- Hi I'm Gavin, a senior
neuroscience major at Hamilton.
Behind me is the Taylor Science Center.
They have over a hundred high-end labs
where students and professors do research
and I'm hoping to show
you as many as I can.
Lucas, how are you?
- Very well, how are you?
- I'm doing great, can
you tell me a little bit
about your major and the space around us?
- Absolutely, I'm a geoscience major here
at Hamilton College and we
are in the mineralogy lab,
one of my favorite rooms on campus.
It's a paradise for
geologists, we're surrounded
by gorgeous colors, gorgeous minerals.
Right now we're all in a
meeting for our Arizona trip
that we recently went on.
Went to the Grand Canyon, all
around the south and north side.
We also went to Iceland last summer.
It's just a wonderful
opportunity to come together
and as a group and look at rocks.
- Hi Danielle, can you tell me
what this thing behind you is?
- This is an NMR, it does
nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
An NMR is really useful for us
especially in the chemistry department
with determining the structure
of chemical reaction
products that we make.
It's a really important tool and it's not
something that every college has so it's
really unique that we have
such an amazing NMR facility here.
And it really was an advantage
being a chemistry major
to have a tool like this at my disposal,
especially during my senior thesis.
- This is a laminar flow hood.
It's a specially designed
hood that blows air
through it to make sure that everything
inside of the hood
stays completely sterile
and clean of any outside contaminants.
(upbeat music)
- So this is Natalie Nannas'
lab, we focus on genetics here.
We use corn as a model organism.
And so what we do, we're
basically, I'm working
on this Ab10 project with Subin as well,
and we're trying to figure out like how
this abnormal chromosome ends up in 80%
of offspring rather than 50%,
which that's predicted
by Mendelian genetics.
So it's breaking the
normal laws of genetics.
- What's it like to be
able to work so closely
with a researcher like Professor List?
- It's great, really Hamilton offers a lot
of great opportunities
to be able to connect
with professors one-on-one and do
really hands-on research that way.
- So you and I both get
to work with Dr. Robinson.
Can you speak to your
experience being able
to work one-on-one with
her and having access to
all of the technology and resources
that we have doing our thesis.
- Yeah, it's been really wonderful.
I've been working with her
since freshmen year now,
so four years.
I've worked with her over the summers.
Well, I actually started
my thesis over the summer
which is when I was able to
do the optogenetic surgery.
So it takes about two hours per surgery.
So without that summer research,
this thesis could not be possible.
- Hi Professor, can you tell us a little
about this lab and what you do here?
- Right, so this is a lab in
which we do behavioral work,
behavior ecology work
and also disease work.
And so we're mainly interested
in the intersection between
behavior and disease.
and the main species we
work with are American crows
and actually I have a video
here, it's called the Nanny Cam.
We have an aviary across the street
and here is the Nanny Cam where we can see
what the crows are doing
at any given moment.
- Thanks for coming along as we looked
at different lab spaces in
the Taylor Science Center.
This is where I do the
majority of my research.
So enjoyed having you guys
and hope you guys learned
about all the great opportunities we have
for research at Hamilton College.
