There are alot of intelligent people on this forum, and I see that some have PhD's. Are any of you PhD's doing any really cool ahead of

 

time research? Please share!

I build atomic clocks for the US navy.

I was formerly doing some reaction methodology work later I was working towards the total synthesis of some natural products . Currently I am involved in various genetics projects (mostly transcriptomics based involving non-model species) and soon I will be adding proteomics to the mix. Eventually I will return to my organic chemistry roots because that's what I'm trained in, but I'm enjoying this biology stuff at the moment.

I like big lists. The biggest lists of all time.

My recent interests have been in some constructions on supermanifolds (and graded manifolds) including curves and jets, Poisson-like brackets (including higher arity brackets), contact-like structures and some links with physics. Overall I would say I am interested in modern geometry inspired by physics.

I took Mammon's shilling - but I keep on thinking about going back; my last research was on the state's acceptance and use of prisoner-on-prisoner sexual violence and a discourse analysis of prison rape. Not only does building atomic clocks sound way cooler - it is less likely to make you wake in the night screaming...

I try to understand cellular activities by abusing, poking and teasing apart cells and their contents. I also develop new methods to do so. The area of research could be described as systems biology with an emphasis on high resolution omics.

I work on DNA methylation. Variation of methylation in natural populations, trans-generational inheritance of methylation variants (epigenetics), and the interplay of genetic variation and variation in DNA methylation, with long term goals of manipulating these differences.

I've done a little research staining lamprey retinal cells during different stages of development. We were supposed to continue and do comparative staining with various actinopterygians, but the PI decided he didn't feel like continuing.

I try to build an area surveillance system which can detect the introduction of radioactive sources, by using a mobile gamma spectrometer and a statistical model which maps the natural background radiation and detects sudden changes.

That's sounds really cool Cap'n!

I mostly research the (limited) ability of pupils to eschew the use of their electronic communication device within the classroom.

 

HTH.

I'm the bioinformatics geek postdoc in an experimental evolution lab. We run experiments to test evolutionary theories using viral and bacterial systems. I mostly crunch genomic data to try and make sense of the phenotypic data from the experiments. The experiment I 'm currently the lead on is looking at evolutionary predisposition to host switching in pathogenic viruses.