Shannon Hendricks '26
(She/Her)
Hometown: Boise, ID
Year: 3rd Year
Major: Microbiology
A Silly, Goofy Microbe
Hi, my name is Shannon Hendricks! I am going into my third year of college. I am from Boise and attended high school at Meridian Medical Arts Charter High School (MMACHS). I plan on finishing my honors bachelor's degree and starting my master's in microbiology. I am interested in all facets of microbiology and I am very excited to see where the future takes me! Besides school, I love to hunt mushrooms and fish and go on road trips. My main goal this summer (or even longer) is to catch a Yellowstone cutthroat trout!
This is my second year of being a peer mentor for the UHP. I also have almost a year of experience as an undergraduate research assistant. Summer of 2023 I participated in the GEM3 SARE program, which was a paid summer internship where I worked at Boise State Univeristy. Here I was looking for riboswitches in the cecum of the greater Sage Grouse, and was seeing how they are able to digest Sagebrush. Then I switched to Dr. Julia Martin’s lab at ISU during the school year. Here I have been in two different parts of the lab. In the first lab, wastewater samples were sent to me from five different cities in Idaho. I used nanobeads to bind and extract virus RNA elements and then I used PCR to determine the infection rate of COVID-19, Flu A, and Flu B in those cities. I then reported those numbers to the CDC. Currently, I am looking and testing a transition metal promoter in Streptococcus pnumoniae. I will be working on this project during the summer (2024) for the INBRE program. I am also the incoming secretary/treasurer for the microbiology club!