A Letter from the Editorial Board

Dear readers, After a year of developments, we are proud to present the Spring 2017 Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal. The current edition of the journal features topics from all over the natural sciences. This year, our main focus regarding the Journal was to extend the reach of the journal to universities all over the world. As the CUSJ’s mission is to encourage students to involve themselves in scientific discovery, we saw no need to restrict our scope to only Columbia University. We received submissions from diverse areas such as biochemistry, astrophysics, and electrical engineering. Our team also published the second issue of the Columbia Junior Science Journal, a journal meant to introduce high school researchers to the world of research publication. After making changes to the previous Columbia Research Scholars Journal to better reflect the mission of the journal, we were proud to publish many of the incredible submissions sent in from high schoolers from around the United States, and invite several of them to our annual Spring Symposium. In addition to producing the two research journals for high school and college students, the CUSJ also seeks to foster the undergraduate research community at Columbia University. This year, we worked hard to further this goal by hosting several events on campus. In the Fall, the CUSJ hosted an event to assist undergraduate students in the process of soliciting a research position. In the Spring, the CUSJ hosted Dr. George Yancopoulos, founder of Regeneron and chief scientific officer, and held the annual symposium. This year’s the CUSJ Spring Research Symposium involved a welcome address from Dr. Gasperov, the undergraduate science research adviser at Columbia University, as well as a poster session where students presented on their research. The Awards of Excellence this year went to Nicholas Page from Rutgers University and Sarah Lundell from Fordham University. This Spring, the CUSJ also established the CUSJ Colloquium, a bi-weekly undergraduate speaker series where students from an array of scientific disciplines presented their research in a comfortable peer setting. Students discussed topics in research subjects including two-dimensional materials, exoplanets, biofilms, viral binding, ophthalmology, and photosynthetic origins of life. Our publications, the CUSJ and CJSJ, and the events we hosted this year could not have happened without the hard work of our editorial team and the assistance of our faculty board and advisors. Natalie Kolba, Editor-in-Chief Osman Moneer, Presiden