Meredith Nishiura (Ingenuity ’22) Recognized in State and National Competitions for Research
May, 2022 – Meredith was selected to give a presentation at the Maryland Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, where she was awarded 3rd place. With her research, “Effects of an Urban Estuary on Blue Crabs and Blue Crab Diet,” she was one of five students in the state to be flown to New Mexico to represent Maryland in the national competition.
Meredith was also awarded 1st place in Earth and Environmental Science at the 2022 Morgan State University Science Mathematics and Engineering Fair, and Outstanding Engineer by the Society of Women Engineers. She has always been passionate about natural sciences and has attended conventions about her research passions ranging from the Arctic to shellfish. “My interest in Marine Biology has always been something I’ve known about myself,” she shares.
What drew you to this topic?
As a sophomore, I took Ingenuity’s Introduction to Research and I heard about the opportunity to get to work in a real research lab and I thought, “that’s crazy, we get to work in a real research lab? That’s awesome!” A student a couple years ahead of me showed me her research and introduced me to her mentor, and then two years later I was able to work with the same mentor. [My research explored] How blue crabs interact with biodiversity and the environment through their diet and how it relates to the urban environment.
Did you do your work in the Chesapeake? What is it like having this natural habitat in your backyard to study?
All throughout my childhood I would go to the bay, and we would do living classrooms things, I love the bay so much; just being there and being so close to it, it’s such a good opportunity to get that hands-on learning. It’s one thing to hear “the bay is so polluted” and it’s another thing to go to the bay and see it. Someone needs to do something about it.
I couldn’t be in the lab during the time I was doing my research because of COVID, but my mentor invited me to come down to the harbor and he’d pull up the biodiscs and you can see all the life growing on them… they wind up covered in life!
They can pull up the discs and see all the species. They have all these mussels and worms and these tiny tiny crabs… and that’s how they got all the data.
Can you tell me more about your interest in environmental science? Are you planning to pursue this in your career?
Oh yes definitely; just over spring break I went to visit colleges, and I’ve decided to go to St. Mary’s in MD – and they have a brand-new Marine Science program! I 100% want to be a Marine Scientist.
When did your interest in STEM begin?
A lot of it was being along the bay; my family and I would go on a lot of hikes, go to the ocean once a year; I live in Roland Park, where we are so lucky to have all this nature all around us while still living in the city. The amount that I was outside and in nature, there was always inspiration.
What was the hardest part of your research? Any surprises along the way?
When I was interested in the research practicum (2019-20 school year, as a sophomore), I met with my mentor, he said yes, you can come to the lab, and then a week later we left school and didn’t come back for a year. I think the whole program had to adapt, and doing the research remotely was a surprise, but it was fun – my mentor and my lab were really great, and I think Dr. Rosen and the other supervisors in the class did a really good job of adjusting expectations so that it didn’t feel like too much of a burden. My mentor would send me images from under the microscope; I did some coding, went through these huge databases – which is a lot of what research work is.
Anything else you’d like to share?
I guess all of it is really exciting to me – getting to go to college and already having experience and having this lab research, and now I get to go to college and do more of it.
