Gustavus Adolphus College senior Rachel Dorr recently completed a ten-week research training program at the University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience in St. Augustine, Fla. Dorr can now look forward to an all expense paid trip to the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society’s annual meeting in Orlando, Nov. 1-4, as winner of the Laboratory’s in-house competition.
Dorr was one of eleven students from over a hundred applicants nationwide selected for the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Whitney Lab. The program responds to the critical need in the United States for increased science education and the recruitment and development of potential science researchers and teachers.
Dorr, a biology major, worked in the lab of Dr. Barbara-Anne Battelle with the responsibility of using the lateral eyes of the American horseshoe crab as a model to look at changes in photoreceptor function in response to signals from a circadian clock.
“This has been a great chance for me to decide if laboratory science is a field I want to pursue,” Dorr said. “I plan to attend graduate school for biology and hope to continue researching at a biotech company or in academics.”
The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience is a non-profit research institute of the University of Florida that uses marine organisms for basic biological research that can be applied to human health, natural resources, and the environment. The lab’s mission includes the training of future experimental biologists, educational programs for children and college students, and monthly lectures for the general public.
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