On Friday, April 20, Research Fellows from the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences were chosen to present at the Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship Poster Session.
The program provides funding for undergraduates from the arts and sciences to have the financial resources necessary for conducting their own research on a topic of choice.
Fellows are chosen after submitting a proposal with their application of admission to Hopkins or at the end of freshman year. Freshmen receive $10,000, and sophomores receive $7,500 to spend on traveling, equipment or any other research costs during their time at Hopkins.
As seniors, students present their final projects to the public. James Zwerneman, Theiline Gborkorquellie and James Harlow were picked for humanities, natural sciences and social sciences, respectively.
The stories of immigration
"I didn't want to write a political novel," said James Zwerneman, a Writing Seminars major, of his novel on Mexican immigration. "I didn't want it to be a propaganda story; I wanted it to be a personal story."
In order to shape his novel, Zwerneman spoke to hundreds of people. The Woodrow Wilson Scholarship financed his travels. He visited Mexico City and Veracruz to speak with people on border patrol, pick apples in work camps, interview one of the biggest immigrant lawyers in Washington and stay in refugee houses for those caught attempting to cross the border.
Although he was satisfied with the quality and quantity of research he did, he wished he could have made a documentary of his experiences. "I had to keep a lot of the stories confidential because there were so many illegal things happening," Zwerneman said. He admits that sometimes he did not tell the Fellowship exactly what he was doing with the grant because they might not have supported him. "Even if it all isn't said, it'll be reflected in my work," Zwerneman said.
Once his research was completed, he spent all of junior year writing about 400 pages and edited his novel the summer before his senior year. His senior year has been spent sending his work out for comments and he hopes to publish aster this summer. The working title of Zwerneman's book is Temo, the last name of the main character. The word "temo" has a duel significance. It means "I fear" in Spanish, and Temo was the name of one of the last Mexican Revolutionaries before he was assassinated by Cort??s.
Protecting patients with HIV
A Public Health major and Spanish minor, Theiline Gborkorquellie had been researching HIV since her freshman year of high school. The Wilson Scholarship program put her into contact with Kelly Gebo, whose research on HIV and infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Hospital interested Gborkorquellie and who ended up becoming her mentor.
Gborkorquellie studied bacteremia, a bacterial infection of the blood, and its occurrence in HIV patients that are already in the hospital.
"HIV patients develop bacteremia because their immune systems are already weak," Gborkorquellie said. The type of bacteremia her project dealt with developed in the hospital and usually from a central venous catheter, which provides fluids and nutrients to the patients. She analyzed data about bacteremia since the introduction of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), a drug cocktail that has become the standard of care of most HIV patients.
Gborkorquellie studied what the most common types of bacteremia were and looked at their rates of occurrence from 2001 to 2005. She found that rates of bacteremia were stable during these years and concluded that the HAART treatment had no positive or negative effect on rates of bacteremia.
"Women, injection drug users or IDUs, blacks, Hispanics and older patients, which are all at the greatest risk because they have the weakest immune systems, should be screened with blood cultures to detect bacteremia," Gborkorquellie said.
In February Gborkorquellie did a presentation at the 14th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI). Her scholarship allowed her to fly to Los Angeles to attend the most prestigious HIV conference in the world.
"I was the only undergrad student there," Gborkorquellie said. "It was mostly doctors and professionals. I was the youngest one there and I didn't realize how prestigious it was while I was there. Everyone was presenting their cutting-edge research."
Contributing to Irish history
James Harlow, a history and political science double major, studied the relations between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and ex-World War I servicemen during the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921.
The scholarship enabled him to study overseas in Berlin after freshman year, use the archives in London, spend three months overseas during his junior year and go to London and Dublin this year.
Harlow's project focused on Offaly County in Central Ireland, the area which saw the most ex-servicemen killed besides Dublin and Cork, cities that were hotbeds of violence during WWI. Offaly had not been very involved in the War, which might have been why ex-servicemen there were targeted.
In a charged emotional atmosphere, the ex-servicemen were caught in the middle.
"Many [ex-servicemen] were associated with British culture ... seen as spies, and marginalized by the community," Harlow said.
"My research was very personally fulfilling. The joy of the project was telling these people's stories. Unfortunately, so few people have looked into this before me, but I've been able to contribute to Irish history."
