VCU news

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) with the Virginia Commonwealth University Office of Research has announced the 2014 Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship Summer Fellows.

The fellowship provides the opportunity for faculty and students to partner together on a funded research project of their choice. The fellowship is designed to provide outstanding undergraduates the chance to make substantial and significant progress on a formal, structured research endeavor during the summer in collaboration with a faculty mentor.

UROP Summer Fellowship Awardees for 2014 include:

School of the Arts

Leah Schmidt: Discovering how Zanzibari textile designs can bridge cultural contexts and their graphic translation. Faculty mentor: David Shields.

Hannah Huddle: Communicating the experience of research through art: a case study of the prothonotary warbler. Faculty mentor: Lesley Bulluck, Ph.D.

Erin Warner: Use of arduino in kinetic sculpture. Faculty mentor: Andrea Keys Connell.

College of Humanities and Sciences

Donald Cox: A study of feather reflectance and nestling provisioning in prothonotary warblers. Faculty mentor: Lesley Bulluck, Ph.D.

Mitchell Layne: Exploring racial disparities in the child welfare system in Virginia. Faculty mentor: Nao Hagiwara, Ph.D.

Julian Neuhauser: The trajectory of “Phylaster” and how the materiality of the play informs its afterlife. Faculty mentor: Claire Bourne, Ph.D.

Logan Wilder: Exploring the potential use of benzimidazole-linked polymers in sensing applications. Faculty mentor: Hani El-Kaderi, Ph.D.

Lena Sinanian: Capital One hosting a credit card rewards program for a microfinance institution in Sub-Saharan Africa. Faculty mentor: Christopher Saladino, Ph.D.

Ashley Cooley: Forensic characterization of bacillus spores using cell surface hydrophobicity. Faculty mentor: Christopher Ehrhardt, Ph.D.

Christina Merritt: Drug of abuse (ketamine): An effective treatment for depression? Faculty mentor: Joseph Porter, Ph.D.

Alexander Burkard: The investigation of protrusion dynamics in motor neurons via time-lapse imaging. Faculty mentor: Gregory Walsh, Ph.D.

Leah Soukup: A gas phase study of SN2 reactions on substituted benzene rings. Faculty mentor: Scott Gronert, Ph.D.

Samantha Meacham: Fossil bovidae of Cooper’s D, and their significance to the paleobiology of Paranthropus robustus. Faculty mentor: Amy Rector Verrelli, Ph.D.

Grace Cummings: Nanopore sensing of glutathione-protected gold clusters. Faculty mentor: Joseph Reiner, Ph.D.

Daulton Sink: Variation in N-fixing community composition and activity between native and non-native species on Hog Island. Faculty mentor: Joseph Battistelli, Ph.D.

Lama Elsharif: Investigating cultural influences on behavior and psychological processes through proverbs. Faculty mentor: Vivian Dsokoto, Ph.D.

Mrignayni Venkatesan: The effectiveness of meteorites as a mock extraterrestrial environment for the growth of cyanobacteria. Faculty mentor: Joseph Battistelli, Ph.D.

Leon Jia: Surgical operations performed in the lateral position: A study of the impact on brachial blook flow as a possible mechanism of ulnar nerve injury. Faculty mentor: Chuck Biddle, Ph.D.

School of Business

Robert Bridge: A proposal for research on the use of artificial feedback loops to encourage altruistic donation behavior to charitable organizations. Faculty mentor: Ed Millner, Ph.D.

William Turfitt: Giving of not taking? Experiments in new fundraising methods using a default gift. Faculty mentor: Laura Razzolini, Ph.D.

 

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