Category: Inquiry

The Finger Lakes Community College Board of Trustees recognized a group of five current and former students who were chosen to present their research on the cultivation of mushroom sugars for a national conference in April.

The research project is part of an 18-month collaboration between FLCC and Empire Medicinals, a Henrietta company that sells mushrooms and mushroom-blended meats. It sought the college’s help for basic research that could lead to the extraction and commercialization of mushroom sugars as a food supplement.

Three of the students, who have since graduated, and two current students represented FLCC at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), an annual event that involves 3,200 students, faculty, and administrators.

“NCUR is the largest showcase in the country of undergraduate research, so it’s all institution types,” James Hewlett of Webster, the professor leading the project, told the board at its May 4 meeting. ”It’s not a given. You have to apply, and the applications go through some pretty intense scientific review before you’re accepted to present at this conference. It’s a huge deal to actually get accepted, and it becomes a published abstract.”

Presenters were Matthew Brooks, a 2021 biotechnology graduate from Canandaigua, Demetrice Garcia, a 2021 biotechnology graduate from Newark, and Philip Simmons of Keuka Park, who has a 2021 associate degree in biotechnology and a 2020 associate degree in viticulture and wine technology.

Current students Leila Doerrer, a biotechnology major from Honeoye Falls, and Chelsea Patterson, an engineering science major from Farmington, also contributed to the development of a poster summarizing the research for the conference.

“It’s a very fascinating study, and I’m very happy to have been a part of it,” said Patterson. “It’s definitely opened my eyes to the detail that research takes, and I absolutely love everything about it.”

“I have to be honest. This is the most valuable experience I’ve probably ever had in my entire life,” said Doerrer. “I’ve learned so much. I can run a whole bunch of machines, like bioreactors. I’ve learned how to operate an autoclave.”

Hewlett, who has been recognized as a State University of New York distinguished service professor for his work promoting student research, directs the students with adjunct instructor Sarad Parekh of Pittsford and instructional specialist Jessica Halliley of Rochester.

The goal of the project is to determine the conditions that promote the fastest growth of mushroom fibers, called mycelia, and the bioactive compounds these fibers produce.

Mushrooms are well established as a health food; they are low in calories and high in fiber, protein and antioxidants. Sugars they produce, called beta-glucans, are studied for their potential to boost the immune system, lower cholesterol and fight cancer. Isolating the sugars requires growing the mycelia in a broth-like medium, separating the liquids and solids, then filtering the liquid.

The students grew two strains of mushrooms in two different broths – one with glucose and another with lactose. One of the strains produced the highest yield in lactose, a sugar found in milk.

Unlike a carefully controlled lab exercise, researchers can run into problems, Brooks noted.

“If something goes wrong, like one of our batches gets contaminated, it’s not like the professors know the answer right away. It’s a genuine mystery,” he said, adding that it takes collaboration to diagnose the problem.

Trustee George Cushman praised the research program for the range of skills it fosters.

“What I heard … was that you learned a lot of transferable skills, and it’s not necessarily the things that go on a resume all the time, but it’s really what the employers need,” he said. “I heard about working together as a team, solving problems – all these things don’t necessarily translate on a resume, but they really are essential skills.”

Hewlett said the college is seeking more research projects, particularly among small startups like Empire Medicinals that lack research and development capacity.  “They need help and we need projects,” he said.

About two dozen interns have tackled 13 conservation projects over the last year at the College’s Muller Field Station at the south end of Honeoye Lake.

The projects involve monitoring the state of the animal and plant life at the field station and surrounding areas to generate data that can be used by a broader community of scientists and educators.

For example, student Amy Slentz gathered aquatic plants from the Honeoye Lake Inlet in summer 2021 to look for invasive species under the guidance of Maura Sullivan, associate professor of environmental conservation and coordinator of the internship program. 

FLCC is participating in iMapInvasives, a citizen science program in which residents can submit information about suspected invasive species for confirmation by experts. The College is also part of the aquatic invasive species monitoring program of Finger Lakes PRISM, which stands for partnership for regional invasive species management.

“The good news is that we did not find any of the new and emerging, especially problematic invasive species in the inlet channel during our summer sampling,” Maura said. They were looking for hydrilla, water chestnut and starry stonewort.

Amy also took part in a partnership project with the Bergen Swamp Preservation Society monitoring grassland birds at Taylor Marsh, 600 acres north of Honeoye Lake.

Some projects last for a few months, others continue over years with new groups of students stepping in as others graduate or transfer. Professor John Van Niel, director of the station, and a rotating group of students have been examining the stomach contents of fishers that have been caught by fur trappers to provide the state Department of Environmental Conservation with data on what the weasel-like mammals eat. (Read about it in the FLCC blog at forward.csc.flcc.edu.)

Students also monitored reptiles and amphibians (herptiles) on the station property, gypsy moths at the field station and Onanda Park in the town of Canandaigua, prothonatory warbler nest boxes at the station, and camera traps set up at the station and the East Hill Campus in Naples to catch images of animal life when humans are not around.

The students are learning scientific methods for collecting information about the natural world that can have policy consequences. For example, when invasive species are detected, local governments have to decide whether to spend public funds to limit or remove the species. 

