The institute enables students to contribute to an individual Hood faculty member s research and receive a salary. Since it began in 1996, Hood s Summer Science Institute has been funded by The Whitaker Foundation. Hood commits institutional and external funding to the institute and other student research projects. The summer program exemplifies the type of research opportunities at Hood, which also offers departmental honors, Second Century Grants, Hood Board of Associate Grants for faculty that pay for student researchers, and Teagle Grants that provide stipends for student researchers. Other participants in last summer s institute were Kara Anlauf who worked with Ferrier in conducting research to help the aquaculture industry in tidewater Maryland and Ruth Sum who worked with Ricky Hirschhorn, associate professor of biology and director of the biomedical sciences program at Hood, in conducting research that may help scientists to understand the function of certain cells.
Scientists often use the sea anemone in the laboratory setting to model corals.
Coral reefs have colors such as pink, yellow, brown or green because of the algae that live inside the coral animals. This plant-animal connection is a symbiotic relationship the algae have access to nutrients in the animal s waste and the host animal receives carbohydrates for energy from the algae s photosynthesis. Chan isolated and sequenced a portion of the glutamine synthetase gene from the sea anemone Aiptasia pallida. This gene is important in the regulation of nitrogen flow between the anemone and its symbiotic algae. By knowing more about this gene, scientists can begin to discover the mechanisms of nitrogen metabolism with the symbiosis.