Science on Display: Student Spotlight on Biology Major Kaziah Terrell
This week our senior science student Kaziah Terrell is in the spotlight. Kaziah is graduating this Spring with her Biology bachelor’s degree with a minor in Chemistry!
Kaziah is originally from Atlanta and joined Bellevue University four years ago to study Biology and play for the BU Bruins basketball team. She is currently completing her senior thesis with research on the resilience and diversity of the human skin microbiome.
Not often do students have a chance to combine their science and sports the way Kaziah did. She took her science to the next level when she recruited six of her basketball teammates as participants to test the skin microbiome of their hands and their basketballs over several weeks (shoutout to the Sensational Six!).
As part of the study, participants applied several cleaning methods to the skin to test their effectiveness in altering the skin microbiome, and tested the transmissibility of the microbiome to the basketball during practice. She collected about a hundred samples and sequenced them with our in-house Illumina genome sequencer. As it turns out, the skin microbiome is very resilient and very specific for each individual, even over longer periods of time!
The results of this study provide further insight into the ability to alter or manipulate one’s skin microbiome and has potential applications in clinical and forensic microbiome studies. If you want to find out more about these exciting results: Kaziah will be presenting the results of her research at the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) meeting in Atlanta in June!
In addition to her academic efforts, Kaziah also has had four successful years playing for the BU Women’s basketball team! Kaziah is a busy bee, but she has done a fantastic job of achieving success in both her academic, social, and athletic life!
Kaziah is planning to continuing her education and her basketball passion in grad school and will be pursuing a master's in forensics and criminal justice.
Besides her thesis project, Kaziah has also been working the past two years as a lab research assistant on various sequencing projects in the Bellevue University Science Labs. She has spent many long evenings extracting DNA from soil samples or analyzing plant phylogeny plots. Even though she’s in the lab often, you probably have seen her around campus as she has helped with organizing and planning many of the residential on campus student activities during the past four years. As if that’s not enough, she is also the Vice President of BOSA (Board of Student Athletes) for the NSAA conference.