Student researchers are at the forefront of IU's research enterprise — making discoveries, impacting communities and gaining hands-on experience to help them excel well into the future. Working alongside faculty researchers, IU students are making valuable contributions to bettering the lives of people in Indiana and beyond.
O'Neill School student Nidhi Arun writes about the research she is conducting that aims at opening the door to improving equity in education.
Read her story
Student innovators received a boost for their start-up companies, one creating an app that connects people through dining-out experiences and another creating software to help farmers implement solar power.
Learn more about their work
IU students Jessica Malejcikova and Agnideven Palanisamy Sundar are tackling real-world cybersecurity challenges and preparing for their futures.
Read their Q&ABelow are resources for IU students interested in research:
Description of the video:
[Video: fade from black, Lana Bolin wearing a t-shirt examines a corn plant with a colleague inside a greenhouse][Audio: Music fades in and Lana Bolin speaks off screen]
My name is Lana Bolin,
[Video: freeze frames][Animation: a cutout of Lana Bolin stays, mahogany background appears as majestic and dark majestic lines animate behind Lana, a lower third appears, Lana Bolin Ph.D. Biology Student animates on and off][Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
and I'm part of a project studying how microbes promote plant resilience to drought.
[Video: freeze frame ends and continues] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
We drove around
[Video: drone footage of a truck driving on gravel road toward a farm] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
to about 70 farms across the Midwest
[Video: Drone footage showing farm compound and long stretch of farm land] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
and we collected soil from the farms, brought them back to
[Video: Lana inside greenhouse scoops dirt into a plastic bag from a pot of soil] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
the greenhouse and we inoculated them
[Video: panning shot of corn plants sitting in a greenhouse to reveal Lana and colleague working side by side] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
onto corn plants. We're also collaborating with social scientists, and they interviewed the farmers
[Video: Lana holds a measuring tool to stock of corn plant] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
to understand how they're managing those fields
[Video: Lana holds a clip board and pulls away from corn plant stock and writes on clipboard] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
where we took the soil. We know whether our soils
[Video: Drone stock footage of large sprinkler irrigating farmland] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
came from fields that were irrigated or
[Video: drone footage looking down on a tractor tilling farmland] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]fields, where they tilled or they didn't till. We
[Video: close up shot of a finger pointing at a sever corn stock plant] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
can link those farmer management decisions to the resilience
[Video: wide pan shot of greenhouse with green tomato plants, Lana and colleague working on corn plants] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
that the microbes confer to the plants. So we can see,
[Video: close up of a hand pulling a underdeveloped corn cob off the stock] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
well, what are the actual traits that the microbes are expressing that help
[Video: close up of a dark green leaves, rack focus to wide shot of colleague placing material in a brown paper bag] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
plants or hurt plants? We're hoping that this research will help us understand
[Video: Lana examines a glass of fertilizer at a work table inside the greenhouse] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
how farmers management decisions affect their
[Video: close up of plastic plant pots that rack focuses to wide shot of grown green plants in greenhouse] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
soil microbial community and then how these microbes
[Video: Wide shot of Lana holding a clipboard and colleague inspecting corn plants] [Audio: Lana speaks off screen]
will affect their crops resilience to drought.
[Video: fades to black][Animation: IU logo, INDIANA UNIVERSITY, research.impact.iu.edu animate on and off screen][Audio: music fades out]
