The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has selected the winners of the 2021 Student Research and Creative Works Expo.

The annual event features the latest innovative research, service or professional work, and creative projects by the student researchers at UA Little Rock. 

The expo also featured presentations by the 2021 winners of the Signature Experience Awards, which provides students with grants to fund a signature experience, including a research project, creative activity, or community project, to enrich the students’ academic experience at UA Little Rock. 

“In its fourth year, the UA Little Rock Signature Experience has matured into a foundational pillar of undergraduate and graduate student research and creative work with the generous support of the Donaghey Foundation,” said Dr. Jeremy Ecke, director of undergraduate research at UA Little Rock. 

The winners include: 

Undergraduate

Creative Works

Cristie Armstrong, first prize, “The Album Keeper”

Logan Sellen, second prize, “Goodbye: An Exploration of Death and Grieving in a Time of Separation”

Andrew Chun and Caleb LeFevre, third prize, “From Campus Tree to Campus Table”

Economics

Josiah Johnson, first prize, “Estimating the Impact of Small Businesses on Crime in the Local Community”

Aleigha Smith, second prize, “NBA and the Tax Problem”

Maximilian Holzmueller, second prize, “Detecting Plant Diseases with AI” 

Education

Sarah Carlat, first prize, “The American Canon is Outdated”

Engineering

Elias Perez Reyes, first prize, “Crossbow Loading Mechanism”

Chance Melby, second prize, “UA Little Rock Classified: An Intentionally Vulnerable Web Application Focused on Teaching K-12 and Undergraduate Students about Web Application Security”

Phillip Bryan, third prize, “Continuous Improvement Web Application”

Humanities

Jaelan Nelson, first prize, “The History Behind Lorraine Hansberry’s Famous Play A Raisin in the Sun”

Lindsey Carl, second prize, “The Mermaid Hunter”

Alyia Goudeau, third prize, “Beyzus: The Duality and Complexity of the Nature of Beyoncé Giselle Knowles”

Life Sciences

Avery McLean, first prize, “The Future of Agricultural Herbicide Regulation: The Biological Evaluation and International Response in Regard to Impending Glyphosate Regulation”

Tram Nguyen, first prize, “Removal of Estrogens from Drinking Water Using Graphene Oxide-Based Filtration Membranes”

Gabrielle Roberts, second prize, “Enzymatic studies of F104G SaMTAN mutant enzyme from Staphylococcus aureus”

Mataya Duncan, second prize, “Active Transport Processes of Dictyostelium discoideum Rab32C”

Physical Sciences

Hannah Krehbiel, first prize, “Novel FRET-based ionic materials for bio imaging applications”

Tripti Shukla, second prize, “Refolding of S. aureus MTA nucleosidase to analyze biological activities”

Stuti Chatterjee, second prize, “Tunable sized combination nanodrugs based on ionic materials”

Kajal Desai, second prize, “Revisiting the chemical stability of molybdenum disulfide membranes”

Lauren Langmaid, third prize, “Studies in the hydridic reduction reactions of alkynyl hydrazones via sigmatropic rearrangement to form allenes”

Mariela Saavendra-Duran, third prize, “Carbon storage in Fourche Creek Wetlands”

Hayley Turner, honorable mention, “Ouch! Determining Factors that Affect Kidney Stone Growth, Formation, Mineralogy, and Morphology”

Shannon Bione, honorable mention, “Dirt on the street: Environmental and Health Impacts of Urban road dust”

Shiraz Atif, honorable mention, “Cigarette litter-derived carbon materials for the adsorption of dye pollutants from water”

Social Sciences

Landon DeKay, first prize, “Community Issues in Little Rock: The Interplay of Religion, Politics, and Income”

Savannah James, second prize, “The Effects of Political Party Issue Focus”

Alex Corrales, second prize, “Statute of Limitations Reform: A Window of Hope”

Graduate

Education

Codi Blackmon, first prize, “Begin Again: Reassessing Graduate Orientation”

Engineering

Awaad Al Sarkhi, first prize, “Building a Data Washing Machine for Unsupervised Entity Resolution of Unstandardized References Sources”

Humanities

Mackenzie Nunnally, honorable mention, “Women in Ceramics: Forms of Femininity”

Life Sciences

Ashley Esparza, first prize, “Localization and Functional Characterization of Dictyostelium discoideum Rab32c”

Quinshell Smith, first prize, “Nanostructured Antibacterial Aluminum Foil Produced by Hot Water Treatment against E. coli in Meat”

Qingfang He, second prize, “Molecular Mechanisms and Anatomical Development of Transfer Cells”

Ilham Kadhim, third prize, “Up-regulation of Osh6 boosts an anti-aging membrane trafficking pathway toward vacuoles”

Physical Sciences

Zach Smith, first prize, “Calculating the Urban Contribution of Surface Water Quality through Cl and 87Sr/86Sr Mixing Models within the Fourche Creek Watershed”

Thuy Le, second prize, “Conductive thin film characterization”

Social Sciences

Melissa Herrington, first prize, “Image-Based Sexual Abuse and Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery as Intimate Partner Violence”

In the upper right photo, Josiah Johnson, a finance and economics major, completed a statistical analysis of the spillover effects and general efficacy of small business initiatives in small towns featured in the TV show Small Business Revolution for his first-place project for the Student Research and Creatives Works Expo. Photo by Ben Krain.