SYRACUSE CHAPTER OF SIGMA XI CITATION 2003 UNDERGRADUATE  AWARD FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE

Ms. Marina Klindo is a junior Biology major at Le Moyne College.  Ms. Klindo was nominated by her research mentor, Dr. Beth Ferro Mitchell.

Anyone who has supervised undergraduate research knows that not all students are created equal.  When a faculty mentor has the good fortune to get an excellent student, the mentor inevitably wishes that student could continue in their lab for more than a semester or a year.  Marina Klindo is an example of such a student. 

Marina was born in Serbia and moved to America with her family as a sophomore in high school.  She struggled to learn English sufficiently well to complete her last two years of high school in a new language and to attend college as a science major.  Her success in this endeavor can be seen in her strong academic performance.  She began doing research in Dr. Mitchell’s lab last semester and has been an excellent research student, interested in both the background library research and the experimental procedures.  Dr. Mitchell’s lab uses Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a unicellar green alga, as a model system for studying flagellar motility.  Previous research in the lab has shown that lithium causes reversible paralysis of the flagella, and Marina’s research has been aimed at determining the mechanism of this inhibition.  She began the semester doing experiments designed to test a hypothesis that was based on the work of a previous undergraduate in the lab.  By November she had successfully disproved the hypothesis.  Rather than being discouraged, at this point, Marina became even more excited by the prospect of figuring out what was going on.  She has come up with an alternative hypothesis which she is testing this semester.  Marina plans to continue her research in Dr. Mitchell’s lab during her senior year, hoping to determine just how lithium inhibits flagellar motility.

In recognition of her accomplishments, as well as her future promise, the Syracuse chapter of Sigma Xi presents a 2003 Sigma Xi outstanding undergraduate student research award to Marina Klindo.

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