April 04, 2025
Linda Blaser
Schwalbe research students earn top honors at conferences
Spring 2025 has been a landmark semester for Assistant Professor of Biology Margot Schwalbe and students in her research lab.
The excitement started in January, when Schwalbe and three students traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to present two research posters at the annual meeting for the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology, which brings together leading researchers and emerging scholars to share groundbreaking work in biology and related disciplines.
Shrija Chhetri ’24 solo presented “Bumblebee gobies use vision and their reduced lateral line canal system to find prey,” while Hridey Kapoor ’25 and Jeremy Levin ’26 teamed up to present “The role of vision and the lateral line system in the jumping behavior of silver hatchetfish.” Kapoor and Levin took first place in the SICB poster competition.
In March, Zoey Young ’25 took a turn at solo-presenting the bumblee gobies research, while Kapoor and Levin teamed up a second time to present their lateral line system poster, this time at the Chicago Society for Neuroscience (CSfN) annual meeting, held March 21 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
Kapoor and Levin wowed the judges again, bringing home a second first-place award in the poster session, this time at the CSfN conference.
Having the opportunity to do research with their professor as undergraduates and present that research at professional conferences is a game-changer for these Foresters. Here’s what they had to say about the experience:
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My biggest takeaway from this experience is having the opportunity to see that there are endless opportunities out there. In biology, there’s sensory biology, there’s biomechanics, so many options. Don’t close yourself off. Just keep exploring and trying to make new connections and seeing different sides of life, biology, or other fields. Embrace a growth mindset, for true learning comes from the willingness to explore, adapt, and evolve throughout life.
Shrija Chhetri ’24
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In one respect, I was astonished by being named the best undergraduate poster. But there was a part of me that was not at all surprised because of the novelty of our project, as we utilize digitizing technology, 2D/3D kinematics, pharmacology, and hi-speed motion capture in order to study our model organism (silver hatchetfish) and examine its ballistic, startle response to danger.
Hridey Kapoor ’25
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Presenting at conferences strengthened my communication skills, particularly in explaining a complex topic that many aren’t as familiar with. This experience will help me in future academic and professional settings of medicine where clear and effective communication is key.
Jeremy Levin ’26
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It was such a surreal experience to attend CSfN as a presenter this time around. Presenting our work to researchers of all ages—undergraduate, graduate, and professional—was amazing practice on how to tailor my language to be comprehensible to a larger audience. It’s easy to forget that the language we use in the lab about fish is mostly unknown to people outside of this specialty!
Zoey Young ’25