The winners of the 2018 Student Research and Creative Works Showcase at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock were announced during an awards ceremony May 1 in the Student Services Center.

Students presented more than 150 research and creative works April 12 in the Jack Stephens Center. Student projects were judged on the novelty and clarity of their research, the soundness of their methodology, the potential application of their findings, and the student’s ability to explain their project to an expert and lay audience.

A complete list of winners and their projects include:

Undergraduate Winners

Art

First Place: Corrie Green, “The New African-American Women:Exploring Intersectionality in Non-traditional Casting”

First Place (tie): Thomas Jackson, “Concept Statement for the play  Art by Yasmina Reza”

Economics

First Place: Abigail Resendiz, “The 1920 Merchant Marine Act: An Outdated and Protectionist Law Disturbing Economic Growth”

First Place (tie): Logan Vickery and Nick Stevens, “The Cost of Responsibility: Impacts on Rental Prices of the Implied Warrant of Habitability”

Education

First Place: Madison Christie, “Visual Verse: Translating English Poems into ASL”

Second Place: Cameryn Kirkham, “Teaching Charlie May Simon as an Author, Artist, and Arkansan”

Engineering

First Place: J’von Jackson, “Venturi Scrubber Design for Syngas System”

Second Place: Begros Asgeirsdottir, “Utilization of Rainwater for Cooling House Interior”

Life & Physical Science

First Place: Davonte Hokes, “Investigation of Bio-Inspired Polymeric Coating for Improvement in ORR Activity of Amidomacrocyclic Cobal (III) Catalyst Complexes”

Second Place: Emily Anderson and Cordell Gilreath, “Development for Lyme Disease”

Third Place: Marina Avram, “Algal Oculata Biotemplated Water-Splitting Nanocatalysts Nickel/Iron Oxides”

Social Science

First Place: Abigail Resendiz, “Financial Impact of the Jones Act”

Second Place: Emily Elam, “500 Fiddle Tunes: Transcriptions of Billy Mathews’ Old-Time Archive”

Third Place: Cynthia Wyman, “Intellectual and Hungry: Assessing the State of Campus Food Insecurity”

Technology

First Place: Deepali Lal, “Are Alcohol Establishments Marketing Crime?”

Second Place: Yumeng Ye, “A Project – First Approach to Teaching Entity Resolution and Identity Management”

Humanities

First Place: El-Noor Ahkter, “The Color of Women”

First Place (tie): Michael Caysido, “Aram II’yich Khachaturian and the Use of Folk Songs in His Compositions”

Second Place: Emily Junkans, “Phonetic Features of Native Spanish Speakers Learning English”

Physical Science

First Place: Rebecca Moreira, “Novel Renewable Resource Based Nanocomposites for Removal and Recovery of Phosphorus from Contaminated Wastewaters”

Second Place: Nathan Taylor, “Ionizing Radiation Protection by Inhibition of PP2A”

Second Place (tie): Samantha Macchi, “Supercapacitor application of phosphorus and nitrogen co-doped carbon materials from renewable precursor materials”

Service Work and Professional Application

First Place: Rebecca Moreira, “How Spanish Interpreting at the 12th Street Clinic Can Lead to Medical School”

GRADUATE WINNERS

Biology

First Place: Diamond McGehee with M. Lahiani, F. Irwin, and M. Green, “Investigation of the Effects of Carbon –Based Nanomaterials on the Metabolomics Level in Plants”

Engineering

First Place: Trigun Maroo, “A Novel Gripper System for Corrugated Box Grasping and Manipulation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”

First Place (tie): Ali Abdulhussein, “Facile fabrication of a free-standing superhydrophobic and superoleophilic carbon nanofiber-polymer block that effectively absorbs oils and chemical pollutants from water”

Health Science

First Place: Asween Marco, Naveen Patil, Jane Voyles, Yan Egbe, and Leonard Mukasa. “The Threat of Tuberculosis Transmission Among the US-born: Lessons from Two Outbreaks, Arkansas”

Second Place: Elizabeth Burnham, “The Social (Media) Social Work(er)”

Life Science

Second Place: Rebekah White, “Toxic Effects of Copper and Nickel on Synechocystis PCC 6803”

Life & Physical Science

First Place: Amita Nakarmi and Rebecca Moreira, “Phosphate Removal From Contaminated Waters”

Second Place: Dane Hudson, “Cylic Electron Flow Prevents Photoinhibition in Solanum habrochaites Under Drought Stress”

Physical Science

First Place: Busra Ergul, Mahbuba Begum, Nancy Kariuki, and Deborah Myers. “Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity of Platinum Thin Films with Different Densities”

First Place (tie): Daniel Nde, “Algae-Biotemplated Water-splitting Nanocatalysts for Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction”

Professional Studies

First Place: Thu Nguyen, “Do In-house Investor Relations Professionals in Real Estate Management Use PR and Strategic Communications Principles?”

Second Place: Raad Alawajji, Zeid A. Nima, Ahmed K. Hashoosh, Karrer M. Alghazali, Emilie Darrigues, Nigel Kelly (undergraduate), Ashley Strohmeyer (undergraduate), and Ali Abdulhussein (presenter). “Fabrication of Transparent Superhydrophobic Polytetrafluoroethylene Coating”

Social Science

First Place: Jennifer Watkins: “Why don’t they listen to me: A qualitative interpretive meta synthesis of a child’s perception of their sexual abuse”

Second Place: Margaret Kealy-Machella, “What’s App: Little Rock AFB Mobile App Communication Plan”

Systems Engineering

First Place: Rajat Singh, “Flexible Control of Synergistic Group of Muscles”

Technology

First Place (tie): Tuja Khaund and Samer Al-Khateeb. “Analyzing Social Bots and their Coordination during Crisis Weather Events”

Second Place: Evan Xiangwen Liu, “Deep Neutral Networks Self-taught Learning”

Second Place: Chen Xu, “Monitoring Traffic through IDS on OpenStack Cloud”

In the photo above right, UA Little Rock student Corrie Green (right) talks about her project, “The New African-American Woman: Exploring Intersectionality in Non-Traditional Casting,” to Jana McAuliffe, who was judging student works at the Student Research and Creative Works Showcase. Photo by Benjamin Krain