| Group Members |
| Introduction | Techniques | Instrumentation | Members |
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| Current Students |
| Nate Johnson (2011) Nate originally from St. Croix Falls, WI. is majoring in Physics. His projects have looked at the impact surfactant monolayers have on cloud formation, Auto-oscillations of surface tension, and self assembling lipid nanostructures. He is very excited to make a real contribution to the scientific community. |
| Nick Hudson (2012) is from the small city of Bemidji. This summer he is working on tracking cells to produce ground truth data with which people can test their cell tracking programs and creating an R statistics package. In his free time Nick skateboards, reads and stays physically active. |  |
| Nicholas Ward (2011) Originally from Milwaukee, Nick is working on refurbishing a Langmuir Trough to add collection. This project will contain circuits that will have to be constructed and integrated into labview to help control the trough. |  |
| Previous Students |
| Ben
Hoffmann
(2010) Ben is an upcoming sophomore who is majoring in Physics and
Math. He
plans on becoming an engineer. This summer Ben is working with Image
Processing, data analysis and programming in MatLab. He is also
designing and constructing a trough for further lipid research. Ben was
an academic all-american in Cross-Country and a varsity Track runner
his freshman year. |
| Andrew Nguyen (2010): Andrew has been working extensively with MatLab, Java, and image processing to track domains and model Brownian Motion. |  |
| Christine Staloch (2009) Christine is an upcoming junior who is double majoring in Chemistry and Physics. She won the Augsburg College Kekule prize this year. She plans to become a forensic scientist, ideally with the FBI. This summer Christine is studying the transbilayer diffusion rate of various lipid compositions and incubation times using a sodium dithionite assay. Christine is in cheerleading, Symphony and Chamber orchestra and is on a synchronized skating team. |  |
| Dan
Forseth
(2008) Dan is a biology major interested in interdisciplinary science.
During the summer of 2006 Dan worked in the Lipids Lab to measure the
interactions between sterols and lipids in monolayers. His experiments
used beta-cyclodextrin to extract the sterols from the lipid layer. He
also tested and calibrated a home built Wilhelmy plate sensor. During
his free time he is the studio manager for the Augsburg radio station
KAUG and works at the library. Dan intends on teaching high school
biology after Augsburg. |
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| Alison Heussler (2009) Alison is a sophomore physics major at Augsburg College. This summer she has been working with lipid domains, more specifically finding the frequencies at which they undulate. To do this she has had to learn how to use and create image analysis programs in ImageJ and MatLab. Alison is also applying her knowledge of image processing to track the boundaries of cells. In her free time Alison enjoys the theatre and German. |  |
| Ben Sonquist (2006) is a senior biology and secondary education student. Using a Langmuir trough and a pressure sensor Ben has studied phase change and miscibility behavior of 25-Hydroxycholesterol in lipid monolayers. Ben has enjoyed working in the Lipids Lab because it has allowed him to explore questions of biological importance in the context of physics. Ben is married and has three rambunctious sons, is the interim minister of youth at his church, and will be student teaching at Minneapolis South West high school. |  |
| Kyle
Sontag
(2007) Chemistry major Kyle Sontag spent the summer of 2006 working on
two projects in the lab. The first project was developing equipment and
experimental procedures to study the transbilayer diffusion of lipids
across a membrane. Additionally, Kyle has written software routines to
calculate geometrically corrected area fractions of lipid vesicles.
Kyle intends on attending graduate school in chemistry after
graduation. Like any good Minnesotan, Kyle enjoys playing Hockey. |
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| Erik Lundberg graduated in 2006 with a double physics and math major. Erik refurbished a Langmuir trough which is currently being used at the University of Minnesota and built a surface potential probe. Erik is currently studying electrical engineering at Cornell. |
| Lava K.C. is a junior computer science major who has been writing some analysis software for the lab this year. When studying lipids that phase separate an important factor to determine is the amount of each coexisting phase. Lava has been solving this problem by making geometrical corrections in bilayer systems. |
