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The ÃÛÌÒÊÓƵ University Office of Undergraduate Research recently presented awards to graduate and undergraduate students for work presented at the 5th Annual Texas STEM Conference, and the 4^th Annual Humanities, Arts, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Education and Business (HASBSEB) Conference.

Receiving 1^st place in the conference talk category was Aleksander Allen, in electrical engineering, mentored by Dr. Weihang Zhu, for his presentation on “Portable Myoelectric Hand Implementation.” Second place went to David Quispe and Syeda Mohsin, in electrical engineering and mathematics, for “Characterizing Indium Zinc Oxide in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells – A Solar Energy Experience at Arizona State University.” Dr. Zachary Holman and Ashling Leilaeioun mentored the two.

Also receiving a second place award were biology majors Brody McBee and Aziz Shaaban for their presentation on “Parasites of Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis): Possible indicators of water quality and environmental health.” Dr. Randall Yoder mentored them.

Third place awards went to chemical engineering major Austin Seaux, for his presentation “Reusable Metal Ion-Imprinted Polymer Sponges for Selective Removal of Heavy Metals,” mentored by Dr. Gina Canlas and Dr. Roland Barbosa.

Also receiving a third-place award was biology/pre-medicine major Carlo Vanz for his work on “Altering gene expression of membrane proteins in Leishmania parasites using the novel CRISPR – Cas 9 technology to identify new treatment targets” under the mentorship of Dr. Ashwini Kucknoor.

Graduate 1st Place honors went to Mithun Kumar Acharjee in mathematics for “Air quality and lung cancer: Analysis via local control,” and to Tyler Evans, mathematics, for “Competitive Intergenerational Population dynamics with Stochastic Lotka-Volterra preliminary results.” Dr. Kumer Das mentored both.

Second place graduate honors went to Md Morshedul Alam in industrial engineering for “Damage Prediction Methodology for Electric Poles Exposed to Hurricane Winds,” under the mentorship of Dr. Berna Eren Tokgoz, Dr. Soekyon Hwang and Dr. Mahdi Safa. 

Third place graduate honors went to Md Rakib Ur Rahman in electrical engineering for “Integration and Simulation of Nanogenerators in the Hybrid Renewable DC Nanogrids using Mathlab-simulink Platform,” under his mentor Dr. M. Reza Barzegaran.

In the poster category, first place undergraduate award went to Michael Penrod in mathematics for “Trend Analysis of Aerosol Particles in Himalayan Region,” under his mentors Dr. Ram Kaf le and Dr. Rudra Aryal. Second place poster went to Amar Mani Aryal in computer science for “New Clustering Approach for Spatio-temporal Data Analysis,” under his mentor Dr. Sujing Wang. Third place went to Manideep Bollu in mechanical engineering for “New Social Media Sentiment Analysis Algorithm for Businesses Competition,” under mentor Dr. Sujing Wang.

Graduate awardees in the poster category were first place, Nabin Sharma Rijal, Ravi Teja Gutta, Avijoy Chakma, and Ben Vizena, in computer science for “Image-based Particulate Matter Analysis using Deep Convolutional Neural Network,” mentored by Dr. Jing Zhang. Second place went to Shanglei Pan, civil and environmental engineering, for “Anaerobic Digester Centrate – A case for algae-based energy production in municipal wastewater treatment system,” mentored by Dr. Thinesh Selvaratnam.

Third place went to Nara Almeida and Molly Ross, civil and environmental engineering, for “Deicer Chemical Effects on Pervious Concrete Phase 2,” mentored by Dr. Liv Haselbach.

Awards were also given for the Office of Undergraduate Research Humanities, Arts, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Education and Business (HASBSEB) Conference.

First place went to Natalie Sfeir, speech and hearing sciences, for “Dementia-Friendly Community in Beaumont,” under mentor Dr. Ashley Dockens.

Second place went to Shelvin Jackson, history, for “Effects of Hurricane Harvey,” under mentor Dr. Mary Scheer.

Third place went to Tanner Driskill, history, for “Volunteers and Hurricane Harvey,” under mentor Dr. Mary Scheer.