Day’s USD Undergraduate Research Journey Began Early

Marjorie Patrick, associate professor of biology at USD for 11 years, recently described what she believed is a necessity for all college student researchers.

“If you have a willingness to learn, if you have that curiosity, it’s the most important thing. It can carry you very far in the sciences,” she said. “It’s what propagates the questions you want to pursue in the research.”

So it’s no surprise that Patrick beams when she talks about Nick Day, a USD junior biology major, because he’s demonstrated curiosity and a strong work ethic on a research project — examining gills and ion transport proteins contained in blackskirt tetra fish in the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon River, to find out what allows it to live in acidic water that is also low in sodium — since 2010. (Full Article, Day's USD Undergraduate Research Journey Starts Early)