Mentor: Dr. Beth Ferro Mitchell

Arsida Nocka, a student member of Sigma Xi, is a senior at Le Moyne College majoring in Biological Sciences. A native of Albania, she did a year of post-high school exchange in the U.S., essentially doing a second senior year Fayetteville-Manlius High School. Having enjoyed her year in the U.S., she then applied to Le Moyne College where she has been a top student for the past four years. Next year she will begin a Ph.D. program in Cell & Molecular Biology at McGill University in Montreal.

Arsida, a truly exceptional student, has been doing research at Le Moyne with Dr. Beth Mitchell for the past three semesters and will graduate in May with Honors in Biology. Over the past year and a half, Arsida has carried out two distinct research projects using different technologies. Her first semester project involved an analysis of the relative effectiveness of several nonionic detergents in creating permeablized cell models; this work was presented at the Northeast Regional Undergraduate and Graduate Student Sigma Xi Poster Conference at Cornell in April 2006. This year, Arsida has used a variant PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technique to amplify the flanking DNA in several insertional mutants of the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This technique allows us to identify the genes disrupted during insertional mutagenesis and is an important alternative to earlier techniques which may only work well for certain mutants. Arsida’s ability to problem-solve and think through the logical consequences of an experiment, in addition to her excellent lab technique, have made her an exceptional undergraduate research student. Despite the time and frustration involved in getting this new technique working, Arsida is beginning to identify some of the disrupted genes. She is bright, interested, inquisitive, and has what those in bench science call “good hands”. On top of all this, Arsida really loves working in the lab and looks forward to her research days when she gets to “play in the lab”.

In recognition of her accomplishments, as well as her future promise, the Syracuse chapter of Sigma Xi presents a 2007 Sigma Xi outstanding undergraduate student research award to Arsida Nocka.

Return to Awards 2006-2007