This scenario played out last year as the city of Canandaigua debated whether to use an herbicide to combat European buckthorn in Lagoon Park, which runs along Lakeshore Drive behind Wegmans. FLCC faculty and students have assisted with projects to plant native species at the park and monitor progress.

“Students relish this opportunity to get hands-on experience, connect with the natural world, and contribute to a greater understanding of phenomena they study,” Maura said. “Although students might be working on individual projects, this helps cement the reality that they are definitely part of something bigger.”  

At the end of their internships, students have been sharing their findings and reflections with other students and faculty, and that may expand to public presentations, she added.

Amy said she values the professional setting that the internships create. “My internship and work within the Conservation Department has helped to nourish my innate passion for the natural world as well as cultivate a deeper enthusiasm around environmental work,” she said.

The Florence M. Muller Foundation has provided funding for the internships for the last three years. The foundation is the legacy of the late Florence Muller, who donated the field station land and buildings to FLCC in 1999 and set up funds for the improvement and operation of the 48-acre property as an education and research center. It had once served as a summer retreat for Florence and her husband, Emil.

Jonathan Weissman of Brighton, Finger Lakes Community College associate professor of computing sciences, has been inducted into the New Internet IPv6 Hall of Fame as an IPv6 Evangelist.

IPv6 stands for Internet Protocol version 6, which provides an identification and location, through an IP address, for computers and devices so they can find each other and communicate over the internet (This is how you can use your phone to pay your credit card bill from a trail in the Adirondacks).

It is designed to replace IPv4, the almost 40-year-old address system that has failed to keep up with the proliferation of Internet‑connected devices. This includes mobile devices and the Internet of Things, a reference to devices that communicate with other devices, for example, those found in wireless sensor networks, control systems, and smart homes.

IPv4 addresses consist of four numbers between 0 and 255, separated by periods. (Example: 192.168.1.1.) North America ran out of IPv4 addresses in 2015, and other parts of the world have run out of IPv4 addresses as well.

IPv6 addresses are four times the length of IPv4 addresses and consist of up to 32 numbers, with groups of four digits separated by colons. (Example: 2001:0db8:000f:0052:0000:0000:0000:1337).

A worldwide consortium called the IPv6 Forum created the evangelist honor to recognize efforts of individuals to get industry, research, education and government to switch from IPv4 to IPv6 to protect business continuity and security.

Weissman, who is also the coordinator of the FLCC associate degree in networking and cybersecurity, developed and taught what he believes is the first college course dedicated to IPv6 anywhere, for FLCC in the summer of 2012. He continues to teach CSC 206 as a summer course; registration has recently opened for summer 2022. In addition to college credit, the class leads to a certification that shows the students are knowledgeable and have hands-on skills in the new protocol.

The evangelist honor, Weissman said, “allows my future CSC 206 students to understand how connected I am to the new protocol.”

For information on the FLCC networking and cybersecurity program, contact the One Stop Center at (585) 785-1000 or onestop@flcc.edu. Follow Weissman on Twitter and Instagram: @CSCProf.

It’s not a standard job title: piping plover technician.

For nearly a year, Sarah Forestiere, a 2018 graduate of Finger Lakes Community College, has monitored two nesting pairs of the federally endangered shorebird at Sandy Island Beach State Park on Lake Ontario, for the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Only 60 nesting pairs are known to be scattered throughout the Great Lakes.

She has kept records of the birds’ activity, taught park visitors about piping plovers, and set up snow fence around their nests to protect their eggs and the chicks, which she describes as “cotton balls that weigh the same as two pennies.”

All this made Forestiere qualified to recognize that a visitor to Sandy Island on Sept. 13 was a plover, but not a piping plover.

She checked guides and concluded it was a snowy plover, common to the southern and western U.S. and the Caribbean. She confirmed her find with an amateur birdwatcher, Matt Brown, who encouraged her to post it on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird app.

It caused an immediate stir.

“The snowy plover observation was significant for birders and ornithologists as it represented the first record of the species for the state of New York and one of only a few dozen from the northeast and Great Lakes area in general,” said Jay McGowan, multimedia collections specialist at the Cornell Lab.

Continue reading “FLCC grad’s bird sighting is a first for New York”

The College is helping a company determine if there is a faster way to grow the nutrient-dense root-like parts of mushrooms.

Demetrice Garcia carefully positions a large flask of orange liquid in an autoclave, an oven-like device, to sterilize it for growing another batch of mushroom fibers.

Demetrice, or “Demi,” and her fellow research assistants, Philip Simmons and Matthew Brooks, are culturing mycelia, the white root-like filaments that, in the wild, extend from mushroom caps into rotting logs. 

They work in the lab at Finger Lakes Community College, trying to answer questions that could lead to a number of commercial products: What conditions promote the fastest growth of mycelia and the bioactive compounds these fibers produce? 

Their work is supported by the National Science Foundation, which funds a variety of programs to promote science education and opportunities for students to pursue careers in science. The exciting part is that this is not a lab exercise. Continue reading “What are mycelia and why is FLCC growing them?”