ERIE, Pa. — More than 50 Penn State Behrend faculty members discussed their research at the college’s second-annual Faculty Showcase on Jan. 28. In a series of lightning-round talks, they discussed deep neural networks, legacy contaminants in Lake Erie, corporate labor investment efficiency and the tensile properties of tarantula silk, among other topics.
The tarantula talk detailed an interdisciplinary project by Daniel Galiffa, an associate professor of mathematics, and Beth Last, the research core facilities coordinator in Behrend’s Burke Center.
Using webs spun by two of the 20 tarantulas that Galiffa keeps at home, Last developed a novel way to test the strength of the material.
“The silk is strong but exceedingly tiny,” she said. “We had to think creatively to measure the tensile strength of it.”
They said they scraped the webs from terrariums, rolled the material into long tubes and used the same testing protocols that are applied to yarns. With additional data — more webs, as soon as the spiders can spin them — they said hope to know if the microstructure of the tarantula silk can be replicated, for example to create better seat belts in race cars.
The interdisciplinary approach is fundamental to the project’s success, said Alicyn Rhoades, vice chancellor and associate dean of research and graduate studies. She coordinates the Faculty Showcase, which also included a display of student projects.
“If we foster respect for the work that is being done in spaces outside of our own, or across the schools, that’s a big win,” Rhoades said. “If we can speak to the success of our peers in a way that maybe we couldn’t before, so we represent our whole college better, that’s also a big win.”
The 15-minute research talks at this year’s Faculty Showcase included a wide range of topics and academic disciplines:
- Will Walker, director of the Women’s Health Innovation and Science Translational Lab, discussed an ongoing study of how concussions can disrupt the length and frequency of women’s menstrual cycles. The study was funded in part by the Chuck Noll Foundation for Brain Injury Research.
- Huiyan Chen, assistant professor of management information systems, shared her analysis of AI-generated content on social media platforms. “AI content has changed what people watch, how they react and how creators manage their social-media content,” said Chen, who tracked the post histories of 1,000 TikTok users.
- Michelle Cook, assistant professor of special education, discussed her use of hip-hop — including original rhymes, which can be used as a memory device — to better engage third-graders who struggle with word problems in mathematics.
Andrew Read, senior vice president for research at Penn State and the Evan Pugh University Professor of Biology and Entomology, joined the program via Zoom to introduce the evening’s keynote speaker, Gamini Mendis, an assistant professor of polymer engineering and science and the recipient of the Penn State Behrend Council of Fellows Faculty Research Award. Mendis discussed polymers and the environment, including the use of fungi to break plastic films into biologically tractable carbon.