Published on Aug. 4, 2024
The Cherng Summer Scholars program allows Honors College students at the University of Missouri to explore their passions through research projects aimed at questions they are interested in analyzing. Students who are accepted into the nine-week program participate in projects that are individually designed, with the support and mentorship of a Mizzou faculty member.
This year, there are 12 Cherng Summer Scholars. Meet Scott Roselli, a senior biology major.
Question: Which faculty member are you working with on your research?
Answer: I work in the Cardiac Cell Physiology Lab. My PI is Timothy L. Domeier, an associate professor of medial pharmacology and physiology.
Question: What is the focus of your research?
Answer: Our lab studies heart muscle cells. The healthy heart has highly coordinated activity of heart muscle cells, which allows the heart to pump blood effectively. In diseased states, heart muscle cells change how they work, which then changes how the heart beats. The changes in heart cell function with disease can also lead to abnormal heart rhythms (called arrhythmias). My research for this summer focuses on determining how heart muscle cells of the right ventricle change in a disease called pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure in the lung). To do this, I measure the concentration of calcium within cells simultaneously with cellular contractile activity. In my research thus far, I have found impairments in calcium handling in the myocytes of the pulmonary hypertension model, and this may be one of the reasons there are cardiac arrhythmias.
Question: What interested you in this specific project?
Answer: Patients with pulmonary hypertension can experience a significant amount of suffering. It is a progressive disease that ultimately can lead to right-sided heart failure, which can become extremely debilitating for patients. The final goal of this project is to find potential pharmacologic targets for treatments that can improve the lives of patients.
Question: How nice has it been to be part of the Cherng Summer Scholars program?
Answer: Research is difficult and often comes with cycles of failure, learning, optimization and eventual success. It takes a major time commitment to reach the success part of the cycle and perform high-quality scientific research. This summer, the scholarship provided by Andrew and Peggy Cherng allowed me to conduct detailed and rigorous research full-time. In other words, my main commitment could be research instead of another job. That is what made the Cherng Summer Scholars Program so great to me. Furthermore, the summer class was a fun experience. My favorite part was learning about research that focused on disciplines that were different than mine, such as those in the humanities and arts.