| Ben Stottrup is
an Assistant Professor of Physics at Augsburg College. He completed his
doctoral work at the University of Washington with Dr. Sarah Keller.
His research is focused on the biophysical properties of
cholesterol/phospholipid membranes. Ben is also working with
Univeristy of Minnesota Professor Xiaoyang Zhu to study interfacial
forces adjacent to lipid monolayers. |
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| Dan
Forseth (2008) Dan is a biology major interested in
interdisciplinary science. During the summer of 2006 Dan worked in the
Lipids Lab to measure the interactions between sterols and lipids in
monolayers. His experiments used beta-cyclodextrin to extract the
sterols from the lipid layer. He also tested and calibrated a home
built Wilhelmy plate sensor. During his free time he is the studio
manager for the Augsburg radio station KAUG and works at the library.
Dan intends on teaching high school biology after Augsburg. |
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| Alison
Heussler (2009) Alison is a sophomore physics major at Augsburg
College. This summer she has been working with lipid domains, more
specifically finding the frequencies at which they undulate. To do this
she has had to learn how to use and create image analysis programs in
ImageJ and MatLab. Alison is also applying her knowledge of image processing
to track the boundaries of cells. In her free time Alison enjoys the theatre
and German. |
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| Ben
Sonquist (2006)
is a senior biology and secondary education student. Using a Langmuir
trough and a pressure sensor Ben has studied phase change and
miscibility behavior of 25-Hydroxycholesterol in lipid monolayers.
Ben has enjoyed working in the Lipids Lab
because it has allowed him to explore questions of biological
importance in the context of physics. Ben is married and has three
rambunctious sons, is the interim minister of youth at his church,
and will be student teaching at Minneapolis South West high school. |
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| Kyle
Sontag (2007) Chemistry major Kyle Sontag spent the summer of
2006 working on two projects in the lab. The first project was developing
equipment and experimental procedures to study the transbilayer diffusion of
lipids across a membrane. Additionally, Kyle has written software routines
to calculate geometrically corrected area fractions of lipid vesicles.
Kyle intends on attending graduate school in chemistry after graduation. Like any good Minnesotan,
Kyle enjoys playing Hockey.
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| Previous Members |
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| Erik
Lundberg graduated in 2006 with a double physics and math
major. Erik refurbished a Langmuir trough which is currently being used
at the University of Minnesota and built a surface potential probe. Erik is
currently studying electrical engineering at Cornell |
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| Lava K.C.
is a
junior computer science major who has been writing some analysis
software for the lab this year. When studying lipids that phase
separate an important factor to determine is the amount of each
coexisting phase. Lava has been solving this problem by making
geometrical corrections in bilayer systems. |