The Sci-Files – 07/14/2019 – Connie Rojas – Spotted Hyena Microbiomes
July 19, 2019
This week on The Sci-Files Chelsie and Danny interview Connie Rojas.
Connie is a 4th year Ph.D. Candidate in Integrative Biology and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior (EEBB) program at Michigan State University. She is investigating the interactions between animal hosts and their symbiotic microbial communities, a.k.a the ‘microbiome.’ Specifically, she is studying how the microbiome affects animal hosts’ physiology and behavior, and how the host and its environment affect their symbiotic microbial communities. Connie is applying her research questions to the social carnivore, the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta). Her research is at the interface of ecology, animal behavior, microbiology, and genomics. Her project brings together fieldwork data, laboratory work and computational tools.
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Chelsie is a Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student at Michigan State University. She studies what happens to the extracellular matrix of cells after they have been stressed. She co-hosts "The Sci-Files" with Daniel Puentes. Together they explore the different topics that MSU students research on "The Sci-Files" at WDBM.
Daniel is a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, where he does research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. His research involves measuring the mass of radioactive nuclei, and how it can tell us how protons and neutrons are arranged inside of a nucleus. This research also helps scientists understand how the elements were created in different stellar environments! At WDBM, he and Chelsie Boodoo co-host The Sci-Files.
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