Cornell’s campus is far quieter in the summertime, with the vast majority of the student body departed for vacation. However, many research labs are still busy and operational, and some of the undergraduates who elect to spend their summer in Ithaca devote their time to working in them. From a materials engineer to an evolutionary biologist, The Sun got to meet some of these student researchers and learn about the projects they did this past summer.
Allison Dew ’27, Laboratory of Soft and Living Materials
Allison Dew ’27 worked in the Laboratory of Soft and Living Materials, which is led by Prof. Eric Dufresne, material sciences engineering and biophysics. She joined the lab in spring 2025. The lab has a number of research directions, including living droplets, which Dew studied.
Living droplets, otherwise known as biomolecular condensates, are found in cells. They’re microscopic drops of organic material — nucleic acids, which make up DNA, and proteins. Biomolecular condensates can affect what the cell does, which is why understanding them is necessary to understanding how cells, organs and the human body work.
“We are studying these because there are benefits, for instance, in medicine. Think [diseased growths from cells] in the brain,” Dew said. “If you understand … why something's forming globules in your brain, then you can understand how to dissolve it with medication.”
Dew was a research assistant under post-doctorate researcher Takumi Matsuzawa. Her main project was to repeat the results of a project previously conducted by lab member Blue Shapiro, M.Eng. “My job was to go back over his research and expand on it and try and repeat his results to see how valid they were,” Dew said. By the end of the summer, she succeeded in replicating Shapiro’s results.
She and Shapiro found that when an enzyme — a structure in cells that speeds up chemical reactions — is pushed into a biomolecular condensate, its activity can greatly increase. Additionally, when the condensate’s viscosity and density increased, the reactivity, or sensitivity, of the enzyme decreased.
“There is a way to control enzymatic activity by playing with the mechanics of its local environment, and that's really helpful,” Dew said. “You could think about it in terms of food, if you wanted faster reactions in baking. You could talk about it in terms of industry, if you wanted to play with the reaction rates of the materials that you're looking at and the chemical processes that you are undergoing.”
While she was in Ithaca, Dew also interned at the Cornell Raptor Program, which houses a collection of non-releasable birds of prey and educates people about them. She also enjoyed hiking and visiting Syracuse with her friends.
Although she will not be continuing with the Laboratory of Soft and Living Materials this semester, Dew is glad to have gotten the chance to work with the team behind it.
“They're a fantastic team,” she said. “They are so clean and organized and kind and welcoming. Love the Dufresne Lab, one hundred percent.”
Caleb Goillandeau ’26, Caddy Lab in The Baker Institute for Animal Health
Caleb Goillandeau ’26 studied viruses and antibodies in The Baker Institute for Animal Health. He worked under Prof. Sarah Caddy, microbiology and immunology, who he has worked with since fall 2024.
Goillandeau’s focus this summer was the rotavirus, a stomach and intestinal virus that can cause severe dehydration.
“It’s the number one cause of diarrhea deaths in infants in third-world countries,” he said, “so we studied why the vaccine wasn’t so effective in these groups through maternal antibodies.”
Through pregnancy and breastfeeding, mothers give their infants temporary immunity to certain diseases in the form of maternal antibodies. These antibodies may cancel out the effects of a vaccine against these diseases because the body thinks you have maternal immunity from the virus, but this effect is only temporary. This leaves the infant vulnerable to disease as the maternal antibodies wear off.
Goillandeau’s project was to test the effectiveness of an engineered antibody against rotavirus, which could be used alongside a vaccine to treat the disease. His lab infected baby mice with rotavirus before applying the antibody treatment, all of which was done as humanely as possible, according to Goillandeau.
“Dr. Sarah Caddy… was very caring towards not only me, but she also wanted to make sure the mice were handled in the best way possible,” Goillandeau said.
All research involving animals at Cornell needs to be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee to ensure that animals are not being used unnecessarily or treated unethically.
The team ultimately found that the engineered antibody was not very effective, but Goillandeau still found value in his experience with “the mouse handling, the literature reviews and all the scientific skills” he gained.
While in Ithaca this summer, Goillandeau also took a physics course and participated in the Community Learning and Service Partnership program, where he helped a Spanish-speaking Cornell employee learn more English while simultaneously practicing his own Spanish.
Although Goillandeau is not staying with the Caddy Lab this year, he hopes to continue pursuing research in other labs and graduate school. He encouraged other undergraduates to also participate in research.
“Keep sticking with it. It’s really hard to learn all these techniques and get used to science, but give it some time and in the end, things will start to feel better.”
Archawin Ice Kittirattanapaiboon ’28, Babonis Lab
Archawin Ice Kittirattanapaiboon ’28 studied the evolution and genetics of sea anemones in the Babonis Lab, which is led by Prof. Leslie Babonis, ecology and evolutionary biology. This summer, he was a research assistant under graduate student Moey Rojas, and he is now working towards his own independent research project.
Kittirattanapaiboon is working with the starlet sea anemone, a two to three-centimeter animal that buries itself in mud in brackish waters of the east and west coasts of the United States, as well as part of coastal England. The Babonis Lab has a colony of them growing in captivity for their studies. Kittirattanapaiboon spent his summer dealing with their genetics in one of the lab’s long-term projects.
“I was trying to identify the function of a gene that no one has found the function for before,” said Kittirattanapaiboon. This could be accomplished through “turning that gene on or off and comparing them to infer the function based on those differences.”
The gene Kittirattanapaiboon studied, when activated and expressed in cells, puts the proper cell types where they’re supposed to go on an embryo. In humans, for example, this type of phenomenon would ensure that the cells that will make up hair follicles only go on your head and not all over your body. In the anemones, it can help distribute stinging cells across the proper parts of its body.
Stinging cells are a particular type of cell that, true to their name, serve to sting those who touch them. They occur in creatures like jellyfish, coral and sea anemones, and they are also at the heart of Kittirattanapaiboon’s independent research study idea.
Specialized cell types with a certain purpose, like stinging cells, are generally developed from a simpler cell. For instance, stem cells are simple cells that are a complete blank slate and can develop into a variety of fancy, specialized cells.
Prof. Babonis previously discovered that there is a certain gene that, when activated, will change a neuron — the simple cell — into a stinging cell — the specialized cell. Kittirattanapaiboon hopes to shed light on the how and why of this process in his independent project, as different subtypes of neurons and stinging cells exist and the links between the subtypes are hazy.
“We don't know what neuron is turned into what type of cell, so my project is kind of linking the groups of neurons and stinging cells that we know these animals have,” he said. “Are they related? Is it important that it must be a neuron to become [a stinging] cell, and what is the factor that determines this cell type?”
While in Ithaca, Kittirattanapaiboon also worked on an independent project researching how evolution spread across the world and how it may have been affected by translation between languages. As an international student from Thailand, he particularly focused on readings about Southeast Asia in the Kroch Library. Kittirattanapaiboon is considering pursuing a dual major in Biological Sciences and Asian Studies.
Kittirattanapaiboon’s work emphasizes the ongoing, current nature of evolution.
“When I tell people I'm studying evolution, everyone thinks, like, ‘oh, are you digging for fossils?’” he said. “But evolution is not just fossils. We can look at [the past] … but we can also look at it just in ourselves … in one cell cycle.”
Angelina Tang is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She is an assistant news editor for the 143rd Editorial Board and can be reached at atang@cornellsun.com.
