Nearly 200 undergraduates gathered in Sayles Hall on August 4 and 5 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 25 of the posters were from undergraduate researchers from the School of Engineering or were conducted under the guidance of engineering faculty members.
Many of the projects are supported by Brown's Karen T. Romer Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRAs).
"I've learned so much this summer about specific topics in science and engineering, but perhaps even more importantly, I've also learned how to be a better scientist," said Colette Bare '19, a rising sophomore engineering concentrator who worked with five other students to produce three research posters for the symposium. "Working in the lab of Professor Zia, I've been able to develop skills in critical thinking, ask meaningful questions, and set attainable research goals. Not to mention how much fun I've had along the way!"
Engineering student presentations included:
Maddali Shivaali '17 (biomedical engineering) presented a poster entitled, "Silk Hydrogel Microfluidics Using 3D Printed Pluronic Sacrificial Elements". Assistant Professor Ian Wong assisted Shivaali, who was supported with an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA).
Gabriel Buchsbaum '17 (environmental engineering) worked with Professor Angus Kingon and presented a poster entitled, "Investigation of Transport in Hybrid Perovskite MSM Devices". Buchsbaum was supported by an Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR-NSF).
Sarah Cowles '17 (chemical and biochemical engineering) conducted research with Assistant Professor Anita Shukla and presented a poster entitled, "A Novel Liposomal Formulation Targeting Opportunistic Fungi". Cowles was supported an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA).
Working with faculty mentor Benjamin Kimia, Anthony Daoud '18 (computer engineering) presented his research on "GPU Implementation of a Curve Extraction Algorithm to Accelerate Object Recognition". He received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU).
Kiran Dhatt Gauthier '17 (engineering) presented a poster entitled, "Gellan-CENTA as a β-Lactamase Responsive Antimicrobial Hydrogel". Gauthier received an UTRA and worked with Assistant Professor Anita Shukla and post-doctoral research associate Shashank Shukla.
Samir Gadre '18 (computer engineering) received an UTRA and worked with Professor Benjamin Kimia. Gadre's poster was entitled, "Design and Implementation of Stereoscopic Visual Odometry Module".
Wendy Gonzalez '18 (electrical engineering) worked with faculty mentor Sherief Reda and doctoral student Reza Azimi and presented the research poster "Energy-Efficient Computing Clusters for Cloud Applications". She received an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA).
With support from an UTRA and Professors Alexander Zaslavsky and Kyung-Suk Kim, Joshua Greene '18 (engineering physics) presented his poster entitled "Electrical Characterization of Crinkled Graphene".
Alex Hirsch '18 (engineering physics) presented research on "Extracting Two-dimensional Radiation Patterns from Wide-Angle Spectroscopic Images". Hirsch received an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award and was mentored by Associate Professor Rashid Zia.
Sayaka Kochiyama '17 (engineering) was supported by Professor Robert Hurt and senior technical assistant Zachary Saleeba in her research, "A New Laboratory-Scale Device for Investigating the Human Health Impacts of Biomass-Fired Domestic Cookstoves." She received an Institute at Brown for Environment and Society Internal Grant.
Professor Dan Mittleman (left) and mechanical engineering concentrator Nicolas Lozada-Smith '18Nicolas Lozada-Smith '18 (mechanical engineering) presented a poster entitled, "Terahertz: The Last Frontier". He worked under the guidance of Professor Dan Mittleman, and received an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA).
Lilibeth Martinez '17 (biomedical engineering) worked with Professor Anubhav Tripathi. Her poster was entitled, "Optimizing Bead Transfer Efficiency for an Immiscible Phase Filtration Separation Device." Martiez was supported by an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA).
Lan Nguyen '17 (engineering) presented her poster, "Developing a Molecular Model to Predict Equations of States from Computational Quantum Chemistry and Machine Learning". She worked with Assistant Professor Franklin Goldsmith and received an UTRA.
Maria Paredes '17 (biomedical engineering) conducted research with Assistant Professor Kareen Coulombe. Her poster, "Microcontact Printing of Cell Shapes for Quantitative Analysis of hiPSCs Cardiomyocytes Maturation in Aid of Regenerative Medicine" was supported by a Summer Research Assistantship in Biomedical Sciences.
Shivam Raikundalia '18 (electrical engineering) presented a poster entitled, "Single Molecule Communications Channels". His work was supported by a UTRA, and he was advised by Assistant Professor Jacob Rosenstein.
With support from the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR-NSF), Giorgio Savini Zangrandi '18 (electrical engineering) worked with Associate Professor Domenico Pacifici on his poster, "Optical Characterization of Thin-Film Perovskites."
Matthew Shorter '17 (mechanical engineering) worked with faculty mentors Jennifer Franck and Franklin Goldsmith to present his research, "Computational Fluid Dynamics of Novel Shock Tube Design". He was supported by an UTRA.
Assistant Professor David Borton advised Placid Unegbu '17 (electrical engineering) on his research poster, entitled, "Computational Model of Thalamic Neural Circuitry". Unegbu was supported by an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA).
Robert (Jake) Wyatt '17 (chemical and biochemical engineering) presented his poster "Vapor Intrusion of Soil and Groundwater Sources: An Evolving Environmental Concern". He worked with Professor Eric Suuberg and received an UTRA.
Jake Wyatt '17, pictured with his water polo coachesKevin Anderson '18 (electrical engineering) and Rohan Rastogi '18 (biomedical engineering) worked with faculty mentors Iris Bahar and Kenneth Breuer to present their poster, "ENGN 1931I: Designing Robotic Systems". Both were supported by an UTRA.
Sophia Gluskin-Braun '17 (electrical engineering), Connor Watts '18 (materials engineering), Colette Bare '19, Isabelle Bauman '19, Anjelica Claxton '19, and Mollie Koval '19 conducted research with Associate Professor Domenico Pacifici, Professor Nitin Padture, Professor Angus Kingon and Associate Professor Rashid Zia. Their posters, "The Next-Generation Solar Cells for the Clean Energy Revolution: Part I, II and III" were supported by Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRAs).
Connor Watts '18 (middle) and Anjelica Claxton '19 were both supported by an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award.With support from Assistant Professor Kareen Coulombe, Chinedu Irofuala '17 (biomedical engineering) and Jackie Vu '17 (engineering) presented their research, "Inducing Collapse of Custom Designed Valveless Vessels to Promote Directional Flow". Both received an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA).
More than half of the students participating in the Summer Research Symposium received support for their research through Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA). Generous support was also provided through several other programs including: American Physiological Society Fellowship, BP-Endure, Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, Dean's Award Program, Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR-NSF), Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, IBES Internal Grant, Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), Leadership Alliance-Summer Research Early Identification Program (SR-EIP), Linking Internships and Knowledge (LINK) Awards, National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REU), Royce Fellows, Solsbery Fellowship, Summer Research Assistantship in Biomedical Sciences, Summer Training in Academic Research and Scholarship (STARS) program of Brigham and Women's Hospital, University of Georgia REU: Population Biology of Infectious Diseases, and Weiss-Sipprelle Summer Undergraduate Fellows.