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News & Events

May 24, 2022

SRI StORIES

From Stars to Stories: Making Science Accessible

The undergraduate journey of physics and astronomy major Ethan Hood

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April 14, 2025
SRI Stories: Andrea Halling

Research journey that led to the study of the advent of multicellular life

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March 18, 2025
SRI Stories: Genesis Aquino

Breaking bonds and creating new ones to develop molecules with unique properties

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February 3, 2025
SRI Stories

Mutualistic Mentorship: Creating stepping stones for students and mentors alike

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December 23, 2024
SRI Stories: Parker Guzman

'A hero of mine is Hank Green, a science communicator who makes science accessible.'

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November 2, 2024
SRI: Just the Beginning

Science Research Initiative celebrates the graduation of its first cohort.

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August 18, 2024
SRI Stories: Costa Rica Field Trip

Coasting through Costa Rica. U students making waves in the land of "Pura Vida"

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July 30, 2024
SRI Stories: Parker Guzman

'A hero of mine is Hank Green, a science communicator who makes science accessible.'

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May 29, 2024
SRI Stories: Bones of the Past

“I like to think of it as just one big puzzle,” says SRI post-doc Kasey Cole.

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April 22, 2024
SRI Stories

Ryan Stolley, PhD, acknowledged as one of 2024's “Forty under 40” by Utah Business.

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February 27, 2024

SRI Team

January 3, 2022

SRI Team

Josh Steffen, Ph.D.

SRI Director; Associate Professor Lecturer

Josh Steffen, Ph.D.

SRI Director; Associate Professor Lecturer
Josh received his BA in biology and secondary education from St. Olaf College. He carried his Ph.D. and post-doctoral research at the University of Utah where he studied plant reproductive development with Gary in the lab of Gary Drews. He carried out post-doctoral research in the lab of Richard Clark where he studied natural variation in gene expression. Over the past 8 years he has held faculty positions at Colby-Sawyer College and Utah Valley University where he focussed on undergraduate education. In 2018 he accepted a position in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Utah. Currently, Josh manages the Science Research Initiative (SRI), teaches courses associated with the SRI, and mentors multiple undergraduate research groups. Undergraduates working with Josh are using metagenomic approaches to characterize pollinator foraging behaviors, attempting to identify novel antimicrobials, and carry out genetic analysis of maize mutants.
 joshua.steffen@utah.edu

Heather Briggs, Ph.D.

SRI Associate Director; Associate Instructor

Heather Briggs, Ph.D.

SRI Associate Director; Associate Instructor
Heather completed a M.S. at the University of Michigan (Natural Resources) and a Ph.D at the University of California, Santa Cruz (Environmental Studies & Ecology and Evolutionary Biology). She went on to complete two postdoctoral positions, first at Harvard, then at UC Irvine. As an evolutionary community ecologist, Heather’s research is motivated by the desire to understand how variation in community context influences the outcome of biotic interactions. Through the exploration of the various determinants of insect behavior, plant ecology, and floral evolution, her research considers the importance of context-dependent interactions from both the plant and pollinator perspectives.
 heather.briggs@utah.edu

Ryan M. Stolley, Ph.D.

SRI Associate Director; Associate Instructor

Ryan M. Stolley, Ph.D.

SRI Associate Director; Associate Instructor
Ryan received his BS in chemistry from Fort Lewis College and Ph.D in organic chemistry from the University of Utah. He then conducted a post-doctoral appointment at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’ Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis. After PNNL, he was a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the US Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies office. Ryan is currently an assistant research professor in the chemistry department where he works with numerous groups as a synthetic chemistry specialist, co-director of the SRI, and chairperson of the Salt Lake section of the American Chemical Society. Ryan’s research is in fundamental organic and organometallic chemistry uncovering new reaction paradigms using underexplored or entirely new functional groups, exotic ligands for rare-earth element coordination, and a variety of exotic conducting materials.
 801-581-6538
 ryan.stolley@utah.edu

Laura Rupert

SRI Program Manager

Laura Rupert

SRI Program Manager
Laura received B.S. degrees in Geography (climate change and landscape dynamics) and Environmental Studies (air, water and health) from the University of Utah. Within the SRI, she coordinates and provides support for daily operations at all levels of program engagement, including students, staff, postdocs, faculty, and college leadership.
 L.rupert@utah.edu

SRI Fellows

 

