Biochemistry Major Says Creativity Is a Key Aspect of Her Experiential Learning

Trinity Hausch — the URECA researcher of the month for June — is a junior in the WISE honors program majoring in biochemistry, with a minor in studio art. Since February 2024, she has been working in the research group of Siu Chiu Chan in the Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, using biochemical, molecular and genome-engineering methods to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of HNF1B mutations that lead to human kidney diseases.

For Hausch, creativity is a key aspect of her experiential learning activities, from painting to gardening to doing bioinformatics research. “I love how creative it is! …You are presented with some bits and pieces, and clues about how this mechanism functions, but the actual arrangement of the information, and how you can predict that these different transcriptional factors interact and the effects that they cause is creative.”

In December, Hausch had the opportunity to present her ongoing research at the first annual LIKER/Long Island Kidney Education and Research Symposium and will be able to focus on her research in Chan’s research group full time this summer, with the support of the Mitchell Wortzman Undergraduate Research Award.  

Hausch’s first research experience at Stony Brook was as a freshman member of SBU’s International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) team mentored by Peter Gergen, distinguished service professor, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. In Summer 2023, as a participant in Explorations in STEM, she worked as part of the 14-person iGEM team to study the integration of a positive and negative feedback system and the nitrogenase gene cluster into E. coli with the intention of providing colonies the ability to fix inert nitrogen to ammonia. Hausch specifically worked on the design and coding of a website to communicate the team’s findings using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The team presented this project “Nitroscillator; Modeling Oscillatory Expression of a Target Protein” at the Summer Symposium in 2023, as well as at the international iGEM Jamboree in Paris, France, where they earned a silver medal.

Hausch’s advice to fellow students is “don’t be afraid to apply, even if you don’t feel that you know how to do everything yet. From my experience, professors and faculty research mentors are very willing to teach as long as you’re willing to ask. But you have to ask the questions. So don’t be afraid of learning something new.”

This past semester, Hausch was selected to be one of the featured undergraduate artists at the URECA art exhibition, a show which took place at the Zuccaire Gallery from April 24 to May 8, and where she received a first place URECA art prize and a second place Gallery North-Virginia Fuller prize for her work, Analecta. On campus, Hausch is president of the SBU Greenhouse Club and has collaborated with the Greenhouse curator to design and maintain a garden of native plants to circle the Life Sciences Building.

Long term, Hausch plans to pursue a PhD in molecular biology and a career as a researcher. 

Read the full interview with URECA Director Karen Kernan.