Past rows of lab benches stocked with supplies and behind a closed door marked with a warning sign, two undergraduate students sit shoulder-to-shoulder in a darkened experiment room peering at a live video feed.
“Ready?” asks Penelope Morris, a first-year behavioral neuroscience major.
“Oh no, not ready,” replies Jared Young, professor of biology and founder of the Young Lab on Northeastern University’s Oakland campus, before adjusting the slightly crooked microscope camera. “OK.”
Morris begins recording and waits as five transparent worms about 1 millimeter in length mill about on a circular feast of bacteria. After precisely 20 seconds, she flips a switch and zaps the worms, called nematodes, with an 80-milliamp electrical current, sending them fleeing in all directions.
“There you go, that’s a good response,” Young says.
The students are among the newest crop of researchers under Young, whose program has equipped more than 100 undergraduates since 2006 with the foundational lab skills needed to advance their scientific careers. A growing number of these students are also now part of an informal researcher “pipeline” created between Northeastern’s campus laboratories last year, Young said, utilizing their experience in Oakland to stand out within a competitive pool of lab applicants when they move to the Boston campus.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
