UA Little Rock recently announced the winners of the 2019 Research and Creative Works Expo.

Students presented more than 150 research and creative works April 18 in the Jack Stephens Center during the premiere student research event.

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.

“This year’s expo was bigger and better than ever before, and was part of the first ever Research and Creativity in the Rock (RCR),” said Dr. Abhijit Bhattacharyya, interim vice provost for research and dean of the Graduate School. “The RCR was an ensemble of four different college events and the expo. The presentations – posters, demonstrations and performance – were spectacular. Faculty, family, and friends turned out to celebrate the undergraduate and graduate winners of the expo in a wonderful ceremony on May 2.”

The student winners, their faculty mentors, and projects include:

UNDERGRADUATE WINNERS

Computer Science/Information Science

(Mariofanna Milanova, mentor for all awardees in this category)

• 1st Kajal Shukla, “Prediction of Coronary Heart Disease Using Machine Learning Models”
• 2nd Sam Willis, “Computer Vision System for Identifying and Quantifying Waste”
• 3rd Lamarcus Coleman, “Human Interaction with Multivariate Sentiment Distributions of Stocks Intraday”

Creative Work

• 1st Thomas Jackson (William Marshall), “Scenic Design for The Fringe Festival 2019”
• 2nd Jess Brasher (Stacy Pendergraft), “Performing Gender Queer”
• 3rd Emily Moore (Stephanie Thibeault), “Ephemeral”

Economics and Social Work

• 1st Emilia Rak (David Namir), “Change Your Days”
• 2nd Maximilian Holzmueller (Moiz Bhai), “Scaling a Small Business – The Use Case of Agrowponics”

Education

• 1st Krista Hancock (Kristina McAbee), “Poetry and Loss: a Unit Plan for High School”

Engineering/Engineering Technology/Construction Management

• 3-way tie for 1st
  • Kassandra Castrillo, Parker Little, Caleb Renfroe, Garrett Wallace, and Isaac Martinez (Nick Jovanovich), “ASCE Deep South Environmental Event”
  • Pablo Centeno (Srikanth B. Pidugu and Ashokkumar Sharma), “Pick and Place Robot”
  • Li Morrow (Ashokkumar Sharma), “Design and Development of a Unique Transparent Fishing Tackle Box”

Health Science

• 1st Carol Bowerman (Nawab Ali), “Targeting Breast Cancer Cells Using Silver-Coated Gold Nanorods”
• 2nd Jessica L. Swatzel (Dana Moser), “Effects of Applying Brain Stimulation During Language Intervention”
• 3rd Elizabeth Jarrott, Michelle Henderson, Darleene Rua, and Christopher Tate (Leigh Snead), “Students’ Perceptions and Performance in Student-led Simulations”

Humanities

• 1st Cassandra Christ (Floyd Martin), “A Century of Violence: William Hogarth’s The Four Stages of Cruelty and the Cyclical Nature of Violence in Eighteenth-Century London”
• 2nd Nicole Ursin (Juliana Flinn), “The Collision of National Identity and National Archive Policy in Third Republic France”
• 3rd Emma Williams (Jana McAuliffe), “An Axiology of Public Philosophy: A Study in Public Intellectualism”

Interdisciplinary

• 1st Lauren Pafford and Cory Watson (Robin Neveu Brown), “Dancer of the Future”
• Tied for 2nd  
  • 2nd Emelie Blennow (Casey Carder Rockwell), “Powdered Alcohol: The Ambiguous Nature of the Law Creates Barriers of Entry and Restricts Competitive Advantage for New Innovations”
  • 2nd Grace Lytle (Floyd Martin), “Images of Empathy: Käthe Kollwitz’s Krieg Series”

Life Science

• Tied 1st
  • 1st Tyler Maxwell (Qingfang He), “De novo Biosynthesis of Resveratrol in Metabolically Engineered Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803”
  • 1st Jessica L. Morris (Scott Woolbright), “Evaluating Variation in Soil Composition Among Habitats at the Little Rock Zoo”
• 2nd Paloma Salazar (Lisa Brents), “The Effects of P-glycoprotein inhibition on norbuprenorphine-induced neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS)”

Physical Science

• 1st Juliann Fiallos (Laura Ruhl), “Microplastics in Fourche Creek Wetlands”
• 2nd Mandolin Harris (Laura Ruhl), “Evolution of Karst Spring Water in the Ozark Mountains: Impacts on Water Quality”
• 3rd Thuy Le (Noureen Siraj), “A Portable Nanosensor for Nitroaromatic Detection”

