{"id":12416,"date":"2022-11-25T13:42:25","date_gmt":"2022-11-25T18:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/?p=12416"},"modified":"2022-11-28T08:43:15","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T13:43:15","slug":"student-spotlight-fatima-herrera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/2022\/11\/25\/student-spotlight-fatima-herrera\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Spotlight: Fatima Herrera"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our student spotlight shines on Fatima Herrera, who recently won an award for an outstanding research presentation at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacnas.org\/diversity-news\/stem-students-recognized-for-research-and-presentation-skills-at-2022-sacnas-the-national-diversity-in-stem-conference\">2022 National Diversity in STEM Conference<\/a> in San Juan, Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n<p>Herrera&#8217;s presentation was on the &#8220;Identification of the Bacteriophage Resistance Mechanisms in the Dental Pathogen, <em>Streptococcus mutans<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Herrera conducted research with Associate Professor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.udmercy.edu\/about\/people\/university\/dental\/all\/joshua-thomson.php\">Joshua Thomson<\/a> at Detroit Mercy Dental.<\/p>\n<p>One of the focuses was to determine the potential for bacteriophage therapy to prevent cavities in kids by specifically targeting and killing the dental bacterial pathogen, <em>Streptococcus mutans<\/em>. However, many strains of this organism are resistant to virus infection which could impact the usefulness of phage therapy.<\/p>\n<p>The goal of the research was to determine the mechanisms of how <em>S. mutans<\/em> prevents being killed by bacteriophage, so scientists can better understand how to get around this problem when applying phage therapy.<\/p>\n<p>Herrera was one of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacnas.org\/diversity-news\/stem-students-recognized-for-research-and-presentation-skills-at-2022-sacnas-the-national-diversity-in-stem-conference\">110 graduate and undergraduate students nationally who were honored<\/a> by the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos\/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). The conference was held from Oct. 27-29.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-12417\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/11\/69EE671E-36EC-4F94-ABE8-91F262FBD2A9.jpg?resize=993%2C772&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Fatima Herrera stands next to her presentation board\" width=\"993\" height=\"772\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/11\/69EE671E-36EC-4F94-ABE8-91F262FBD2A9.jpg?resize=300%2C233&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/11\/69EE671E-36EC-4F94-ABE8-91F262FBD2A9.jpg?resize=1024%2C795&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/11\/69EE671E-36EC-4F94-ABE8-91F262FBD2A9.jpg?resize=768%2C597&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/11\/69EE671E-36EC-4F94-ABE8-91F262FBD2A9.jpg?resize=708%2C550&amp;ssl=1 708w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/11\/69EE671E-36EC-4F94-ABE8-91F262FBD2A9.jpg?w=1236&amp;ssl=1 1236w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 993px) 100vw, 993px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fatima Herrera recently won an award for an outstanding research presentation at the 2022 National Diversity in STEM Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":12417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6,4083],"tags":[2723,2577,150,1227,5791,5793,104,5792,4223],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/106\/2022\/11\/69EE671E-36EC-4F94-ABE8-91F262FBD2A9.jpg?fit=1236%2C960&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbwnTV-3eg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12416"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12422,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12416\/revisions\/12422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/campusconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}