2009 Bachelor’s of Science with Honors in Biology and Concentration in Environmental Studies at Haverford College, Haverford, PA
Thesis: The Effect of Nectar and Pollen Energetics on Pollinator Visitation in a Desert Community

2010 Drexel University, Pennsylvania State Secondary Education Teaching Certificate in General Science

           Clean water and toxin-free food are evermore important in our world of population growth and development—especially in impoverished parts of the world where people have insufficient funds to maneuver overwhelming environmental problems.  In Bangladesh and parts of India, a need for clean water grew because surface water became polluted.  People thus dug deeper to access “clean” water from the underlying aquifer, which incidentally contained naturally occurring arsenic from volcanic sediments millennia ago.  This arsenic consequently entered the Bangladeshi people’s vital water system, which people rely on for drinking, agriculture, and daily household use.
            My interest lies in resolving the problem of arsenic-contaminated rice grains.  Rice is a chief grain that constitutes the majority of the daily caloric value for people in Bangladesh.  The consumption of arsenic through food or water causes skin legions, neurological injuries, and may lead to a variety of cancers.  Previous research has shown that iron plaques that form on the outer surfaces of wetland rice roots sorb arsenic (arsenic sticks to the surface of plaque/root), and thereby remove it from the ambient paddy water, and prevent the absorption of arsenic into vascular tissues of roots where arsenic is transported to the stems and eventually the edible grains.
            For my master’s project, I hope to elucidate the structure and function of these iron plaques that sorb (hold) arsenic in order to reduce the human consumption of arsenic.  Just how much arsenic can be sorbed by the iron plaques?  In other words, what is their maximum capacity to sorb arsenic?  Does this depend on the speciation (molecular form) of arsenic?  Where are the plaques specifically located along the length of the root?  I hope the answers to these questions will help determine alternative farming practices to reduce the amount of contaminated rice for the Bangladeshi people.