McNair Scholars Natalie Alvarado and Austin Katzer Awarded at 2021 CU Denver DARE Conference

Natalie Alvarado, a senior majoring in Environmental Engineering, was awarded 2nd place for her poster presentation at the 2021 CU Denver DARE Conference. Natalie presented her research on a Life Cycle Assessment of protein extraction in a microalgae biofuel biorefining concept. The purpose of her work was to analyze the environmental impacts of extracting microalgae protein to sell in order to decrease the price of microalgae biofuel.

Austin Katzer, a senior majoring in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, was awarded People’s Choice Award at this same conference. Austin presented on how genomic alterations in cis-regulatory elements associated with the twist gene which resulted in the establishment of its presence in Neural Crest Gene Regulatory systems. 

Congratulations to Natalie and Austin!