2023 Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium - Winners and Runners-Up

Congratulations to the category winners and runners-up from WVU's 16th Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium held on Thursday, July 27, 2023. Thank you to all of our presenters for sharing your research and scholarship from this past summer!

Arts, Humanities & Design

• Winner: Kimia Izadinia, Senior, Department of Psychology, West Virginia University. “How Arts-Based Community Building Lends to Building a Culture of Solidarity Economy.” Mentor: Dr. Cynthia Gorman. Funded by Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE)

Biological & Biochemical Sciences

• Winner: Marion Cahill, Junior, Department of Biology, West Virginia University and Junyeop Ahn, Senior, Department of Chemistry. “Intravitreal AAV Gene Therapy for Blue Cone Monochromacy.” Mentor: Wentao Deng. Funded by Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE)
• Runner-Up: Abigail Long, Senior, Neuroscience, West Virginia University. “Pain in the Assay: A Method for Measuring Olfactory Behavior in D. melanogaster.” Mentor: Andrew Dacks. Funded by: Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE)

Environmental & Agricultural Sciences

• Winner: Conner Channels, Sophomore, Geology. “Does Tree Crown Architecture Differ by Tree Species?” Mentor: Brendan McNeil. Funded by NSF-REU/SURE

Health Science & Community Health

• Winner: Annabelle Smith, Senior, Immunology and Medical Microbiology. “Novel monoclonal antibody protects against respiratory infection with pathogenic Burkholderia select agents.” Mentor: Slawomir Lukomski. Funded by: IMMB Summer Internship
• Runner-Up: Megan Alexander, Senior, Biochemistry. “The Role of Endothelial Dysfunction associated with TBI and BCAS.” Mentor: Zachary M. Weil.
• Runner-Up: Samantha Antol, Junior, Immunology and Medical Microbiology. “Suppression of periodontitis-induced bone erosion by haloanilide drug candidate ELP-004.” Mentor: Jennifer Franko. Funded by: IMMB Summer Internship

Physical Sciences & Engineering

• Winner: Noah Walsh, Junior, Biochemistry. “Bulky Amide Ligand-Metal Complexes and Their Application in The Synthesis of Single-Molecule Magnets.” Mentor: Brian Dolinar. Funded by: NSF REU in Chemistry
• Runner-Up: Elliot Chang, Senior, School of Mathematics and Data Science. “Mutual Information and its Application in Neuroscience, Computational Chemistry, and Deep Learning.” Mentor: Srinjoy Das
• Runner-Up: Christopher Smith, Junior Biomedical Engineering. “Separating PBMCs from PYMT and WT Model using COMSOL Multiphysics for breast cancer study.” Mentor: Soumya Srivastava. Funded by: Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE)
• Runner-Up: Ray King, Junior, Physics and Computer Science. “Analysis of Pulsar Nulling Fractions from the AO327 Survey.”  Mentor: Maura McLaughlin, Funded by: Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE)
• Runner-Up: Leonardo Peele, Sophomore, Computer Science. “Cooperative Formation Control for Teams of UAVs.” Mentor: Guilherme Pereira. Funded by: Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) & LSAMP