More than 175 undergraduates gathered in Sayles Hall on August 1 and 2 to present the results of their research at the annual Summer Research Symposium sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College. More than 30 of the posters were from undergraduate researchers from the School of Engineering or were conducted under the guidance of engineering faculty members.
Rebecca Barron '15 (civil engineering) and Jennifer Thomas '14 (civil engineering) presented their poster, "Spira Engineering Camp: An Exploration of Engineering for the Young Women of Providence." They worked under the guidance of faculty mentor Karen Haberstroh and received an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA).
Catherine Bautista '14 (biomedical engineering), working under faculty mentor Bahar Bilgen, also received a UTRA and presented her poster, "Dynamic Mechanical Stimulation of Tissue-Engineered Cartilage."
Samantha Brady '15 (biomedical engineering) received a Bard Fellowship and worked with Professor Diane Hoffman-Kim. Her poster was entitled, "Schwann Cell Dynamics on Polydimethylsiloxane Substrates with Varying Stiffness."
Eliza Brine '15 (mechanical engineering), Ryan Brown '15 (biomedical engineering), Montana Feiger '14 (A.B., engineering), Samuel Moore, and Sam Zeif presented, "Solar Decathlon." They worked with under faculty mentors Chris Bull and Derek Stein and also received UTRAs.
Veronica Chiou '14 (biomedical engineering) received a UTRA and conducted research with Professor Eric Darling. She presented her poster entitled, "Examining live-cell traction forces in stem cells during osteogenic differentiation."
Ahyoung Choe '15 (mechanical engineering), working under Professor Allan Bower, presented her research on the bow and arrow, "From Engineering Mechanics to the Hunger Games: the Engineering, History, and Mythology of the Bow and Arrow." She also received a UTRA.
Kate DeSimone '14 (biomedical engineering) received a C.R. Bard Summer Fellowship and conducted research with Professor Anubhav Tripathi. Her poster was entitled, "Isolation of RNA using magnetic beads in a microfluidic oil channel."
Sarah Frank '14 (mechanical engineering) received a UTRA and worked with faculty mentor Jennifer Franck. She presented a poster entitled, "Optimal Hydrofoil Kinematics for Tidal Energy Extraction."
Sukyun (Kevin) Jung '15 (electrical engineering) was granted support through a UTRA and worked with Professor Jacob Rosenstein. He presented a poster entitled, "Biomimetic Lipid Membranes on Electronic Circuit Boards."
Emily Matteson '14 (electrical engineering) received a UTRA and worked with faculty mentor John Simeral. Her poster was entitled, "Improving the performance of an intracortical brain‐computer interface."
Working with Professor Tayhas Palmore, Chezev Matthew '15
Chezev Matthew '15 (biomedical engineering) received support from the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation (IMNI), and presented a poster entitled, "Detect, Splice and Glow: Engineering a DNA biocircuit for chemical sensing."
With support from a UTRA, Adrian Nadeau '15 (materials engineering) worked with Professor Eric Chason and presented a poster entitled, "Understanding Tin Whiskers."
Working with Professor Harvey Silverman, Gaurav Nakhare '15 (electrical engineering) received a UTRA and presented, "Talker locationing and speaker enhancement with the octoMIC."
With support from a UTRA, Khoi Nguyen '14 (biomedical engineering) worked with faculty mentor Shreyas Mandre and presented a poster entitled, "Fluid Surface Deformation by Objects in the Cheerios Effect."
Danielle Rothermel '14 (engineering-physics) received a UTRA and worked with faculty mentor Nabil Lawandy. She presented a poster entitled, "Laser Oscillation in Nanoparticle Plasmonic Systems."
Subhradip Sarker '15 (electrical engineering) received support from the Royce Fellows (Swearer Center for Public Service) and worked with Dean Larry Larson. He presented a poster entitled, "Wireless transceiver in the brain."
Tegan Tingley '15 (chemical and biochemical engineering) received a UTRA and worked with Professor Joseph Calo. She presented a poster entitled, "Removal of Mercury, Arsenic, and Lead from Water with Iron Compounds."
Working with Professor Sherief Reda, Jie Ying Wu '15 (computer engineering) received support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and presented a poster entitled, "Measuring the Energy Consumption of Servers."
Several students from other universities also presented posters after conducting research throughout the summer under the guidance of Brown faculty members.
Cynthia Barajas (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo) received support from the Leadership Alliance Summer Research Early Identification Program (SR-EIP) and worked with Professor Jacob Rosenstein. She presented a poster entitled, "Real-Time Hardware Identification of Single Ion Channel Gating."
Amrita Mazumdar (Columbia University) and Abigail Zimmerman-Niefield (Williams College) received support from the Distributed Research Program for Undergraduates (DREU) and worked with Professor Iris Bahar. Mazumdar presented a poster entitled, "An Automated Synthesis Tool for Generating Noise-Immune Sub-Threshold Circuits," while Zimmerman-Niefield's poster was entitled, "Energy and Performance Efficient Parallel Computing for Embedded Systems."
Christopher Miller (University of Colorado-Boulder) received support from the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation (IMNI), and worked with Professor Eric Chason. He presented a poster entitled, "Modeling Stress Development in Thin Film Growth."
Viktor Rozsa (Hillsdale College) ) received support from the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation (IMNI), and worked with Professor Nitin Padture and Professor Stephan Parman. He presented a poster entitled, "Experimental and Analytic Methods towards Synthesis of Ultrahard Nanotwinned Cubic Boron Nitride."
More than half of the students participating received support for their research through Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA). Generous support was also provided through several other programs including: Beckman Scholars Program, Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR-NSF), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation (IMNI), Leadership Alliance-Summer Research Early Identification Program (SREIP), Royce Fellows (Swearer Center for Public Service), Space Grant/NASA, Summer Research Assistantship in Biomedical Sciences, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, and Voss Environmental Fellows.