Lorna A. Ness Fellows

This summer, I had the opportunity to expand on and complete a research project that Dr. Cheryl Stuntz and I began in the fall of 2025. This project aimed to better understand why some people enjoy exercise more than others. Most prior research has looked at the factors that lead to more enjoyable exercise as isolated predictors – our project looked at how these factors interact, taking a more holistic approach that allowed us to see the complexity of individual experiences with exercise. 

Insulin resistance (IR) has traditionally been studied in the context of metabolic disorders, most notably type 2 diabetes, but growing evidence suggests that IR also plays a crucial role in cognitive decline and neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. My research explores this emerging intersection between metabolic health and brain function by developing a fast acting IR rat model using a high fructose diet.

What is meaning, and how is it communicated? Paul Grice’s formulations of speaker meaning (Grice, 1957) and conversational implicature (1975) pave the way to answer those questions. In a nutshell, Grice demonstrates that our intuitions about the distinction between what is said and what is communicated can be explained in terms of communicative intentions. Unfortunately, his theory lacks psychological plausibility, and it fails to give an adequate explanation of how hearers comprehend a speaker’s communicative intention.

While last semester I spent a course learning how to design my own research project, this summer I started doing it. I spent 8 weeks living within a commune in rural Virginia and learned what it was like to live in an income-sharing community with 75 other members. While I spent some time in the garden, cooking community meals, and packing vegetable seed packets, I also spent time doing in-depth interviews, participatory observation, and ethnography.

Today, 75% of residential land in the United States is zoned for detached single-family homes. This means that anything other than detached single family homes including apartments, low-income housing, senior living, and student housing are prohibited in these areas. Zoning regulations are the foundation of city planning, making them a fundamental aspect of society to evaluate when assessing the future of our nation.

My Modern Physics lab with Dr. Munir Pirbhai taught me a lot about spectroscopy, spectrometers, and their applications, how they work, and how to carry out experiments in an effective manner. Spectrometers are expensive devices but could be made for a very low cost, and I wanted to see if we could create an inexpensive spectrometer that can be used for the same applications as an expensive one. After taking computer science courses with Dr. Lisa Torrey and Dr. Choong-Soo Lee, I had a strong background in a few programming languages which was very helpful.