Students present research at SOURCE Explore 2024

The program takes place on Jan. 24, Jan. 31, Feb. 7 and Feb. 14, with the final presentation on Feb. 28 from 2 to 4 p.m. All cohorts, except “Mapping Stories, Making Change with ���ϲ����� Community Geography” take place from 2 to 4 p.m. The Community Geography cohort will meet on Fridays from noon to 2 p.m.

The six SOURCE Explore programs being offered are:

• “Mapping Stories, Making Change with ���ϲ����� Community Geography:” Learn how maps help us visualize and share pressing stories like the impacts of climate change, the global pandemic, housing inequalities and ongoing racial injustice (among many more).
• “Analyzing Media and Popular Culture Through a Social Justice Lens with Newhouse’s CODE^SHIFT Lab:” Learn how to examine media texts (such as news stories, social media posts, movies, TV shows, music videos or advertisements) from a social justice lens to become more mindful media users.
• “Culture Clubs: Researching Communities of Interest:” Explore traces of human culture, activity and ideas through archival materials like photographs, scrapbooks and diaries, homemade fliers and pamphlets, notes and ephemera to better understand what constitutes “community” from mainstream offshoots to counterculture and subculture groups, to organizations of extreme niche interest. This cohort will be offered through the Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.
• “3D Printing and Advanced Manufacturing*:” Learn how to utilize computer aided design (CAD) and 3D printers in academic research for precise modeling and rapid prototyping of complex structures.
• “Discovering Connections: Using Graph Theory to Solve Real-World Network Challenges*:” Learn how to model networks as graphs and apply key concepts like shortest paths, network flows and connectivity to explore how mathematical models can help solve real problems.
• “Exploring the Building Blocks of Life*:” Learn how DNA, the building block of life, is a key component of life science research through Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), a common laboratory technique that amplifies DNA sequences of interest.

The three STEM Explore programs* are offered in partnership with the����program; students meeting the LSAMP����are strongly encouraged to apply.

Of the SOURCE Explore experience in spring 2024, one student shared that they learned “how to be more open-minded and adaptable when doing research,” including “how to navigate looking at archival, first-hand sources.” The student explained, “I didn’t have much experience with this prior, as I mainly used online databases and second-hand sources to complete projects. This led me to a third skill that I developed, which was how to narrow down my search and ask relevant questions.”

Interested students should by Dec. 5.

Presenters and attendees at the 2023 SOURCE Symposium

Hua, a nutrition science major in the , has investigated the effects of fish oil on paternal obesity and its impact on offspring muscle function. Ross, a neuroscience and psychology major in the , has studied the impact of Cited2 excision and maternal folic acid supplementation among mice on neurodevelopment. And Lu, a music composition major in the (VPA), has worked with music ensembles and experienced the premieres of two of his original compositions.

They are among the more than 250 students who have actively participated in research this summer—both in-person and remotely—through initiatives of the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE) and other programs, including the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP); Chemistry, iSchool, and BioInspired Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs; the SUNY Upstate Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program; the McNair Scholars Program; the psychology SPARC and STAHR programs; Renée Crown University Honors Program; Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)-supported students and others.

As a culmination of their experiences, the —a poster session featuring more than 110 undergraduate research students, will be held Thursday, Aug. 8, from 10 a.m. to noon in the Schine Student Center’s Panasci Lounge. A picnic will follow on the patio of Huntington Beard Crouse Hall. .

Some of the posters that will be presented include:

• Mercury Release From Alaskan Permafrost
• The Role of the Kit Tyrosine Pathway in Primordial Follicle Formation and Cyst Breakdown
• The Effects of the Post-Mating Immune Response in Drosophila on Female Fecundity
• ���ϲ����� Policy Legacy Project
• Testing the Hydropathy of Synthetic RNA
• Polyurethane Foams for Hemorrhage Control
• Supporting Healthcare Outcomes and Access for Refugees
• Effects of I-81 Highway Construction on Freshwater Streams in the Valley Neighborhood of ���ϲ�����
• Role of Rab GTPase-Mediated Ciliary Cargo Transport in Cilia formation and Cellular Polarity
• Validating Hydraulic Flood Control Risk Assessment Using High Resolution Satellite Imagery

“Summer research students make great strides in their research skill-building during these few short months; they explore fascinating topics, engage with existing work, try new methods and techniques and experience deep immersion and focus in their work,” says SOURCE Director Kate Hanson. “We are thrilled to learn about research at the Summer Symposium and grateful to the mentors that have supported them.”

Xuezhu (Stephanie) Hua ’25

Stephanie Hua

Hua’s research is inspired by the obesity epidemic. “Obesity is a growing concern, with two in five people in the U.S. affected. It not only diminishes quality of life but also has lasting effects on the health of future generations,” Hua says. “In our research explores the potential of fish oil supplementation in mitigating the detrimental, we focus on using fish oil as a dietary intervention for obese fathers.”

Hua and her colleagues have found that a father’s high-fat diet during the preconception period significantly impacts the muscle health of their offspring, potentially decreasing muscle function. Conversely, when the father follows a low-fat diet during the preconception period, the offspring’s muscle health is more influenced by their own diet. “Moving forward, I will employ an analysis of variance test to determine if fish oil supplementation can reverse the adverse effects of a father’s high-fat diet on offspring,” she says.

