research experience gives

Lauren Singelmann is a third-year student at NDSU and already she’s a seasoned researcher.

All it took to get her in a lab was an email to an NDSU faculty member, expressing her interest in math and engineering. The faculty member invited Singelmann, who at the time was a senior at Fargo North High School, to visit labs at the university, which led her to choose NDSU.

“I knew I could conduct research right away,” she says.

Singelmann, an electrical engineering major, is on a research team working on a series of cardiovascular engineering projects. The hands-on experience is preparing her for the next step, be it graduate school or the workforce. As a student researcher, she applies knowledge she learns in the classroom, works as part of a team, and solves complex problems. It also brings out the teacher in her.

She recently observed as a newer member of the team set up an experiment. The student searched for the tiny aorta in a mouse heart. The dark red heart was about the size of a marble, but a lighted magnifying glass supersized its slippery contours.

The student was nervous. It was only her second time setting up the experiment in one of NDSU’s newest research labs, and the room was full of people. Singelmann, along with several lab partners, were there to offer advice and encouragement. “Try again. You’ll get it.”

The student found the aorta on the third try. The experiment was ready to begin.

It’s one of many experiments Singelmann has conducted. Her first project exposed mice to radiofrequency waves to see which heart genes, if any, those waves changed. They discovered 10 genes had been manipulated.

Singelmann and other undergraduate students then took on their own part of the project: collecting the cells from mice and pelting them with radiofrequency waves. The research could one day be applied to human cardiovascular therapies and treatments that are less invasive than pacemakers.

“It could lead to a new branch of medicine if it works,” Singelmann says.

Singelmann wants to expand her research to brain cells. “I want to incorporate science and research to understand how the brain develops,” she says.

She wants to grow the cells into a neural network, electrically stimulate the network and analyze how it “learns” and forms synapses. The lab work combines two of her biggest interests: the science behind the brain, and teaching.

She’s also a teacher in the community. Last fall, she tutored high school students in the Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Public Schools on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), concepts. This spring, she is mentoring second-grade math students at Fargo’s Ed Clapp Elementary.

She connects the student’s passions and interests with her lesson plans. For example, she taught DGF students computer coding techniques by tying the lessons to Instagram.