Cedar Crest College junior biology major Mercedes Melo of Lehighton was awarded a $700 research grant from Beta Beta Beta Research Foundation for her project titled “Gastrointestinal microbiome biodiversity in developing American kestrel chicks.”

Melo will use the funds to purchase reagents and travel to Cornell University this fall to use Cornell’s equipment and sequencing facility.

Her project will explore how bacteria living in the gut of wild birds change during chick development.

Her project is supervised by Dr. Allison Cornell, assistant professor of physiology at Cedar Crest, Jenn Houtz from Cornell, and Dr. JF Therrien at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.