Service Work/Professional Application

• Tied 1st
  • 1st Madison Brown (Jeffrey Condran), “Presenting the 2019 Equinox Literary Magazine at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, Portland, Oregon, March 2019”
  • 1st Brandy Mimms (Stephanie Thibeault), “Deaf Can Dance”
• 2nd Kathryn Bates (Jeffrey Condran), “Funding Undergraduate Literary Magazines: An Investigation at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, Portland, Oregon, March 2019”

Social Science

• Tied 1st
  • 1st Robin Freeman (Avinash Thombre), “Understanding Communication Strategies for Women Without Children”
  • 1st Alex Palmer (John Hendon), “Medical Marijuana and Federalism”
• Tied 2nd  
  • 2nd Noah Currey (Krista Lewis), “Aerial Archeology: Identifying the Mosques at Al Baleed”
  • 2nd Solomon Davis (Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm), “Making Human Lives Better: How Material and Symbolic Reparations Improve Post Civil War Peace”

GRADUATE WINNERS

Computer Science/Information Science

• 1st Coenrad de Jager and Marinda Huisamen (John Talburt), “Using Hadoop to Solve Diverse Big Data Challenges in the Industry”
• 2nd Tuja Khaund, Billy Spann, and Richard Young (Nitin Agarwall), “Blog Farm Detection Using Social Network Analysis and Social Cyber Forensics Informed Methodologies”
• 3rd Zachary Stine (Nitin Agarwal), “Machine Learning and the Legislative Evolution of Ukraine”

Education

• 1st Marcus Johnson (Ibrahim Duyar), “Examining Determinants of Teachers’ Collaboration: A Closer Look at the Influence of Principal Leadership and Teacher Work Attitudes”

Engineering/Engineering Technology/Construction Management

• 1st Trigun Maroo (Andrew Wright), “A Novel Gripping System for Corrugated Box Grasping and Manipulation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”
• 2nd Abbas Al-Wahhamy (Hussain Al-Rizzo), “Efficient Evaluation of Massive MIMO Channel Capacity”
• 3rd Gregory Riley (Hirak Patangia), “Extending Life of Electric Vehicle Batteries Using a Novel Battery Voltage Equalization Technique”

Humanities

• 1st Mary Melissa Miller (Floyd Martin), “Marriage Rituals in a Renaissance Italy and the Significance of the Cassone”

Interdisciplinary

• 1st Kalyca Spinler (Rene Shroat Lewis), “Improving Student Outcomes in Introductory Earth Science Courses Using Active Learning Strategies”
• 2nd Quinshell Smith, Nawzat Saadi, Khulud Alotaibi, and Laylan Hassan (Tansel Karabacak), “Enhancing the Antibacterial Efficacy of Aluminum Foil by Nanostructuring its Surface Using Hot Water Treatment”

Life Science

• 1st Emilie Darrigues (Alexandru Biris) “Interaction of Drug pH-Responsive Gold Nanorods in ‘Big’ 3D Pancreatic Microtumors Using Fluorescence, Photoacoustic and Photothermal Microscopies”
• Tied 2nd
  • 2nd Molly White and Bryan White (Alexandru Biris), “Selectively Targeting Cancer Cells Using Nanotechnology”
  • 2nd Ilham Kadhim (Fusheng Tang), “Osh6 Controls Membrane Trafficking Through its ORD Domain”

Physical Science

• 1st Amanda Jalihal (Noureen Siraj), “Highly Thermal Stable and Photostable Ionic Materials and Nanomaterials for Solar Cell Applications”
• 2nd Anil Parameswaran Thankam (Anindya Ghosh), “Synthesis of Guar Bean-Based Thermo-responsive and Injectable Hydrogels for Drug Delivery and Bone Cell Growth”
• 3rd Hind Jawad (Alexandru Biris), “Low-Cost, Portable, Pulsed Diode Laser Based Photoacoustic Flow Cytometry for Early Detection of Circulating Clots to Prevent Stroke Disease”

Social Science

• 1st Sajni Kumpuris (April Chatham-Carpenter), “Combating the Opioid Crisis: A Comparative Study of Opioid Education for Older Adults in Medically Underserved Communities”