Kendra Autumn, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Kendra Autumn, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow
Kendra completed her BA in Biology at Willamette University and her PhD in Biology at the University of Utah. She is broadly interested in the evolution of symbioses, particularly in fungi. Her graduate work focused on using phylogenetics and genomics to investigate the evolution of parasitism of fungi by other fungi (mycoparasitism) in the agriculturally and industrially important order Hypocreales. She is currently working to characterize undiscovered diversity in the mycoparasitic genus Hypomyces and exploring poorly understood associations between Hypomyces molds and their mushroom hosts. Her mentorship style welcomes students to ask questions and make mistakes as they gain experience and confidence in a laboratory setting. She is invested in public science communication and prioritizes student involvement in outreach projects.
 kendra.autumn@utah.edu

Mikhael Semaan, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Mikhael Semaan, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow
Mikhael received twin BSes in Electrical Engineering and Physics from California State University, Long Beach, before continuing to the University of California, Davis for his Physics PhD. While at Davis, he taught active learning-based courses geared towards bioscience majors and cultivated a passion for scientific communication between disciplines. His research centers on how pattern and structure emerge in “complex systems:” how do we discover nature's patterns? How do we recognize a forest's structure as intricate, but a coin flip's as simple? Tackling these questions involves a combination of techniques from physics, mathematics, and computer science—applied in such seemingly unrelated areas as finance and cardiology! As an SRI Fellow, Mikhael is most excited to equip students not just with these tools but with the skills to build new ones, so that they might carry them across disciplinary boundaries throughout their chosen careers.
 m.t.semaan@utah.edu

Rodolfo Probst, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Rodolfo Probst, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow
Rodolfo received his B.Sc. in Biology at the State University of São Paulo and an M.Sc. in Systematics, Taxonomy, and Biodiversity at the University of São Paulo, both in Brazil. He recently obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Utah (Ecology, Evolutionary and Organismal Biology), where he investigated the evolution of ant-plant mutualistic interactions while working in the lab of Jack Longino. His research uses genomic tools, taxonomy, and natural history to understand ant-plant symbioses. He is led by his interest in insect evolution and his passion for tropical fieldwork, teaching the public about bugs and conservation, and exploring the outdoors. When not at the lab or collecting ants, he likes going road biking and hiking around Utah, cooking, and writing poetry.
 rodolfo.probst@utah.edu

Maira Alves Constantino, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Maira Alves Constantino, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow
Maíra completed her undergraduate studies in Physics with emphasis in Biomedical Physics at State University of Campinas (Unicamp) in her home country, Brazil. She continued her studies at Boston University where she received a MS and PhD in Physics, working under mentoring of Prof. Rama Bansil on the motility of cancer-causing bacteria Helicobacter pylori. During her PhD she developed a deep interest in Cancer Biology and switched gears to learn genetics of cancer at Dr. Glenn Merlino lab in the National Cancer Institute at NIH as a postdoctoral fellow. Her multidisciplinary career path gave her the ability to apply her Physics training to study the mechanical properties of cancer, a recently growing topic in cancer biology. Her research focuses on investigating how stiffness of tissue can influence the development of non-malignant nevus into melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer.
 maira.alves.constantino@utah.edu

Robyn Brooks, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Robyn Brooks, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow
Robyn Brooks received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Tulane University in 2020. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston College from 2020-2023, and in the Fall of 2023, is a Postdoctoral scholar at Brown University at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics. Her research interests lie in Algebraic and Computational Topology, including multi-parameter persistence, as well as in Knot Theory, Functor Calculus, and most recently, in using topology to understand feed forward neural networks. As a fellow at the University of Utah, she will continue to research the theory and applications of Topological Data Analysis. TDA can be used to tackle any scientific question with associated data, and has broad applications in finding meaning shapes and patterns within data from any field. As a mentor, she encourages creativity when approaching problem solving, and hopes to build confidence in technical communication and collaboration skills.
 robyn.brooks@utah.edu
 Find more about Robyn at: https://sites.google.com/view/robynkayebrooks/home

Austin Green, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Austin Green, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow
Austin Green is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Utah under the Science Research Initiative (SRI) and one of the leaders of Wasatch Wildlife Watch (WWW). Both the SRI and WWW are all about providing experiential and research-based learning and mentorship opportunities to undergraduate students and volunteer citizen scientists. Austin’s research goals are to help elucidate how human influence affects wildlife distribution and behavior in an effort to apply this knowledge to on-the-ground wildlife conservation. Austin is passionate about teaching and interacting with people, and he firmly believes that the best way to protect the wild lands we all love is to approach it with inclusive community engagement. He is excited to not only contribute to science and conservation on a local level, but it also help provide valuable evidence about human-wildlife interactions across the globe.
 austin.m.green@utah.edu

