analyzing the transcript data using open coding and axial coding methods, I was able to take a deep dive into the problems with virtual advising services. My initial research surfaced several insights including the inconvenient drop-in only advising services, unreasonable student-to-advisor ratio, and less discoverable content. The impact of this study is that I took my initial research findings to ISS UX intern to discuss potential changes that could be made to the ISS to improve students' experience. As part of the community, I would like to use my design background to advocate for international students to be receiving more attention and resources from the UW ISS.

Preliminary work has shown that long-term arsenic exposure affects the relative partition of bacterial species in freshwater lake microbiomes. Our current hypothesis is that arsenic acts as a selective pressure for tolerant and resistant bacteria in all compartments of the lake microbiome. I have attempted to confirm this hypothesis by taking a larger sample size of periphyton, water, sediment, and Chinese Mystery Snails (CMS) in summer of 2023 for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and arsenic quantification via ion-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Samples were taken from non-contaminated to highly contaminated local lakes in the South Puget Sound area, all with open access to the public. I performed DNA extractions and processed the samples for ICP-MS. I have also cultivated lab-acclimated CMS for experimentation with the feeding of high-arsenic sourced periphyton vs. sterile algae wafers to observe whether the snail gut microbiota and their innate immune system are affected by direct arsenic consumption. Upon receiving NGS and ICP-MS results, I determined relative fractions of bacterial species across the various lakes in correlation to their respective arsenic contamination levels. Ongoing work involves the optimization of a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay of arsenic metabolizing genes aioA, arrA, arsC, and arsM. These genes are widespread across bacteria and confer resistance/tolerance to arsenic via respiratory arsenite oxidation, respiratory arsenate reduction, inorganic arsenic detoxification, and organic arsenic methylation, respectively. The overall goal of this project is to determine how arsenic exposure shapes interactions between microbes and their hosts in a complex aquatic ecosystem, and the implications of these changes for the total lake ecosystem including humans, fish, and birds. 

This project focuses on the redesign of a faculty research website with the objective of enhancing the site’s user experience. The project documents the history of Egyptology in the late 19th and early 20th century, through the lens of unpublished personal archives. The target audience includes scholars working in the discipline of Egyptology, students within the Middle Eastern Languages and Culture department at the University of Washington (UW), and the general public, for whom survey research will be conducted. The research methodology takes a multi-faceted approach, incorporating contextual inquiry-based interviews to observe user interactions with prototype designs. Additionally, in-depth interviews will be conducted with Middle Eastern Languages and Culture professors, and independent scholars, to gather insights on the presentation of the website. The survey research gathers feedback from UW students, gauging their preferences, expectations, and challenges when interacting with Egyptology-related online resources. Through contextual inquiry-based interviews, the project aims to identify user behaviors, allowing for the development of user-centric design solutions. The involvement of Middle Eastern Studies professors in interviews adds an academic perspective, enriching the redesign process with expert insights. The redesign process will address identified user needs and preferences, streamlining navigation, and optimizing content presentation. The redesign process will prioritize fulfilling the requirements and needs that we find through our user experience research. Iterative prototyping allows for user feedback to be continuously integrated, ensuring the final design aligns with the expectations and requirements of the target audience. By combining survey research, contextual inquiry-based interviews, and expert insights from Middle Eastern Studies professors, this project aspires to create a more engaging and user-friendly Egyptology website. The outcomes of this redesign endeavor aim to contribute significantly to the improvement of academic online resources, fostering a seamless and enriching learning experience for students in the Near and Middle Eastern Studies department at the University of Washington.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes significant sensorimotor deficits that negatively impact autonomy and quality-of-life. In a previous study, we determined that optogenetic spinal stimulation significantly enhanced forelimb recovery, axonal growth, and angiogenesis compared to sham controls. However, we have yet to determine the synaptic changes associated with optogenetic stimulation after SCI. The current project addresses this important detail by quantifying the synaptic changes that occur with and without optogenetic spinal stimulation in rats with cervical SCI.To investigate this, rats received a moderate hemicontusion of the 4th cervical segment (C4) and a spinal injection of an optogenetic viral vector (AAV2-hSyn-ChR2-YFP) to express light-sensitive proteins in the ipsilateral sixth segment (C6). Four weeks later, rats received a second surgery to receive a blue uLED implanted over ipsilateral C6 for optogenetic or sham stimulation. Rats were trained and scored regularly on a variety of forelimb behavioral tasks throughout the course of the study, while the rats in the stimulated group received stimulation 1x/week for 6 weeks beginning on the 6th week post-injury. After perfusion, the cervical spinal cord was sectioned and underwent immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining to examine synaptic density around motoneurons caudal to the lesion site where stimulation or sham stimulation occurred. Synaptic quantification has been completed using FIJI software. Our initial results reveal increased synaptic density around the motoneurons of rats that received optogenetic spinal stimulation, suggesting an increase in synaptic plasticity and connectivity. This indicates that stimulation not only enhances axonal growth but also supports the formation of new connections with downstream neurons partially disconnected by the injury. This study provides insight into the circuitry-related changes involved in SCI recovery. Identifying specific mechanisms of how optogenetic stimulation improves recovery can guide the development of more effective stimulation paradigms and treatment strategies in order to optimize functional recovery for people with spinal cord injury

