Montana State undergrad gives presentation at highly selective conference

BOZEMAN - For Mckennah Thompson, one notably appealing aspect when considering attending Montana State University was its reputation for providing robust opportunities to conduct undergraduate research.

"You can get experience really easily while getting paid, plus you are also getting credit for working in a lab," said Thompson, who is expected to graduate in May with a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering, a program in MSU's Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering.

Thompson, who is also a student in MSU's Honors College, presented a paper last November she coauthored at the highly selective Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Conference on Neural Engineering in San Diego. A travel award through MSU's Undergraduate Scholars Program funded her expenses to attend the event. The conference invites about 10% of applicants to give talks, so the Bainbridge Island, Washington, native said she thought she might be chosen to present a poster rather than to give a platform presentation. But, out of about 500 applicants, she said, she was one of 50 selected to speak at the three-day event.

"It was such a unique opportunity for me to go do as an undergrad from Montana State," Thompson said.

Thompson's paper, titled "Microembossing Hydrogel Meso-Circuits for Patterning Dissociated Neurons Promotes Ensemble Formation," showed that the more organized living neurons are in a petri dish, the more synapse communication between neurons. A synapse is the junction where neurons - highly specialized nerve cells - transmit information through electrical and chemical signals across the gaps between cells.

"All these people I was presenting to, they live in this field. They eat, sleep and breathe neuro-engineering," she said, laughing. She admitted she initially felt intimated presenting as an undergraduate student to around 200 people in the conference audience. "Here I was, presenting to all these experts."

Thompson began working her sophomore year in the lab of Anja Kunze, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

"This is very novel work," Kunze said. "Mckennah worked hard to get the patterning technology to work and record the communication patterns from the brain cell cultures."

Thompson used 3D printing technology to create microscopic structures from a soft material called hydrogels. These biocompatible hydrogels, called agarose, were then used to create patterns in which neurons grew their neuronal networks. After culturing the neurons for two weeks, Thompson added a fluorescent dye to detect calcium in the neuronal cultures. When ultraviolet light hits the neurons containing the dye, it shows the calcium rushing into the neurons, which in turn caused the dye inside them to blink green. This microscopic green light show allowed the researchers to visually detect the precise moment the neurons fired. This visual indicator proved crucial because it allowed her to see how frequently the patterned neurons fired synchronously instead of randomly.

"When groups of neurons fire at the same time, they create coactive events, and these coactive events are representative of how our brain is functioning," Thompson said.

She said the research could one day have many applications, including in the burgeoning field of personalized medicine.

"When somebody has an issue and they need a drug medication for it - and there may be 20 different types of drugs out there that they could take - instead of [them taking] all 20 over three weeks of trials to see which is the best, they could insert a little bit of that drug into this device and kind of see how it reacts."

She said her presentation was well received.

"It was really great," Thompson said. "I really liked it. I came in and I felt very prepared."

Outside the lab, Thompson is active in intramural soccer and the Delta Gamma sorority, and she established a club for biomedical engineering majors. After graduation, she plans to take a gap year then possibly study dentistry.

"It was a no-brainer to do undergraduate research," she said. "It was three birds, one stone."