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URSS Oral and Poster Presentations

The annual 2025 Undergraduate Research & Scholarship Symposium (URSS) will be held on  April 2 in the Charles Dougherty Ballroom in the Power Center.

From the Heisler Lab:

Ryan will be giving both an ORAL and poster presentation describe his findings of imidazole and diamine compounds that possess novel antibacterial properties.

Trista will be giving a POSTER presentation describing her exploration of novel triazole compounds that have both broad and high specificities against common food-borne pathogens.

Brianne will be presenting her POSTER that highlights her efforts to uncover how a subset of Listeria proteins interact with host proteins during infection.

Megan will be using her POSTER to describe her efforts to understand how Listeria may regulate gene transcription to prevent a host response using a secreted protein.

Welcome Mia!

The Heisler lab is excited to welcome Mia to our lab this semester. Mia a freshman biochemistry major who aspires to be a medical doctor. Her project will focus on proteins and genes related to the pathology of multiple sclerosis (MS) and how structures in the regulatory elements of genes linked to MS might provide new avenues for therapeutic intervention. 

Heisler Lab at CERM 2024!

Today Megan, Trista, and Elizabeth (Cascio Lab) represented the Heisler lab at the American Chemical Society Central Regional Meeting 2024 in Greentree, PA. Trista and Elizabeth were both recognized for their presentations with Top Poster Award!

Additionally, work from Zoe (Summer student; Bryn Mawr) was presented as part of Sophia Hershey’s poster (Mihailescu Lab). Caleb Frye (Mihailescu lab) also gave a talk about our collaborative findings on the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome 3′-untranslated region. 

Halloween in the Heisler Lab!

The undergraduate students took advantage of some free decorations from the School of Science and Engineering to spread some Halloween cheer! Be sure to stop by Dr. Heisler’s office for some Halloween candy!

SoSE Fall Festival!

Today, the School of Science and Engineering (SoSE) welcomed our new students and welcomed back current students with a celebration of what the department has done and what we will strive to continue to do our students each semester!

Welcome to the lab Elias and Morgan!

Today, the lab added 2 new prospective graduate students in Elias and Morgan.

Elias comes to us from Grove City College where he studied biochemistry and was a First Team All-PAC swimmer. He will explore the crossover between organic and inorganic chemistry and biochemistry to address the need for novel antibiotics.

Morgan is a graduate of Bucknell University, where she focused on cell biology and biochemistry. She will utilize this background to better understand how Listeria is able to continue to be a worldwide foodborne pathogen with recent outbreaks in the United States and Canada!

 WELCOME to the team!

URP Symposium

The summer research season has come to a bittersweet ending. As the last activity of the summer, the undergraduates presented all of their hard work at the Regional Undergraduate Research Symposium here at Duquesne University.

Accidental Beauties

Not sure this would fly in a methods section: Crystals were formed by diluting the compounds in DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS and forgetting to vortex the tube fast enough.

The Summer Crew!

Not sure I can articulate how thankful I am for the craziness that this summer has been in the lab, but this team shows up every morning happy, excited to try and learn, and give it their best! So ladies, thank you for everything you do and here is to hoping a lot of success comes from this for the lab, but more important each of you in your future endeavors. 

Left to right: Ellen, Adisyn, Erin, Trista, Zoe, and Megan

Heisler Lab Growing this Summer!

 This summer, the Heisler lab welcome FIVE new students to the lab!

Erin (Carlow University) and Ellen (University of Arizona) come to us as part of the Pain and Neurodegenerative Undergraduate Research Experience (PURE and NURE) program here at Duquesne.

Zoe (Bryn Mawr) come to us as part of the The Integrated Computational and Experimental Chemistry NSF-REU Program here at Duquesne. Zoe will be co-advised with Dr. Rita Mihailescu (Duquesne).

Adisyn and Trista (Duquesne University) were selected as part of the Summer Departmental Undergraduate Research Program (URP).

Megan will be back in the lab this summer as well as part of URP.

Here is to a busy but hopefully very successful summer!