The Monte Carlo Physarum Machine (MCPM) is a modeling program constructed similarly to the more traditional Monte Carlo Markov Chain. The program is modeled after the Physarum slime mold, an organism which seeks out nutrients to absorb and consume. When applied to matter distribution in the universe, MCPM is designed to seek out the largest density objects, primarily in the form of galaxies and galactic clusters. Given previous applications of the program, I wanted to know whether it could be put into further use to produce accurate predictions of the current structure of matter in the universe. We call these large structures of matter that make up the universe Large Scale Structures (LSS). To determine the accuracy for LSS environment predictions via MCPM, I am cross comparing the results from the Value Added Catalog (VAC), obtained using MCPM, with the results from the most recent Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) catalog. The VAC, which was the first catalog of matter dense galaxies obtained using MCPM, and MaNGA both possess matter density data that I have compared to determine if the same galactic structures were documented. The step that I am currently working on is seeing if I can replicate the VAC results with data compiled in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) catalog. I am currently still working with and sorting through the data from HETDEX to produce the most accurate results. If I can determine with certainty MCPM produces the same results as other methods, its use as a primary data modeling process in cosmology would establish a concrete method for mapping the cosmos with unprecedented accuracy and reliability. Continued work with MCPM will allow for further advancements in its modeling and mapping procedures and push the boundaries of cosmological modeling and prediction.

A keystone bacterium involved in the pathogenesis of chronic periodontitis, commonly known as gum disease, is Porphyromonas gingivalis. Two well-studied wild-type strains, 33277 and 381 have nearly identical genomes, however, they possess different immunostimulatory capacities. Experiments in our lab have compared the interbacterial interactions of these two strains, with a focus on outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) as mediators via abundance and cargo. We have characterized differences in the abundance of OMVs between the two strains, with 381 producing more. Through a peptide degradation assay, we have determined that 381 OMVs also exhibit more protease activity than the 33277 strain. Through biofilm assays, we observed a difference in biofilm morphology, in which 381 formed a dense biofilm aggregating in columnar structures, while 33277 formed an evenly distributed biofilm. Finally, by performing protein isolation and analysis through SDS-PAGE, 381 OMVs displayed a reduction in a specific band, compared to 33277 OMVs. Our ongoing work is to optimize an outer membrane protein isolation protocol to identify the differentially loaded protein in 33277 OMVs, and any other differences in protein composition between 33277 and 381. In our work to compare 33277 and 381 wild type strains, we can further understand the mechanism behind their difference in virulence and how this contributes to pathogenicity of P. gingivalis.