Student research is an important activity for Biology majors at Beloit College. Under the direction of a member of the Biology faculty member, students design and implement their own research, gather and analyze their own data, and present their results.

Students have studied a variety of topics and published and/or presented their research:

• Antipredator communication between free-living male and female red-winged blackbirds: Burton, N., Yasukawa, K. 2001. The "predator early warning system" of red-winged blackbirds. Journal of Field Ornithology 72, 106–112.
• Modeling plant growth: Grossman, Y.L., A. Berdanier, M. Custic, L. Feeley, S. Grogan, S. Peake, A. Saenz, and K. Sitton.  2008.  Strategies for assessing plant growth.  BioQUEST Workshop: Problem Solving in Biology: Data, Tools and Resources from Plant Science.  St. Louis, MO, June 14-21, 2008.
• Analysis of food production systems: Fass, M.F., Helregel, N., Loos Dialo, A.  2008. Slow Food: A SENCER Model on Nutrition and Sustainability, presented at the SENCER Capitol Hill Symposium, Washington, DC, April 15, 2008.

A second way that Beloit Biology majors do independent research is to work in a lab at another college or university. Many of our majors do research away from Beloit College during the summer or during the school year. Beloit has provided funding for summer biomedical laboratory research experiences through the Beloit Summer Biomedical Research Scholars Program. Other students have participated in externally funded summer research opportunities. Here are some recent examples of student research from papers published in the 2009 volume of The Beloit Biologist, our departmental journal:

• Yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flavientris) female reproduction at low and high elevations. Mary A. Cobb (Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory)
• Elevation effects on life history characteristics of yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris), Christine L. Brown and Brett C. Woods (Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory)
• Iron uptake in OMPR mutants of Escherichia coli is not dependent on the enterochelin system or acetyl phosphate, Jill M. Beamon, Sylvia Reimann, and Alan Wolfe (Loyola University)
• Biologically active Bacteroides fragilis toxin initiates cleavage of intestinal surface proteins E-cadherin, carbonic anhydrase IX, and Desmoglein-2 in vitro, Aarti Chawla, Kijong Rhee, and Cynthia Sears (Johns Hopkins University)
• IgE regulates the expression of FcεRI receptor on human basophils but not neutrophils, Uyen Tran, Emily K. Riggs, Jun Fu, and Larry L. Thomas (Rush University)
• PDL-1 inhibition enhances the rejection of murine (Mus musculus) malignant mesothelioma, Sonia J. Laurie, Nadine Larret, Magdalena Rogezenski, Eushin Lee, and Amanda L. Marzo (Rush University)
• The effect of histone deacetylase inhibitors and radiation on transformed WB-F344 and HeLa cells, Deana L. Brown and Tomonori Hayashi (Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Hiroshima, Japan)