The 2015 Student Research and Creative Works Expo award winners were announced at an awards ceremony Wednesday, April 15, in the Student Services Centern

A total of 80 unique entries were submitted, both undergraduate and graduate.

Students presented their work in the Donaghey Student Center on April 13 using posters. They were judged in several categories, including how clear and novel their approach, how well they create perspective, and how apt they are at briefly “pitching” their work to convey what they are doing.

The complete list of winning entries and student presenters follows:

Undergraduate Arts and Humanities

First Place Winner: “Natural Language Processing in the Study of Literature,” Savannah Adams

Honorable Mentions: “Evocations of Baudelaire in the Photography of Clarence John Laughlin,” Jennifer Bass; and “Exploring the Effects and Use of Language in Neighborhood Characteristics of Hillcrest through Linguistic Landscapes,” Kelly Singer’’

Undergraduate Social Sciences

First Place Winner: “Al Baleed: Archaeological Excavations at a Medieval Port City,” Deanna Holdcraft and Devin Sorrows

Undergraduate Life Sciences

First Place Winner: “Simulated Microgravity’s Effect on Multiple Inositol Polyphosphate Phosphatase Expression in Mammalian Cells,” Bryan White

Honorable Mentions: “Effects of Nicotine on Expression of Membrane Cofactor Protein CD46 in Human ARPE-19 Cells,” Xeniya Rudolf; and “High Light Induced Phenylpropanoid Variation in Wild and Domestic Tomato Varieties,” Dane Hudson and Aaron O’Neal

Undergraduate Physical Sciences

First Place Winner: “Chemical and Absorption Behavior of Weathered Coal Combustion Products,” Kellylinh Ho

Honorable Mentions: “Novel Phosphorus and Nitrogen Co-Doped Carbons for Utilization in Supercapacitors,” Zachary Hicks; and “Graphene-Enhanced Cobalt(III) Electrocatalyst in Oxygen Reduction Reaction for Fuel Cell Applications,” Zachary Smith, Joshua Park, Phuc Tran, Charlette Parnell, Andrew Brandt, Yahya Albkuri, and Bijay Chhetri

Undergraduate Engineering and Technology

First Place Winner: “Airless Tire Design for Low Gravity Surface Mobility – Spring Tires,” Joshua Shaw

Honorable Mentions: “American Red Cross Seismic Retrofit Study,” Sarah Brown, Josh Hendricks, Essie Whitmore, Esteban Rodriguez, Whitney Montague, and Angela Matika; “Mining Twitter to Identify How Video Game ESRB Rating Correlates with the Language Content of Authors of Tweets of Video Games over a Period of Time,” Jermaine Marshall

Graduate Humanities

First Place Winner: “The Learning Disabled Student in College Composition,” Madison Hedrick

Honorable Mentions: “Alla Prima: Experimenting and Developing Expressive, Realistic Oil Paintings that Are Started and Finished in One Painting Session,” Tessa Davidson

Graduate Social Sciences

First Place Winner: “Predictors of School Violence: Are Parents the Source?” Kristen Sobba

Second Place Winner: “The Sexual Exploitation of Adolescent Males: A Hidden Population,” Brittani McNeal

Third Place Winner: “Hispanic Population Concentration and Political Participation: A Macro-level test of the Hispanic Paradox and Minority Threat Perspective,” Brenda Branham

Graduate Life and Physical Science

First Place Winner: “Application of a Cobalt(III) Complex Supported on Carbonaceous Nanomaterials for Electrochemical Sensing of Hydrogen Peroxide,” Charlette Parnell

Honorable Mentions: “A Novel High Light Inducible Carotenoid Binding Protein Complex From Synechocystis 6803,” Soumana Gaoh Mahaman Tachiou Daddy; and “Novel P, N Co-Doped Carbon from Spent Coffee Grounds Synthesized by Microwave Technique for O2 Reduction Reaction,” Sunil Kumar Ramasahayam

Graduate Engineering and Technology

First Place Winners (Tie): “A Framework for Collecting, Extracting and Managing Event Identity Information from Short Social Media Text,” Debanjan Mahata and “Modeling the Antipodal Connectivity Structure of Neural Communities,” Bayazit Karma

Second Place Winner: “Architecture and Biological applications of Artificial Neural Networks: a Tuberculosis Perspective,” Venkata Kiran Kumar Melapu

Honorable Mentions: “Flexible Elliptical Ring Monopole Antenna for DCS and UWB Applications with Notch Suppression,” Ali Hammoodi and Ayman A. Isaac; and “E-EYE: A Multi Media Based Unauthorized Object Identification and Tracking System,” Tolgahan Cakaloglu

Graduate Health Sciences

Winner: “Synthesis and Cytotoxicity of Amino Acid Conjugates of Dehydroleucodine,” Fatimah Al-Doori

Honorable Mentions: “Reverse Effects of Caloric Restriction Reveal Roles of Vacuoles in Longevity,” Thomas Hahn; “Surface Signature Analysis of anti-Leukemic Sesquiterpene Lactones,” Paola Ordonez; and “Interaction of Multiple Inositol Polyphosphate Phosphatase1 (Minpp1) and Heat Shock Protein Hsp40 in Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER): Its Potential Implication in ER Stress,” Surya Kilaparty, Meenakshisundaram Balasubramaniam, Qudes A.AL-Anbaky, Aparna Konidala, Megha Agrawal, William H Baltosser and Nawab Ali