Scott Feller Encourages Undergraduates to do Real Research
by Wade Coggeshall
Students signing up for Prof. Scott Feller's chemistry lab at Wabash College had better come prepared. That's because his pupils are doing graduate-level research. "I believe very strongly undergraduates can do real, scientific research," says Feller, Ph.D., an associate professor of chemistry. "They can discover new things."  Such graduate-level study is practically necessary nowadays. About half of Wabash's chemistry students eventually attend grad school. Research experience helps them compete when getting into the best programs.
Whereas a grad student may work on every aspect of a particular project, undergraduates don't have that luxury of time. It's up to Feller to separate the project into different areas of study, having each student tackle specific aspects. This is new research too, not something with intended outcomes found in a textbook. "I would just like them to realize there are lots of open questions in science, and people don't know the answers," Feller says. "The best part of the undergraduate experience is when students realize I don't know the answer to the problem they're working on. When they realize what they figured out is something that maybe nobody else knows, that's the real benefit. Then there's an understanding of what it means to be a research scientist." Cell membranes are central to Feller's lab, no matter how disparate each exercise may be. Specialized proteins called channels move in and out of cells, and are central to its machinery. Movement of things in and out of cells is something you want to be able to control. Many pharmaceuticals act by working on proteins found in membranes. Feller's tool is molecular modeling - computer models of membranes, proteins and pharmaceuticals, and how they might interact. In every case he has collaborators from around the world doing experimental studies on these same systems. Some are as close as IUPUI, others as far away as Germany. Typically these projects are a collaboration between their experimental measurements and Feller's theoretical models. The measurements are used to validate the models. These models are extremely detailed. So much so you can only see a small part of a cell membrane. There isn't enough computer power in the world to look at the entire cell.  "Scientific research leads to incremental understanding," Feller says. "The hope, realistically, of most research scientists - and I hope this is one thing students take away - is that when revolutions in science occur, it's generally not because one person or one lab figured something out. It's because hundreds of thousands of different investigators in different labs figured out small things that eventually a community of people came together to realize are important connections. The hope of any research scientist is to add to the knowledge base."
Omega-3 fatty acids are another area of intense study in Feller's lab, both because they end up incorporated into cell membranes after consumption and they are associated with many diseases in a positive way. "We'd like to understand why that is," Feller says. "Maybe rather than just designing as many new pharmaceuticals as we can, we should also be looking at what are the important things in our regular diet that we should get plenty of." Omega-3 fatty acids are found in leafy green plants. In the past 50 years, their level in Western diets has dropped dramatically because livestock used to feed on grass, but is now fed corn, which is low in omega-3. "In terms of revolutions, that may be one," Feller says. "The message that needs to get out is that unsaturated fats may have benefits. Eliminating fat from the diet may not be the best thing. It's the type of fat. All fats are not made alike. So I like to think our work on omega-3 fatty acids may have just as good an impact on human health as the design of any pharmaceutical." The research Feller's students perform is published regularly in industry journals. Delving into cutting-edge analysis has helped keep Wabash's science disciplines stocked with some of the world's future minds. That's important, especially since the number of students choosing science/engineering studies is going down in the United States. The number of advanced degrees among U.S. citizens is dropping too. That trend is opposite countries like Japan and India. One thing to counteract this trend is to show students "what science is really about," Feller says. "That's where the undergraduate research project comes in. The structure of science education is such that fundamental training is crammed into people, and not much attention is paid to the big picture. You need to know all this to be a scientist, but maybe we don't do as good a job of saying this is what a scientist does, this is what science is. "Science is about investigation and learning new things. It's not about cramming your head full of things people already figured out. We need to combine what people have already learned with the experience of seeing what it's like to study something no one knows about."  Coggeshall is a reporter for the Crawfordsville Journal Review.
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