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Winners of ULM’s 15th annual student research symposium announced

Published March 18, 2015

The University of Louisiana at Monroe recently announced the winners of the 15th annual Student Research Symposium. Used as a vehicle to showcase the outstanding research being conducted by graduate and undergraduate students at ULM, the symposium presents the unique and high quality work of ULM students.

The symposium has provided a platform for the presentation of research conducted by over 3,000 student researchers since the inaugural Student Research Symposium in 2001.

Students are required to conceptualize a research question, work with a faculty mentor to address the question, design a research method, identify the subjects, correctly and objectively collect and analyze data, reach conclusions, and make recommendations.

Student researchers presented their work either by presentation poster or by a platform presentation in which they read their research aloud to the audience.

In both cases, student researchers were expected to answer questions from judges who have credentials in the student’s research field.

Award winners are as follows:

 

School of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Graduate: Poster Presentations

First place: Rachel Knight of West Monroe presented “Beauty Pageants and Life History Theory.” Knight’s faculty mentor is Dr. Kilian Garvey.

Graduate: Oral Presentations

First place: Farah Salameh of Baton Rouge presented “Factors that Predict Objectively Measured Altruistic Behavior.” Salameh’s faculty mentor is Dr. Jack Palmer.

Undergraduate: Poster Presentations

First place: Dawa Sherpa Lama of Woodside, NY presented “Cognitive Reflection and Fear Perception: An exploration of aversion to ambiguous stimuli.” Lama’s faculty mentor is Dr. Kilian Garvey.

Second place: Baylen Harris of Oak Grove presented “Music preferences as a predictor of altruism and empathy.” Harris’ faculty mentor is Dr. Jack Palmer.

Third place: Olivia Travis of Madison, Miss. presented “Self-Reported Religiosity as a Predictor of Altruism.” Travis’ faculty mentor is Dr. Jack Palmer.

Undergraduate: Oral Presentations

First place: Kate Saterfiel of Monroe presented “Personality Profile of Recovering Alcoholics.” Saterfiel’s faculty mentor is Dr. Jack Palmer.

 

School of Health Professions

Graduate: Poster Presentations

First place: Tonya Keene of Winnsboro presented “Effectiveness of integrating a 4-week fine motor program for 4 year old students in a regular education preschool classroom.” Keene’s faculty mentor is Dr. Carolyn Murphy.

Second place: Jordan Harris of California, Md. presented “How can we continue to improve our use of stereotypes?: internal family systems and stereotyping.” Harris’ faculty mentor is Mr. Jason Austin.

Third place: Amber Bettencourt of Livermore, Calif. presented “Uh-huh: A third implicature?” Bettencourt’s faculty mentor is Dr. Johanna Boult.

 

School of Humanities

Graduate: Oral Presentation

First place: Catherine Olson of Oil City presented “Roman de la Rose: A ‘False Seeming’ Multiplicity.” Olson’s faculty mentors are Dr. Jana Giles and Dr. Rebecca Stephenson.

Undergraduate: Oral Presentation

First place: Rachael Maddox of Start presented “Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Unraveling the Roles of Shakespeare’s Forests.” Maddox’s mentor is Dr. Julia Guernsey-Pitchford.

 

School of Nursing

Undergraduate: Oral Presentation

First place: Briana Strange of Shreveport presented “Community Assessment as Clinical Experience.” Strange’s faculty mentor is Dr. Sherilyn Wiggins.

 

School of Pharmacy

Graduate: Poster Presentations

First place: Salman B. Hosain of Bangladesh presented “Heterozygous missense p53-mutant leads to drug resistance, epithelialmesenchymal transition and stemness in colon cancer cells.” Hosain’s faculty mentor is Dr. Yong-Yu Liu.

Second place: Hassan Ebrahim of Egypt presented “The Louisiana lichen-derived depsidone norstictic acid inhibits invasive breast cancer cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo through targeting the proto-oncogene receptor tyrosine kinase c-Met.” Ebrahim’s faculty mentor is Dr. Khalid El Sayed.

Third place: Yazan S. Batarseh of Jordan presented “In vitro studies on amyloid b handling by astrocyte.” Batarseh’s faculty mentor is Dr. Amal Kaddoumi.

Graduate: Oral Presentations

First place: Osama Alawin of Jordan presented “The antiproliferative effect of _-tocotrienol on HER2 breast cancer cells is associated with lipid raft mediated mechanism.” Alawin’s faculty mentor is Dr. Paul W. Sylvester.

Second place: Loqman Mohamed of Libya presented “Donepezil and rivastigmine enhance brain A_ clearance in aged rats: a novel mechanism for cholinesterase inhibitors against Alzheimer’s disease.” Mohamed’s faculty mentor is Dr. Amal Kaddoumi.

Undergraduate: Poster Presentations

First place: Ashley Depaula of Hammond, and Courtney Langley of Kinder presented “Discovery of Compounds Using High Throughput Screening to Enhance the Integrity of Blood-Brain Barrier and Potential Efficacy for the Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease.” Depaula and Langley's faculty mentor is Dr. Amal Kaddoumi.

 

School of Sciences

Graduate: Poster Presentations

First place: Osvaldo Rivera of Puerto Rico presented “An investigation of the effects of HFD in the head of Drosophila melanogaster,” with co-authors: Jamon Harris, Silvienne Sint Jago, and Siddhartha Dhakal. Rivera’s faculty mentor is Dr. Matthew Talbert

Second place: Fernanda Alonzo of Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico presented “Preliminary Annotation of Rhodococcus erythropolis Phages Chewy VIII and Trina,” with co-authors: G. Brooke Morgan, and the 2014-2015 ULM Sea Phages class. Alonzo’s faculty mentors are Dr. Allison M.D. Wiedemeier, Dr. Chris Gissendanner, and Dr. Ann M. Findley.

Undergraduate: Poster Presentations

First place: Kyle Gresham of Monroe presented “Genome Annotation and Preliminary Host Identification for Bacteriophage Hobo,” with co-authors: Grant Gallien, Taylar Boutte, Nicholas Carlson, Samantha Clark, Joseph Davis, C. Connor Dixon, D. Derek Dozier, Quoc-Nam Duong, Lauren Enyeart, Cassidy Horton, V. Grace Jeanfreau, Bria Mays, Shelbi Penny, Anna Rogers, Tanner Traweek, Harry Hawthorne, Trapper Munn, and Fernanda Alonzo. Gresham’s faculty mentors are Dr. Allison M.D. Wiedemeier, Dr. Chris Gissendanner, and Dr. Ann M. Findley.

Second place: Adebanjo Adedoja of Nigeria presented “A Comparison of Characteristics of Different Bacteriophage of Agrobacterium Tumefaciens,” with co-authors Tyler Hawthorne, Erin Foster, Mackenzie Miller, and Cortez Davis. Adedoja’s faculty mentor is Dr. Allison M.D. Wiedemeier.


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