Third Annual BUMP Research Symposium celebrates undergraduate researchers across disciplines
On Friday, November 15th, Columbia University students, faculty, staff, and family members filed into the sun-soaked Education Lab at the Zuckerman Institute for the third Annual BUMP Research Symposium. Upon entering the Zuckerman Education lab, a space designed for hands-on science programming for community members, attendees were handed a vibrant pamphlet, outlining the impressive range of students’ projects on display. To the right, a tank bubbled invitingly, with colorful fish welcoming visitors into the space. Immediately beyond the tank, students presented their posters, carefully explaining the conception, methods, and findings of their work. These undergraduates had dedicated entire summers and many semester hours to building tools, collecting data, and analyzing their findings in labs across universities in New York City.
BUMP is dedicated to guiding undergraduate students to meet scientists, get jobs in research labs, and learn about the intricacies of applying to graduate school. The student group was originally founded during the pandemic, when GSAS Biological Sciences PhD candidates, Beka Stecky, Yasmin Ramadan, and Zuckerman postdoc Raffi Cohn wanted to address Black undergraduates’ exclusion from science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields due to a lack of exposure to invaluable resources for success in the sciences. Since then, the program has grown to support over 60 undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds pursuing STEM at Barnard College, Columbia College, and the Fu Foundations School of Engineering and Applied Science. In November 2022, the first BUMP Research Symposium demonstrated the impact the group had made in just a few years. Many alums of the first symposium have since secured positions in laboratories, and started their graduate school journeys. This October, two new coordinators were appointed to carry on the mission of BUMP: Deme Geneva Fortson and Lena Kogan, both of whom are PhD candidates in the Biological Sciences program.
The dynamic poster session at the Zuckerman Education lab celebrated the accomplishments of nine current BUMP mentees as they shared their research from a range of scientific areas. Emmanuel Ifeanyichukwu Okeke (CC’26) worked with postdoctoral researcher Dr. Zhiting Gong downtown in the Ye Lab at the NYU College of Dentistry to elucidate the role of osteocalcin, a protein hormone, in regulating tumor growth associated with oral cancer. Back in Morningside Heights, Akosua Agyemang (CC’25) worked with Mark Fongheiser in Biological Sciences department chair Brent R. Stockwell’s lab to understand the role of ferroptosis, an iron-dependent form of cell death, in neurodegenerative diseases. Meanwhile, Biftu Tesfaye Regaa (CC’26) used the Fly-FUCCI labeling system and live imaging to calculate cell cycle times in adult fruit fly stem cells, working the Dr. Amy Reilein in the Kalderon lab. Emily Sarkar (CC’25) also worked with fruit flies, visualizing and analyzing neurons in the Drosophila visual system with Eavan Donovan in the Barnhart lab. Still further uptown, Fiker B. Zewdie (BC’25, Boldrini Lab), Tumi Anthony-Sawyerr (CC’25, Scorza Lab), Chinonye Omeirondi (CC’26, Dumitriu Lab), Anisa Thompson (CC’26, Rumora Lab), and Chimelu Ani (CC’25, Overdevest Lab) worked across disciplines in psychiatry, pediatrics, neurology, and rhinology at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus. Many presenters’ faculty mentors and lab colleagues stopped by to support the students and build connections with other students across disciplines.
While supporting undergraduate students in research labs is important for their resumes, it also gives students the chance to learn which fields excite them, and can help spark their scientific interests. BUMP’s mission is rooted in the belief that all research work should be compensated fairly, providing funding opportunities every semester and summer to mentees in the program. This mission was described at the symposium in a brief speech by the current team, along with an acknowledgement that the program would not be possible without the support of faculty advisors Dr. Harmen Bussemaker, Dr. Erin Barnhart, Director of the RCSS and Director of the MA in Biotechnology Program Dr. Lili Yamasaki, department chair Dr. Brent Stockwell, as well as Liliana Rosario from Columbia Biological Sciences and Melinda Miller from the Zuckerman Institute.