Students show off research efforts

The title of Friday night's "Jazz Tones and Dirty Bones" event was fitting for a tribute to the diversity of research opportunities available at Penn. Held in the rooftop lounge of Hamilton College House, the program was a joint effort by Hamilton and Harnwell college houses to allow four students to tell others about the research they have conducted at the University. The goal of the event, attended by about 50 students and visiting parents, was "to celebrate some extraordinary research opportunities here at Penn," Michelle Seidl, who organized the program, told the crowd. For Seidl and her husband Neil Shubin, the faculty master of Hamilton House -- as well as their counterparts in Harnwell, David and Ann Brownlee -- research is one of the most important opportunities available to undergraduates. "That's why you come to a place like Penn," said Shubin, a Biology professor. His advice to students is to find faculty members whose interests parallel their own. "Follow the Nike sneaker add: Just do it," Shubin advised. "E-mail them, give them a call or just approach them. Nine times out of 10 they will involve you or point you [to other faculty]." After a brief introduction, Seidl introduced the student speakers. Jason Downs, a College senior double majoring in Biology and Geology, spoke about a recent trip he took to China looking for dinosaur bones. As a junior, he landed a grant to travel to the Gongpoquan Basin in China, where he helped American and Chinese scientists mark future dig sites. "It was what I was hoping for," Downs said of his trip. "Research is not necessarily labcoats and beakers. It can be what you make of it." Kristina Herbert, a College senior majoring in Biochemistry and Physics, credits the work she did in Chemistry Professor Ponzy Lu's biochemistry lab with helping her pick a career path. The evening's other students discussed humanities research. George Blaustein, a College senior double majoring in English and History, is currently writing his thesis on the Cafe Society, a 1940s jazz club in New York City's Greenwich Village. Blaustein saw the cafZ, a renowned communist haunt that regularly saw the likes of Billie Holliday and Thelonius Monk, as a window to society. It represented the political repression of the era, Blaustein said. The owner was under constant investigation by the FBI, and the club was forced to close in 1950. While Blaustein enjoys his current research, he warned that research can also be frustrating. He's been waiting for FBI files on the club for some time. "Humanities research is akin to? looking for dinosaur bones," he noted. "It's determined by what's out there." College senior Bea Jauregui, a Psychology and Sociology major, interviewed inmates at Graterford prison in Philadelphia. Working in a prison afforded her the opportunity to examine how society deals with criminals, something that has interested her since she was young. "It was definitely an interesting experience," she said. "I ended up going out with a much more human view of these people."