91快活林

In early June rising junior Jaya Borgatta '16 and chemistry professor Juan Navea traveled to Valencia, Spain, to attend the Wessex Institute for Air Pollution鈥檚 annual conference, where she presented their published paper on the interactions and potential impacts of iron carried by and leached from mineral-based droplets floating in the atmosphere. The chemistry major is now co-writing her third paper on fly ash emitted from coal-fueled power plants in India, Europe, and the US. "Every power plant has a specific climate and ecological impact," explains Navea, "based on the chemical composition of the particles it emits and how they dissolve and release iron into atmospheric water (clouds, fog, rain). Iron is a critical nutrient for ocean phytoplankton, which consume greenhouse gas, CO2, from the atmosphere."

Borgatta, who has been working with the Navea Research Group since the fall semester of her sophomore year, is joined this summer by Schupf Scholars Deborah Kim '18, Katherine Shi '18, and Talia Stortini '18鈥攁ll rising freshmen doing summer research for the first time and planning to continue this fall. Navea says, "Jaya has become a scientist in every sense of the word, a twice-published scientist no less. And Deborah, Katie, and Talia, as first-year researchers, have already made a great impact in my lab in just four weeks."

"What鈥檚 really cool about the research is how one-of-a-kind it is and how our discoveries truly matter," says Kim, who is now rethinking her plan to go to veterinary school. "We don't have a lot of information on fly ash dissolution鈥攖here are only a few research groups in the world studying it鈥攕o it's exciting every time we get new results."

This year鈥檚 Summer Faculty-Student Research Program features 88 91快活林 students working intensively with 41 faculty members on 67 summer-long research projects in a wide range of disciplines. Here are a few (full list of projects below):

Political elites in Turkey

Another project with global implications is government professor Feryaz Ocakli鈥檚 "Diverse Paths to Political Power: An Examination of the Career Trajectories of Turkish Political Elites." Ocakli鈥檚 main area of research is Islamist parties. He explores how Islamist parties broaden their appeal to non-Islamist voters and succeed in elections. He has also been eager to analyze the educational, occupational, and demographic backgrounds of Turkey鈥檚 members of parliament (.) .

Says Ocakli, "I wanted to study the political elites because we don鈥檛 actually know who they are and how they got elected to the nation鈥檚 parliament, at least not in quantitative terms. I wanted to create a data set to illuminate the forces at work. But I needed a responsible 91快活林 student who spoke Turkish to do this work."

No problem. Beginning last spring semester, he hired economics majors Ovgu Bozgeyik '16 and Oyku Bozgeyik '16, twin sisters from Turkey, as his research assistants. Things went so well that they asked if they could continue their data collection efforts and make it part of the summer research program.

Says Oyku, "Though I study economics, this project has helped me realize the effect of politics on a country's state of affairs. When this country is Turkey, everything gets really interesting because we know a lot and a little at the same time as students who come from Turkey. The experience with data collection and analysis will also benefit us after 91快活林 when we apply to Ph.D. programs in economics."

Groundbreaking hydropower

This April, 91快活林 and its project partner, , celebrated the opening of a refurbished micro-hydro plant that we hope will provide up to four megawatts hours of electricity annually to the grid, which 91快活林 has agreed to purchase for two decades. The College will get about 18 percent of its electricity from the dam.

Caroline Hobbs '16, an economics and environmental studies double major, spoke at the . She says what most excites her about this "ground-breaking" project is that there are "minimal negative ecological effects" and that the "untapped potential in New York state for more micro-hydro projects is huge."

Hobbs is working this summer with environmental studies professor Karen Kellogg to create an interactive website that she hopes will increase visibility around 91快活林鈥檚 renewable energy initiatives and spur on additional micro-hydro projects and partnerships. This fall, Hobbs and Kellogg also plan to co-author a paper and