Featured photo of the week

December 17, 2012

University Relations

Undergraduate Alyssa Komac, standing, works with graduate student Teresia Schnurr in a West Ridge Research Building lab.

Undergraduate Alyssa Komac, standing, works with graduate student Teresia Schnurr in Kriya Dunlap's West Ridge Research Building lab. Komac is an exchange student from Montana, and Schnurr is a biochemistry major and Nordic skier from Buhlertal, Germany who was the Dr. Wood Scholar Athlete of the Year for 2010 – 2011. They are working on a project on the metabolism of sled dogs, researching whether exercise increases expression of a particular protein in white blood cells, work which has implications for human health as well.

"We utilize sled dogs as a research model since they are a great homogenous population to study parameters such as nutrition and physical activity in the circumpolar North," Schnurr said in an email about their work. " After a long field day we spend many, many hours in the lab to prepare our samples to run biochemical analysis," she said.