The 2013 Student Research and Creative Works Expo award winners were announced at an awards ceremony held Monday, April 22, in the UALR Engineering and Information Technology Auditorium.

More than 160 entries vied for recognition from judges during the competition, including a record 93 graduate students who presented their works following the undergraduate session April 15.

Calling the event a “big success,” Dr. Patrick Pelicane, dean of UALR’s Graduate School and vice provost for research, thanked the students and more than 125 faculty mentors who assisted in the projects.

“You are enhancing the reputation of UALR by the extraordinary work that you do,” he said.

Research efforts pay dividends, enhance understanding

UALR senior Carli Steelman, a first place winner in the undergraduate humanities category, worked with Political Science Professor Rebecca Glazier to develop her research on how a person’s religious beliefs intersect with trust in the government.

“She is a great student, and her award was very well deserved,” Glazier said, following the ceremony.

Glazier assisted Steelman for over a year to help develop and administer a survey to coincide with the 2012 presidential election. Steelman used the survey in five Little Rock congregations to better understand the complex relationship between religion and institutional trust.

“She also participated in over a dozen interviews of local congregation leaders–and even stepped in to conduct an interview on her own when I went into labor the morning of our scheduled meeting!” joked Glazier.

Glazier praised Steelman saying she was recently given a “very generous offer” from the Political Science Ph.D. program at the University of New Mexico for being a reliable student and creative thinker.

Steelman and the other students were judged in several categories including how clear and novel their approach, how well they created perspective, and how apt they were at briefly “pitching” their work to convey what they are doing.

Top undergraduate winners will be nominated for Posters on the Hill, hosted by the Council on Undergraduate Research in Washington D.C.

The university has had student representatives chosen to compete in the national competition for the past two years.

Complete list of winning entries and student presenters:

Undergraduate Arts

First place: “Straight Documentary Photography and Surrealism: A Dialectical Resolution,” Alexandro Leme

Second place: “Concept to Embodiment: The Costume Design Process for THE BACCHAE OF EURPIDES,” Mikita Thompson

Undergraduate Engineering and Technology

First place: “Shape Memory Alloy Thin Films,” Anthony Keener and Steven Bray and Mehmet Ozturk (PhD candidate)

Second place: “Microcontroller Based Complex Waveform Generation for Inverter,” Ramanan Sivasubramanian and Tavleen Bedi

Third place: “Improved Micro inverter for Photovoltaic applications,” Manas Pratim Mahanta

Honorable mentions: “Characterization of Shape Memory Alloy Thin Films,” Steven Bray

“Solar Air Condition,” Geoffrey Lueken

“Natural Gas: Driving to A Cleaner Tomorrow,” John Suit and Michael Nauman

Undergraduate Humanities

First place: “Trust in God, Trust in Government: How Religious Belief, Belonging, & Behavior Affect Political Trust,” Carli Steelman

Second place: “From the Academy to the Nursery: Charles Perrault and the Tales of Mother Goose,” Sarah Snell

Third place: “Men Speaking to Men: The INfluence of Wordsworth’s The Preface on Melville’s Moby-Dick,” Stephenaie Mantell

Undergraduate Life Sciences

First place: “Microgravity Produces Morphological and Biochemical Changes in Mammalian Cells,” Bukola Odeniyi and Zartashia Javid

Second place: “DNase Activity in Kidney Cell Pyknosis Induced by Serum Deprivation,” Kanika Topiwala

Third place: “Characterization of the Tomato Ubiquitin-Conjugating Enzyme SIUbc19 in Plant Immunity,” Dolapo Odeniyi

Honorable mentions: “The Effect of Cleat Placement on Muscle Recruitment and Fatigue During Cycling,” Cheyenne Wilson

“Selected Osh Proteins Are Required for Caloric Restriction-mediated Lifespan Extension,” Xeniya Rudolf

“Development of a Digital Trail Guide for Coleman Creek,” Megan Matthew

Undergraduate Physical Sciences

First place: “Characterization of Aspergillus niger cellulase for biomass conversion,” Jennifer Hill

Second place (tie): “Novel Fabrication of Carbon Nanotube Arrays,” Asad Akhter

“Muscle Recruitment During Various Soccer Tasks,” Megan Zollinger and Nathan Carr

Undergraduate Social Sciences

First place: “The Relationship Between Spontaneous and Contagious Yawning, Personality, and Gender,” Andersen Lafont, Christopher Campbell, Priyamvada Goyal, Zade Holloway, Nikki Knight and Nicholas Carter

Second place: “Effects of Develpmental Methylphenidate (MPH) Treatment on Play Behavior of Male and Female Sprague-Dawley Rats,” Alton Withers

Third place: “Causes of the Academic Achievement Gap in African American Students in Central Arkansas,” Kanesha Barnes

Graduate Engineering and Technology

First place: “Human Movement Intent Identification Using the Myoelectric Process and the AR-GARCH Model,” Ghulam Rasool

Second place: “Low-profile Wake-up Rado Mechanism for Resource-constrained Wireless Devices,” Ali Al-Uraiby

Third place: “Flexible Yagi-Uda Antenna for Wearable Electronic Devices,” Ayman Abbosh and Said Abushamleh

Honorable mentions: “Solution Processed Cu (In,Ga) S2 for Nanowire Solar Cells,” Johnathan Armstrong

“A Sequential Approach to Spectrum Sensing and Channel Estimation for Wireless Cognitive Radio Systems,” Raied Caromi

“Impact of Data Quality on Entity Resolution in Student Enrollment Data,” Daniel Pullen and Pei Wang

“A Study of Cell Charge Equalization Techniques,” Neeru Saini

Graduate Health Sciences

First place: “Structure-based engineering to generate high affinity immunotherapy for the drug of abuse,” Shraddha Thakkar

Second place: “Different Exercise Programs Effects on Body Composition and Physical Performance,” Tanya Phillips

Graduate Life and Physical Sciences

First place: “DNA-Encased Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes for Probing Hydrogen Peroxide in Serum,” Azhar Kamel

Second place: “Ground-Penetrating Radar is a Tool to Prevent Levee Failure,” Hussein Chlaib

Third place: “The Use of Polymer-Tethered Fullerenes in Bulk Hetereojunctions,” Joshua Moore

Honorable mentions: “Assembly of Fullerene C60 Nanostructures Utilizing Polymer-Tethered Fullerene Additives as a Surfactant,” Steven Baker

“Electrochemical Applications of Nonmetal Doped Mesoporous Carbon,” Udaya Nasini, Venugopal Bairi and Sunilkumar Ramasahayam

Graduate Social Sciences and Humanities

First place: “Enduring Hot Spots of Repeat Residential Burglaries,” Grant Drawve

Second place: “Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Tweets and Posts Might #Kill @Me: Speech Act Theory and Homophobic Cyber-bullying,” Clint Brockway

Third place: “Looking at Life in Ghana in 1912 Through the Gold Coast Leader,” Hattie Felton

Honorable mention: “Collaborative Learning: An Integrated Use of Social Media,” Faysal Ahmed

Graduate Professional Studies

First place: “IFRS Adoption in Africa: How Colonial Ties and Other Factors Have Shaped the Process,” Ruth Chelagat

Second place: “Outside the Band of Brothers: Female Military Personnel and Sexual Assault,” Lori Goldman

Third place: “Japanese Culture and Fraud: What the Olympus Scandal Means,” Saaya Imai

Honorable mention: “The Death Penalty: A Multi-Level Analysis of Public Opinion,” Kyle Burgason and Lynn Pazzani