Isabel is a member of the Centennial Honors College with a BioChemistry major, microbiology and physics major. She also serves as a tutor for our student-athletes. Has been on the Dean's list multiple times.
Her research has earned an award through the Centennial Honors College:
https://www.wiu.edu/news/newsrelease.php?release_id=19201
Last year, Isabel Navas Rodriguez, won first place in the poster contest at Undergraduate Research Day for her work with Dr. P.K. Babin entitled, "Optical Band Gap and Refractive Index Variation in Lead-Bismuth Borate Glasses."
"This research mainly focuses on how the refractive index and the optical band gap vary with lenses with different concentrations of lead-bismuth," said Rodriguez. "In other words, how the lenses created behave with light with the different concentrations. This could help in machinery/equipment and absorbance of non-visible radiation, like UV light and X-Ray, that produces cancer, helping to prevent it."
This year, Rodriguez presented at WIU's Graduate Research Conference on March 29, 2024. Rodriguez's new research is on
Anti-Cancer activity of Nigerian Plant extracts in Pancreatic Cancer. It focuses on analyzing plant extracts provided by a university in Nigeria by looking at their impact on pancreatic cancer cells grown by Rodriguez. By observing these cells for anticancer activity, Rodriguez says the research could help develop drugs to treat pancreatic cancer in the future.
