{"id":61,"date":"2025-08-12T19:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T19:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/?page_id=61"},"modified":"2025-08-14T17:31:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:31:59","slug":"alice-cottrell-steen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/alice-cottrell-steen\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Cottrell-Steen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-122 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/PD5A0272-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"299\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/PD5A0272-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/PD5A0272-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/PD5A0272-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/PD5A0272-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/PD5A0272-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/PD5A0272-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/PD5A0272-272x182.jpg 272w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 299px) 100vw, 299px\" \/>Alice is a rising senior at Lincoln High School in Seattle. She doesn\u2019t know exactly what she wants to pursue in the future, but knows she wants to combat climate change and ameliorate the conditions of the oceans through an interdisciplinary approach of biotechnology, engineering, and science communications. Her interest in these fields stems from concern towards the changes being undergone by our planet and her love for designing and fiddling with solutions until they work.\u00a0 She has already begun to explore these fields through her involvement in water quality testing at Carkeek Park and public speaking competitions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Outside of school, Alice plays water polo, raises Guide Dog for the Blind puppies, competes in quiz bowl competitions, and helps organize leadership conferences and events for younger students in her community. \u00a0When she\u2019s not at school or engaged in an extracurricular, you\u2019ll find Alice hiking, swimming, playing with her dogs, or hanging out with family and friends.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">At ISB, Alice and her partner Elizabeth Gabbay worked under mentors Jake Valenzuela and Chris Deutsch to study microbial differentiation in groundwater using drip-flow reactors to simulate field conditions. The drip-flow reactors allowed for the creation of conditions where microbes could either grow planktonically in the liquid media or attach to sediment particles, as well as enable the development of an oxycline. The goal was to identify which species thrive under which conditions, as well as determine the extent of denitrification that occurs. This work entailed daily measurements of dissolved oxygen, gas chromatography sampling, cell pelleting, pH and optical density measurements, and learning new techniques such as 16S sequencing and coding in R to visualize the data.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Meet the dogs! <div id=\"metaslider-id-127\" style=\"max-width: 400px; margin: 0 auto;\" class=\"ml-slider-3-102-0 metaslider metaslider-flex metaslider-127 ml-slider has-dots-nav ms-theme-default\" role=\"region\" aria-label=\"Alices dogs\" data-height=\"400\" data-width=\"400\">\n    <div id=\"metaslider_container_127\">\n        <div id=\"metaslider_127\">\n            <ul aria-live='off' class='slides'>\n                <li style=\"display: block; width: 100%;\" class=\"slide-141 ms-image \" aria-roledescription=\"slide\" data-date=\"2025-08-12 19:16:53\" data-slide-type=\"image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/IMG_4736-Large-400x400.jpeg\" height=\"400\" width=\"400\" alt=\"\" class=\"slider-127 slide-141 msDefaultImage\" title=\"IMG_4736 Large\" \/><\/li>\n                <li style=\"display: none; width: 100%;\" class=\"slide-142 ms-image \" aria-roledescription=\"slide\" data-date=\"2025-08-12 19:17:02\" data-slide-type=\"image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/IMG_9069-Large-400x400.jpeg\" height=\"400\" width=\"400\" alt=\"\" class=\"slider-127 slide-142 msDefaultImage\" title=\"IMG_9069 Large\" \/><\/li>\n                <li style=\"display: none; width: 100%;\" class=\"slide-143 ms-image \" aria-roledescription=\"slide\" data-date=\"2025-08-12 19:17:11\" data-slide-type=\"image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/08\/IMG_6916-2-Large-400x400.jpeg\" height=\"400\" width=\"400\" alt=\"\" class=\"slider-127 slide-143 msDefaultImage\" title=\"IMG_6916 2 Large\" \/><\/li>\n            <\/ul>\n        <\/div>\n        \n    <\/div>\n<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alice is a rising senior at Lincoln High School in Seattle. She doesn\u2019t know exactly what she wants to pursue in the future, but knows she wants to combat climate change and ameliorate the conditions of the oceans through an interdisciplinary approach of biotechnology, engineering, and science communications. Her interest in these fields stems from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"contact","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-61","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}