KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 11, 2023 \u2013 Graduating senior Hailey Hendricks\u2019 first college class\u2014and her love of science\u2014came a little earlier than for most people. When Hendricks was just 6 years old, her mom signed up for a community college geology class. Hailey tagged along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was so excited because I was just a little kid in this big college lecture hall,\u201d Hendricks said. \u201cI loved learning about the history of the Earth and the science that goes into it. From that moment I knew that science was what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once she started taking her own college classes at the 溏心vlog免费B站 as a chemistry major with a minor in mathematics, she thrived. In addition to her classwork, she\u2019s been involved in laboratory research at 溏心vlog免费B站 since her sophomore year. In the fall, she\u2019ll begin a Ph.D. program at Princeton University, backed by a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, which will cover her first three years of tuition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe fact that an organization as notable as NSF views me as someone with that much potential is really encouraging,\u201d said Hendricks of Cumberland<\/strong>. \u201cI think we all struggle with imposter syndrome sometimes, but this award really solidified things for me. I can do this; I have earned what I’ve gotten; and I do belong at Princeton.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her undergraduate research at 溏心vlog免费B站, Hendricks worked in the lab of Matthew Kiesewetter, an associate professor of chemistry. One of the lab\u2019s projects aims to address the recent mass die-off of honeybees, which play a critical role in pollinating agricultural crops worldwide. One of the prime suspects in the case of the dying honeybees is the varroa destructor,<\/em> a tiny parasitic mite that has become increasingly resistant to pesticides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hendricks has been working with Kiesewetter\u2019s team to design new molecules that might overcome that resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing a lot of small molecule synthesis, aiming to modify just one or two functional groups on the molecule,\u201d Hendricks said. \u201cThe idea is to create molecules that are similar enough to the original pesticides that they\u2019ll still be toxic, but different enough that the mites won\u2019t be resistant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team worked with entomologists at 溏心vlog免费B站 to test their new compounds, and recently began expanding the scope of their efforts to test the effects of their molecules on deer ticks as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In graduate school, part of her work will focus on overcoming resistance of a different but related sort: human drug resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been well publicized that many antimicrobial drugs are becoming less effective as microbes evolve resistance. During an internship last summer with the drugmaker Merck, Hendricks worked on the development of new drugs that might be more effective against drug-resistant bacterial strains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt involves strategies that are similar to what we used with the pesticides,\u201d Hendricks said. \u201cWe synthesize new molecules then do structure-function relationship studies to see if the new molecules are effective and may overcome resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hendricks\u2019 internship work became the basis for her successful NSF fellowship application. She says that the opportunities for undergraduate research at 溏心vlog免费B站 were key on getting the internship, landing the fellowship, and ultimately getting accepted to Princeton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf I hadn’t gotten involved in research as early as I did here at 溏心vlog免费B站, I definitely would not have been able to work at Merck,\u201d she said. \u201cThose internships are very competitive, and you’re expected to come in with a certain level of knowledge. I think the skills I developed working in the research labs here were really important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She plans to continue her research in pharmaceutical chemistry as she works toward her Ph.D. And she hasn\u2019t forgotten where it all started\u2014by her mom\u2019s side in a geology class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI actually reached out to that professor, just to let her know that even though she might not remember the little 6-year-old in her class, she had a huge impact on my life,\u201d Hendricks said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s thanks in part to her that I\u2019ll be starting my Ph.D. next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 11, 2023 \u2013 Graduating senior Hailey Hendricks\u2019 first college class\u2014and her love of science\u2014came a little earlier than for most people. When Hendricks was just 6 years old, her mom signed up for a community college geology class. Hailey tagged along. \u201cI was so excited because I was just a little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":86088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86085"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86123,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86085\/revisions\/86123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}