Written by Jennifer Marangos | July 22, 2024 | SHARE
Ray Kennedy, ‘26
Biology with a minor in Earth and Environmental Sciences
NSF REU - Lexington, Kentucky
The National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF REU) enables undergraduate students to engage in paid summer research internships for 6 to 10 weeks at more than 700 universities and research institutions across the United States. Kennedy applied for this highly competitive opportunity with the support of the Lehigh’s Office of Fellowship Advising. We caught up with them about half-way through their eight-week project at the Rittschof lab at the University of Kentucky, where Kennedy is studying bee behavior.
What are you working on?
I'm doing both fieldwork and lab work focused on bee behavior. Mainly, I've been running an ongoing aggression experiment on honeybees where we agitate them and then record their waggle dances and 'stop signals' in the hive. The goal is to understand more about how much aggression causes honeybees to tell the other bees in the hive to no longer go to a floral resource. I also am helping run an interference competition study between honeybees and wild bees in the field, and I help with bee brain and fatbody dissections in the lab.
What has been the most exciting part of your experience so far?
The most exciting experience has been being able to immerse myself into everything about honeybees! They are fascinatingly complex insects, and actually getting to go everyday and see firsthand their intelligence and memory is awesome. Also, it is very exciting to help run a 'real life' experiment where we troubleshoot daily and are really tweaking on the go.
Tell us about some of the sites you’ve visited?
Lexington is definitely known for their horses, and I actually work on a horse farm owned by the University. While there are lots of beehives, there also are over 75 acres of land full of various crops and horse pastures. I think it's really interesting to get to see more into how an agricultural farm is maintained on the daily.
What’s one thing you know now that you wish you knew before you started?
I wish I knew I was allergic to bees! Needless to say, it's important to get allergy tested before you work on bee aggression studies. Editor's Note: Unfortunately Kennedy was forced to cut their time at the Rittschof lab short due to their newly discovered bee allergy.
If you could give one piece of advice to someone about to apply for an NSF-REU, what would it be?
I would tell them to make sure you really elaborate on what papers and ongoing projects in the lab you are applying to interest you in your personal statement. Also, don't be afraid to read the professor's papers and email them with questions!