Kasey Cole, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Kasey Cole, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow
Kasey recently received a Ph.D. in Anthropology, with an emphasis in zooarchaeology (the study of animal bones from archaeological sites) and paleoecology, at the University of Utah. As a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Science Research Initiative, she is studying the fossil animal remains recovered from Utah’s high-elevation cave deposits to establish what animal communities looked like prior to anthropogenic climate change. Using this data, her work compares these past records with recent zoological survey data to evaluate whether ongoing climate change has contributed to range shifts or local extinctions, as has been predicted for the region’s montane mammals. Her research is interdisciplinary, incorporating theory and methods from Anthropology, Ecology, Geology, and Climate and Environmental Sciences. As a mentor, she strives to build a collaborative research environment aimed at equipping students with transferable skills and experience with science communication.
 kasey.cole@utah.edu
 Find more about Kasey at: https://sites.google.com/view/k-cole?usp=sharing

Andrea Halling, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Andrea Halling, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow
Andrea completed dual B.Sc. degrees in Physics and Biology with an education emphasis from Utah State University. She taught high school physics for two years before pursuing a Ph.D. in Geobiology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focused on the origin and evolution of multicellular life, using experimental evolution to better understand the interaction between single cells and their physical environment 700 million years ago, and how the cold viscous oceans during that time might have selected for simple life to become more complex. As an SRI Fellow, she continues to study the interplay between life and the physical environment by using the Great Salt Lake to understand how planktonic life adapts to the changing ecosystem today. She is passionate about science education and outreach, and in her free time loves to climb mountains, ski, and cuddle her cat Penelope.
 andrea.halling@utah.edu

Rachel Havranek, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Rachel Havranek, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Thilina De Silva, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

Thilina De Silva, Ph.D.

SRI Fellow

SRI Timeline

January 3, 2022

What to Expect in the SRI

Want to learn how to conduct research and create connections with faculty and other College of Science students? Join the Science Research Initiative (SRI)!

SRI offers College of Science students the opportunity to participate in discovery-based scientific research starting on your first day on campus, with no prior research experience required. You will gain research skills that will help you in science classes, learn with College of Science peers, and connect with faculty across the University. The SRI will jumpstart your path academic success, and give you needed skills to prepare for an internship or a career - whether that's in a research lab, an office, or one of the many other opportunities open to our graduates. Find out more below, or email us for more information.

Fall Year 1

Enroll in a 1-credit class in which you will learn about how science happens, join a community of researchers, and determine placement in a lab based on your research interests.

1
Spring Year 1

Begin the scientific journey in your selected lab. Students will engage in research activities for approximately 10 hours per week.

2
Fall Year 2

Continue in your selected stream and keep building upon your skills as a researcher. Students are given various opportunities to share research findings and mentor new students.

3
Beyond

Stay involved with the SRI community. Connect with new research and professional development opportunities in both SRI & College of Science.

4

FAQ

Information for Prospective SRI Faculty

December 21, 2020

Inspire the Next Generation

The Science Research Initiative (SRI) creates opportunities for first-year and transfer students to join a research lab in the College of Science, to begin to learn and master the skills they will need for a successful career in a STEM field.

Faculty can lead a stream of SRI scholars (3-10 students) in their lab on a project of their choosing, that relates to overall research productivity. By participating, faculty can help students gain research skills and mentorship that lead to academic retention, a more positive undergraduate experience and paths to graduate school.

The SRI process:

1. First-year students, upon acceptance to the University of Utah, can apply to the SRI if they intend to declare a major or minor in the College of Science/College of Mines & Earth Sciences.

2. Upon admittance to the SRI, students are placed into research streams - a group of fellow students working together in the same lab.

3. Once in a lab, the stream is taught the necessary lab skills they will need, as well as begin creating community with their fellow students, faculty, and research lab members.

4. Students work with their stream for an academic year. They will then have the choice to continue with the SRI for a second year, becoming mentors for the next cohort of students, or leaving the lab for new opportunities.

 

We want you to be involved! Email our SRI team today.

 

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