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A Luke Stebbins Undergraduate Research Symposium was held Friday, April 7, 2025 
Thirty abstracts were submitted. Presentations were organized into five oral sessions (judged). Approximately 70 people attended the event.

Prizes were awarded to six students:

Undergraduate Thesis (Session A):

First Place ($200) Jessenia Buzunis-Delagneau (Hoover Lab) for “Honey bee (Aphis mellifera) abundance does not influence floral niche overlap with bumble bee (Bombus) species”

Second Place ($100) Rylie Mooney (Logue Lab) for “Using machine learning to classify song types in multiple songbird species”

Independent Study presentations:

Session B1 ($100) Alex Frost (Flanagan Lab) for “A time series analysis of wetland characteristics following the continuous input of wastewater effluent”

Session B2 ($100) Rexelle Asis (Yevtushenko/Aboukaddour Labs) for “Tan spot of wheat virulence gene ToxB is located in a degraded Starship mobile element”

Session C1 ($100) Laura Pizzaro (Wiseman Lab) for “Effects of alizarin dye on embryonic development of Zebrafish (Danio rerio)”

Session C2 ($100) Courtlynd Cherpin (Schultz Lab) for “When the flower fails: mutants impairing auxin transport lead to a female reproductive defect”

Joint research between the universities of Calgary and Lethbridge has unlocked a new understanding of sperm function, opening up possibilities for fertility in the cattle industry.

There has been a long-standing scientific belief a half-century old that sperm was in a dormant state during capacitation, using existing proteins.

However, Nehal Thakor, a molecular biologist in the U of L’s biological sciences department, Jacob Thundathil, a reproductive physiologist and veterinarian in U of C’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and U of C PhD student Saurabh Tiwari discovered in a transdisciplinary study that mRNA translation is activated, and new proteins are made, using bovine sperm samples in their labs.

Veterinarians do breeding soundness evaluations of bulls with physical examinations, measurement of scrotal circumstances and semen analysis for motility, density and morphology.

“When stem cells are producing new proteins, and their ability to produce new proteins, all those things are absolutely critical. Maybe at one point that knowledge we found could be translated to make diagnostic approaches for complementing what veterinarians are already doing. We can select better quality tools and improve fertility and thereby improving animal productivity,” said Thundathil.