Early this growing season, Andre Mendoza was hard at work installing mini-rhizotron tubes in several sorghum plots throughout the University of Illinois Energy Farm.
Over the course of the summer, he has become an expert on root demographics and turnover in bioenergy crops – an important topic when discussing carbon storage in cropping systems.
A rising sophomore studying Earth and Environmental Science at Vanderbilt University, Mendoza is one of 11 student interns to participate in the annual Research Internship in Sustainable Bioenergy (RISE) in summer 2024. RISE is hosted by the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) and offers bioenergy research and career development opportunities for undergraduates from groups underrepresented in STEM.
During this 10-week paid internship program, students were paired with a CABBI mentor and worked on a research project. They gained experience in plant biology, agronomy, synthetic biology, genetics, environmental sciences, chemical engineering, or civil & environmental engineering. In addition to their research projects, students also participated in a series of seminars on STEM career options, graduate school, the research process, and science communication.
Coming from across the country, the 2024 RISE cohort worked at six CABBI sites: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Penn State University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and HudsonAlpha. Each student received a $6,000 stipend, and housing and travel were provided.
For Mendoza, RISE was an opportunity to see firsthand what a career in research looks like.
“This was my first-ever research experience,” he said. “And I got to do a wide range of work, both out in the field and in the lab.”
Mendoza worked with mentor Janith Chandrasoma and CABBI Sustainability PI Evan DeLucia this summer. His research project focused on examining winter root decomposition and turnover in sorghum.
“I was out in the field helping install the ingrowth cores that the roots grow into, and then later I was out there removing the cores and preparing the samples,” Mendoza said. “During the last week of the program, I worked on some of the mineralization tests on the samples. I thought that was cool, to do the full circle of installation, removal, sample prep, and testing.”
Outside of the lab, RISE interns were invited to engage in other research-related programming, along with social and professional development events.
“They had a lot of opportunities for the interns to network and engage in research workshops,” Chandrasoma said. “When I met Andre, I told him, ‘If you have time, attend every possible opportunity you get.’”
And at the end of the summer, the RISE interns attended the yearly CABBI retreat, where they had the opportunity to present the fruits of their labor at the CABBI Undergrad Research Symposium. Interns gave 10-minute talks about the highlights of their work and had the opportunity to also present a poster. This well-attended event was a highlight of the retreat for many.
“Presenting my research at the CABBI retreat was great,” Mendoza said. “I’d never been to a scientific conference, but Janith helped make it a really approachable experience. And I got to network with the other interns and researchers and hear about their work, too.”
The experience was productive for mentor and mentee alike.
“This was the third CABBI retreat I’ve been to,” said Chandrasoma. “And for the first time, one of my mentored students was presenting. It was like living the dream of being a professor. Andre did great.”
Although he was previously uncertain about research and graduate school, Mendoza now feels confident about taking the next step.
“I’d like to continue doing research,” he said. “I’m going to poke around the EES department at Vanderbilt to see if there’s anything similar, where the skills I’ve developed with RISE will be useful.”
The experiences they’ve had and connections they’ve made, both in and out of the lab, will provide these students with a strong foundation for future research endeavors and networking.
The other 2024 RISE interns and their projects:
- Ashlyn Lomelli, who worked with mentor Sujit Jagtap and Conversion PI Chris Rao (Illinois) on examining the role of metal ions in metabolism of CABBI yeasts and their effect on the conversion of feedstocks to bioproducts;
- Dominyq Gritten, who worked with mentor Sanbon Gosa and Feedstocks PI Andrew Leakey (Illinois) on studying tissue-specific gene expression patterns in response to environmental cues in sorghum engineered for greater water use efficiency;
- Vivian Ritter, who worked with mentor Tirath Raj and Conversion PI Vijay Singh (Illinois) on the development of a green chemistry approach to lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment for efficient lipid and sugar recovery;
- Leanna Skeete, who worked with mentor Nikita Bhatnagar and Feedstocks PI Don Ort (Illinois) on evaluating the role of Rubisco activase in thermotolerance in sorghum;
- Brady Woods, who worked with mentor Andie Suratt and Sustainability PI Wendy Yang (Illinois) on optimizing fertilizer use in sorghum to reduce N2O emissions;
- Solimar Guzman-Rubalcaba, who worked with mentor Susan Hubbard and Conversion PI Brian Pfleger (Wisconsin) on engineering oleaginous yeast for improved tolerance to growth inhibitors and production of oleochemicals
- Jordan Masterson, who worked with mentors Yuan Liu and Katerina Estera-Molina and Sustainability PI Jennifer Pett-Ridge (LLNL) on investigating the role of plant-microbe-mineral interactions on soil carbon dynamics in response to drought in oil-enhanced sorghum bioenergy systems;
- Donovan Mauney, who worked with mentor Alexandria Murphy and Conversion PI Melanie McReynolds (Penn State) on dissecting how pH affects NAD+ metabolism in model and non-model yeast;
- Alejandro Paulino, who worked with mentor Thasneem Frousnoon and Conversion PI Yasuo Yoshikuni (LBNL) on analyzing ploidy of multiple generations of an engineered orientalis strain to establish its stability; and
- Isabella Soto, who worked with mentor Brandon James and Feedstocks PI Kankshita Swaminathan (HudsonAlpha) on characterizing starch synthase II expression patterns through overexpression and RNAi across Saccharum varieties.
Read more about RISE on CABBI’s outreach page >>>
— April Wendling, CABBI Communications Specialist
