Logo credit: Emily Georgopoulos
Lab News
April 2025
GRG members present their paper accepted at the 2025 annual meeting of the American Eductational Researchers Association in Denver, CO! See the i-Presentation here: https://aera25-aera.ipostersessions.com/Default.aspx?s=1E-B5-5A-41-46-3A-E4-07-74-06-EF-4F-E8-FD-05-7C
March 2025
January 2025
GRG members with Soumi at the wedding venue.
Left to right: Emily Georgopoulos, Tyler Pikes, Soumi Mukherjee, Emily Hutton
December 2024
Congratulations to Allison Peterson for winning second place poster at the fall expo! Her poster is titled "Impact of Structured Revision Intervention During the Peer Review Process on Scientific Writing Self-Efficacy in Undergraduate Biology Students."
August 2024
July 2024
July 2023
GRG at SABER in Minneapolis, MN!
Left to right: Sharleen Flowers (former GRG member), Jill Cornell, Stephanie, Soumi Mukherjee, Lauren Stoczynski, Nouran Amin, and Emily Georgopoulos
April 2023
Much excitement! Our research group would like to celebrate Anupriya on her doctoral defense! We also like to congratulate Emily H. and Soumi on passing their preliminary exam. In addition, congratulations to all our graduating undergraduates (Kal, Mehul, Kayla, and Gabby)! Although we wish them the best in their academic and professional journey, we will miss them dearly! Left to Right (bottom): Emily G, Anupriya, Stephanie, Soumi and Emily H. Left to Right (top): Kal, Mehul, Allison, Jill, Lauren and Nouran
July 2022
SABER 2022 in Minneapolis, MN was exciting! Nouran gave a poster presentation on her work around understanding graphing practices in biology. Anupriya gave a poster presentation and a talk on her project regarding conceptions of scientific hypotheses and predictions. Left to Right: Nouran Amin, Anupriya Karippadath, and Stephanie Gardner
The Gardner lab reunites in-person to celebrate Sharleen's graduation at Stephanie's house. Top left to right: Emily Hutton, Nouran Amin, Lauren Stoczynski, Stephanie Gardner, Sharleen Flowers, Anupriya Karippadath. Bottom left to right: Kal Holder and Soumi Mukherjee
April 2022
This month was very eventful and filled with many celebrations for our research group!
Sharleen successfully defended her Ph.D. on April 15! The title of her dissertation is "Where's the mechanism? Exploring features of undergraduate biology students' systems thinking in various contexts." More than 45 people came to witness Sharleen's defense!
Members of the biology education research community meet to celebrate! Sharleen defended her dissertation, Anupriya won the Bilsland fellowship, and Emily and Jill officially joined the Gardner group! Pictured left to right is Emily, Anupriya, Stephanie, Soumi, Jill, and Annaleigh with Sharleen and Nouran on Zoom.
Undergraduate students in the Gardner research group participated in the Purdue University 2022 Spring Undergraduate Research Conference! Perion Sharp and Mehul Shrivastava presented an in-person poster, titled "Agree to disagree? A national survey of biology researchers’ and educators’ conceptions of scientific hypotheses and predictions" based on data from Anupriya's project!
Gabrielle Rump submitted a virtual poster, titled "Analysis of Mechanistic Understanding in Biofilm Data" based on data from Sharleen's project!
Kal gave an in-person talk (and submitted a recorded version!), titled "The Search for Mechanistic Explanations: Characterizing Biology Students’ and Instructors’ Connections Between Fundamental Biology Concepts" based on data from Sharleen's project!
March 2022
Congratulations to Kal Holder for being named Outstanding Junior in the Department of Biological Sciences for 2021-2022 AND for earning third place in Purdue University's 2022 Undergrad Research Pitch Competition!
Kal delivered their 3 minute pitch "Characterizing Mechanistic Reasoning in the Context of Biofilm Formation by Biology Undergraduate Students" at Fowler Hall. Check out a recording of their pitch here!
November 2021
Kal participated in the Purdue University 2021 Fall Undergraduate Research Expo. The title of their talk was "Characterizing Mechanistic Reasoning in the Context of Biofilm Formation by Biology Undergraduate Students."
July 2021
All lab members attended the 2021 SABER (Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research) conference virtually over Zoom this summer. Sharleen gave a talk over her dissertation project and Aya and Perion presented a poster on data from Anupriya's dissertation project.
Sharleen presented her dissertation project in her talk titled "Assembly required: How students and instructors define and connect biological processes." This talk was also supported by two undergraduate researchers, Kal and Gabrielle!
Perion and Aya presented data from Anupriya's dissertation project as a virtual poster, titled "Exploring variation in students' and instructors' conceptions of scientific hypotheses and predictions."
April 2021
Stephanie, Sharleen, and Anupriya attended the 2021 NARST (National Association for Research in Science Teaching) conference virtually over Zoom this spring. Both Sharleen and Anupriya gave talks over their dissertation projects.
Anupriya presented her dissertation project in her talk titled "Students' and instructors' conceptions of scientific hypotheses and predictions: A case for closer scrutiny." This talk was also supported by two undergraduate researchers, Perion and Aya!
Sharleen presented her dissertation project in her talk titled "Characterization of Undergraduate Students’ and Instructors’ Knowledge Integration of Cellular Biology Concepts."
August 2020
The Gardner Lab snapped a group photo during a virtual lab meeting. Stephanie is pictured at Lake Michigan, Sharleen is pretending to be on a beach, and Anupriya is far away from the pandemic in space!
July 2020
Stephanie, Sharleen, and Anupriya attended the 2020 SABER conference virtually over Zoom this summer. All three virtually presented their posters on Padlet.
Stephanie presented work from the Exploring Biological Evidence project. Her poster focuses on data analyzed by Stephanie, Sharleen, and undergraduate researcher Eryn Sale. Her poster is titled "Evidentiary Reasoning Revealed: Analysis of Ecology Student Visual Models of Species Interactions."
Sharleen presented her dissertation project as a virtual poster, titled "Features of undergraduate students' knowledge integration in an open and specific biological context."
Anupriya presented her dissertation project as a virtual poster, titled "Exploring variation in students' and instructors' conceptions of scientific hypotheses and predictions."
February 2020
The Gardner Lab celebrated Anupriya passing her preliminary examination in February 2020. Pictured left to right is Sharleen and Anupriya at a pho restaurant in West Lafayette, Indiana!
January 2020
Sharleen won a travel grant through the Graduate Women in Science Programs (WISP) organization at Purdue University to present her research at the 2019 SABER conference. Here is Sharleen sharing her work with fellow WISPers at a WISP event.