The Student Research and Creative Works Expo at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock is headed in a new direction. 

This year’s event featured the Digital Hub, which showcased innovative presentation styles that are becoming more popular as research presentations move away from traditional poster presentations, said Dr. Jeremy Ecke, chair of the expo committee.

Live radio broadcasts, documentaries, podcasts, virtual presentations, installations, and artist demonstrations are all a part of the new presentations styles in the Digital Hub in the Innovation category.  

About 100 UA Little Rock students submitted 80 entries for the April 3 expo. The winners were announced during an awards ceremony April 18 in the Student Services Center.

Chancellor Andrew Rogerson praised the student research and creative work, adding that students who collaborate with a professor are more likely to complete their program of study and are more prepared for graduate school.

“UA Little Rock is about setting students on a path to successful careers and presenting them with opportunities to make rich lives,” Rogerson said. “Central to this is our belief in the teacher-scholar model. The expo has encouraged collaboration and innovation between students and faculty.”

The winners of the new Innovation category include Jasmine Blunt and Kendrick Dunn, who presented a live radio show broadcast of the Expo. Blunt and Dunn also showcased a documentary they created featuring three local artists.

The students are hoping to launch a business called “The Influence,” which provides individuals with a platform to express their creative works in Little Rock.

The other winners of the innovation category included civil and construction engineering students Blake Johnston and Sam Kincannon, who were part of a team of students who constructed a working canoe out of concrete materials. They raced the concrete canoe as part of the American Society of Civil Engineers competition.

A list of expo winners and their projects include:

Undergraduate Winners

Art: Zachary Tallent, “The Broken Chain”

Humanities: Kalan Horton, “Identifying the Key Social Infrastructural Factors in School Buildings That Affect 12th Grade Students’ Standardized Test Scores in 3 school districts”

Engineering/Technology

First Place: David Stinnett, Matthew Mitchell, Patrick Phillips, Jeff Choate, Jessica Vinson, Daniel Blaire, Dylan Singleton, Abdulaziz Alanazi, Norbert Rungano, Julian Castillo, Drew Potter, and Fidele Kabera; “Multi-Purpose Tornado Shelter”

Second Place: Deepali Lai, Michelle Poroshine, and Logan Vickery; “Data Analysis of Consumer Complaints”

Life Science/Human Science

First Place: Marina Avram, Sakr Elsaidi, Tyler Maxwell, and Bonn Belingon; “Algal Oculata Biotemplated Water-Splitting Nanocatalysts Nickel/Iron Oxides”

Second Place: Lelia Rosenkrans; “Physiological Relationships Between Salivary Expressed Metabolites and Dancer Fitness”

Physical Sciences

First Place: Tyler Maxwell, Marina Avram, Sakr Elsaidi, and Bonn Belingon; “Nannochloropsis Oculata Biotemplated Water-Splitting MoS2 Nanocatalysts for Hydrogen Production”

Second Place: Autumn Jones; “Petrographic examination of the El Hammami H5 meteorite from the UA Little Rock Meteorite Collection”

Social Sciences/Professional Studies

First Place: Wesley Bland; “Determining a Champion: Economic Analysis of NFL Teams”

Second Place: Suzanne Abou-Diab; “Evaluation of the Readability, Validity, and User-Friendliness of Aphasia Written Web-Based Patient Education Materials”

Second Place: Kiana Manning; “An Investigation to Document Interjudge Reliability of Two Standardized Measures of Social Skills”

Innovation

Winner: Blake Johnston and Sam Kincannon; “Concrete Canoe”

Winner: Jasmine Blunt and Kendrick Dunn; “Media Platform” 

Graduate Winners

Engineering/Technology

First Place: Wei Dai; “Measuring Data Quality of Global Earthquakes”

Second Place: Trigun Maroo; “Novel Mechanism for Object Manipulation and Grasping for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”

Third Place: William Parsley and Wei Dai; “Improving Data Quality Through Machine Learning”

Health Sciences

First Place: Yan Wang, Jing Jin, Susan Thapa, Leanna Delhey, and Qing Zhang; “SNP Imputation and Cardiovascular Health Study”

Second Place: Asween Marco; “Oral Health Access in Arkansas”

Third Place: Qudes AL-Anbaky, Zeiyad Al-karakooly, Ilham Kadhim, Mohd Zubair, and Richard Connor; “Dictyostelium discoideum Senses Inositol Polyphosphate-Mediated Programmed Cell Death Mechanism Following Exposure to Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs)”

Humanities/Social Sciences/Education

First Place: Amy Cole; “Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn: Separate Paths Lead to Similar Mother Figures in Farm Security Administration Photography”

Second Place: Brenda Prochaska and Erin Pavioni; “Disproportionate Sanctions: A Comparison of Judicial Handling of Male and Female Southern Minority Youth”

Life Science/Physical Science

First Place: Matthew Carey; “Temporal and Spatial Changes in the Water Quality of the Arkansas River Through the Little Rock Metropolitan Area”

Second Place: Amita Nakarmi and Rebecca Parker; “Removal and Recovery of Phosphate from Wastewater Using Novel Reusable Renewable Resource-based Nanocomposites”

Second Place: Kamal Pandey; “Regulation of productivity of Ornamental crops by Carbon-based Nanotechnological Approach”

Third Place: Ghusoon Al-Bazzar and Muatez Mohammed; “Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) for TiO2 nanorods with SWCNTs/Polyaniline”

In the upper right photo, Dr. Jeremy Ecke (right), chair of the expo committee, recognizes winners of the Student Research and Creative Works Expo during the April 18 awards ceremony in the Student Services Center. Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/UA Little Rock Communications.