UW’s McNair Scholars Research Symposium Aug. 7

Student projects will be presented during the 32nd annual McNair Scholars Research Symposium Wednesday, Aug. 7, in the Wyoming Union Ballroom at the University of Wyoming.

The symposium begins at 9:15 a.m. with welcoming remarks, followed by presentations until 4 p.m. The event will feature research from 12 UW undergraduates. Scott Henkel, UW’s director of the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research, Wyoming Excellence Chair in the Humanities and associate professor, is the symposium’s keynote speaker at 12:30 p.m.

The program is an opportunity for McNair Scholars to share the progress and findings from their undergraduate research internships with the broader community of scholars. Student presentations are from a diverse range of academic programs, such as family and consumer sciences; chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering; computer science; criminal justice and sociology; ecosystem science and management; English; kinesiology and health; plant sciences; and psychology.

UW’s McNair Scholars Program encourages first-generation college students from limited incomes and other undergraduates from groups traditionally underrepresented in graduate education to prepare for and pursue a Ph.D. by providing opportunities to engage in funded research and prepare for success in graduate school. The program is funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

UW McNair Scholars presenting their work, listed by time, hometowns, titles of their projects and UW mentors, are:

9:30 a.m. -- Carter Worcester, Moran, “Ambulatory Electrodermal Activity Data from an In-Lab Experiment: Preprocessing Techniques, Case Examples and Recommendations,” with Kyle De Young and Lindsay Gillikin.

9:50 a.m. -- Tatiana Warden, Iowa, “The Impact of Nutrition Factors on Suicide Risk in Adolescents,” with Grace Shearrer and Grace Strahan.

10:10 a.m. -- Jacob Huerta, Laramie, “Surface Effects of Superhydrophobic Coatings on Flat Plates,” with Jonathan Naughton, Connor Wilkinson and Mostafa Ojaghloo.

11 a.m. -- Josey Frazier, Gillette, “Mechanical Stimulation of Chondrocytes in Suspension Using a High-Throughput Microfluidic Device to Recover Chondrogenic Phenotype,” with John Oakey and Alan Stenquist.

11:20 a.m. -- Jose Campos-Jiuarez, Edgewater, Colo., “Cardiac Deletion of Mitochondrial Superoxide Dismutase (MnSOD),” with Danielle Bruns and Emma Mehl.

11:40 a.m. -- Kendall Moyte, Cheyenne, “Peptidylarginine Deiminase (PAD) Expression in the Female Hippocampus during the Estrous Cycle,” with Brian Cherrington, Ari Tourtellot and Liz Quigley.

1:30 p.m. -- Kyla Bush, Cheyenne, “Germination Patterns of Seeds with Varied Soil Longevity in Red Light-Depleted Environment,” with Andrew Kniss and Jonah Ziyaaba.

1:50 p.m. -- Chelsea Turner, Cheyenne, “Fungal Endophyte Presence in Three Common Garden Crops (Phaseolus Vulgaris, Cucurbita Pepo and Solanum Lycopersicon),” with Tim Collier and Sulav Dhakal.

2:10 p.m. -- Joel Chambers, Rock Springs, “Runtime Prediction for the Traveling Salesman Problem Using Machine Learning,” with Lars Kotthoff.

3 p.m. -- Adrianna Morrow Guerrero, Pueblo, Colo., “Dynamic Assessment of Narrative Retells with Japanese-English Multilingual Students,” with Doug Petersen and Alisa Konishi-Therkildsen.

3:20 p.m. -- Carissa Fostervold, Greybull, “The Atomic Energy Commission’s Influence in the Social Construction of Uranium,” with Dan Auerbach and Janna Gentry.

3:40 p.m. -- Amelia Payne, Evanston, “Contemporary Social Anxieties in Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys,” with Kent Drummond and Makayla Kocher.

For more information about the McNair symposium, go to www.uwyo.edu/seo/mcnair, or email Elizabeth Nysson, McNair Scholars Program project director, at lizn@uwyo.edu.