Biochemistry

While the student traffic across Summit Avenue is much lighter, things are far from quiet on the St. Thomas campus over the summer months. Dozens of Tommies - 44, to be exact - are spending their summer working full-time on research thanks to funding from St. Thomas grants, including Young Scholars, Community-based Research and Sustainability Scholars.

Five St. Thomas student groups have been accepted into the Clinton Global Initiative University, including a pair of graduate students looking to cut food waste on campus.

This week's notes feature faculty Corinne Carvalho, Massimo Faggioli, Anne Klejment, Mark McInroy, Manjeet Rege, Angela Senander, Gary Voegele and Christian Washburn; and School of Social Work students Shanea Turner Smith and Elisabeth Wells, and a host of award-winning students from the 2014 Chemistry and Biochemistry Banquet.

This month, St. Thomas senior Elizabeth Chambers, junior Hunter Gaitan, sophomore Ryan Burke and biochemistry professor Dr. Adam Kay will help plant 96 plots of wildflowers on a vacant gravel pit in downtown St. Paul for their research study, The Helpful Flowers Project. The team will study biodiversity and how wildflowers remove toxic heavy metals from soil.

This week's notes feature faculty Anne Klejment, Dalma Martinovic-Weigelt, Lisa Prevette, Manjeet Rege, Christian Washburn, John Wendt and Reid Zimmerman; staff Carol Peterfeso and James Rogers; and students Katie Boyd, Emily Cabel, Jackie Heitzman, Caitlin Kielblock, Lauren McGovern, Kirsten Muller, Megan Tappe and undergraduate students from the Geography Department.