“I would like to express my gratitude to the SOURCE, Renée Crown University Honors Program and WiSE for sponsoring my research. This invaluable experience has allowed me to ask scientific questions, grapple with challenges and find solutions,” Hua says. “What drives me is the potential impact of my research on people’s lives. To me, research is about serving the community. This experience has been instrumental to me in preparing for my Ph.D. studies in obesity and metabolism.”

Hua’s faculty mentor is , assistant professor of nutrition and food studies in the Falk College.

Edward Lu ’26

Lu says his music composition research this summer has provided him with some of the most artistically fulfilling experiences in his career. He attended the Connecticut Summerfest and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival at the Juilliard School as a part of their Emerging Composers Program.

Edward Lu (photo by Isaac Schwalbe)

“Both of these festivals were incredible, and they each provided a diverse array of insights into the business of composition and chamber music,” Lu says.

He traveled to Connecticut in June for a week of lectures, presentations, rehearsals, concerts and recording sessions. “I was paired with ~Nois, a saxophone quartet based in Chicago, who were an absolute joy to work with,” Lu says. “They premiered my piece, ‘Leaf Litter,’ and we also shot a separate professional video/audio recording with the Kinsmen Sound Studio. I loved how much creative liberty I was given during this process, and how much they valued my artistic input. Additionally, I enjoyed getting to know the other ensembles-in-residence.”

In July, Lu spent 10 days in New York City, attending lectures and masterclasses with Imani Winds and the composer-in-residence, Jessica Meyer, as well as other visiting composition faculty. “I was paired with Nimbus Winds, a student wind quintet, and we spent the week rehearsing and workshopping my piece ‘Cloud Shapes,’ which was premiered at Juilliard’s Morse Recital Hall on Aug. 3.” He also had the opportunity to present “Leaf Litter” in a masterclass and share his work from Connecticut Summerfest, bringing his summer research full circle.

“At both festivals, I met a lot of amazing people and built lasting and meaningful relationships while learning important skills such as outreach and finding my musical voice and message,” Lu says. “Additionally, I now have two new pieces and recordings to add to my portfolio. Most importantly, I’ve made colleagues and friends in the field of chamber music that will last my entire lifetime. I’m eternally grateful to SOURCE for making these experiences possible for me.”

Lu’s faculty mentor is , associate professor and chair of music composition, theory and history in VPA’s Setnor School of Music.

Kaniya Ross ’25

Ross’s project is specifically investigating the impact of Cited2 excision and maternal folic acid

Kaniya Ross

supplementation among mice on neurodevelopment. Loss of Cited2 (knockout) has been known to cause disruptions in brain development such as neural tube defects, reduced cortical thickness that can lead to microcephaly, and heart and lung defects.

“Based on preliminary research, prepartum folic acid supplementation has been linked to a reduction in�� neural tube defects like exencephaly. It has also been linked to rescuing reductions in cortical thickness seen with Cited2 knockout,” says Ross. Her team uses immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis and cell counting to measure whether reduced cortical thickness is due to increased cell density or decreased cells overall following Cited2 knockout and maternal folic acid supplementation. As microcephaly is linked to learning and memory deficits, they also do novel object recognition testing to measure changes in both following maternal folic acid supplementation.

“This project is deeply connected with my future endeavors as a pediatric neurologist who will continue doing research on neurodevelopmental disorders as well as providing affordable care and treatments in my own private practice,” Ross says.

Ross has worked with faculty mentor , associate professor of biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and graduate student Sara Brigida.

Additional events featuring undergraduate research include the 2024 McNair Summer Research Symposium, which will be held Aug. 9 from 10 a.m.to 3 p.m. in 331 Sims Hall. The Psychology SPARC-STAHR & iSchool REU Program Symposium was held on July 25.

Xheneta Sopjani (left), Emeka Ossai (center) and Natasha Brao are among the recipients of the Spring 2024 Orange Innovation Fund grant.

���ϲ����� Libraries is accepting fall 2024 applications for the grant now through Friday, Sept. 27, at 5 p.m. Interested applicants should plan to attend one of the information and proposal/grant writing workshops on Sept. 10, 11 or 12.

The Orange Innovation Fund supports student research initiatives emerging from campus innovation programs. The grant ‘concept to commercialization’ fund is designed to help move graduate and undergraduate student research or scholarly projects from ideation to proof of concept to commercialization. Initial funding from the program came from a gift to the Libraries from Raj-Ann Rekhi Gill ’98, a member of the University Board of Trustees.

Grants up to $5,000 per award will be made, with a total of up to $50,000 per academic year based on the merit of applications.

The program is administered through ���ϲ����� Libraries, in collaboration with the University’s research and commercialization programs such as the�� (SOURCE), the��,��, ,��, the��, the����at ���ϲ�����,��,��, the����(NYSTAR designated Center for Advanced Technology) and the��. Applicants can also come directly through research classes, labs or independent study programs across the University.

Student applicants must identify specific tangible needs related to the product, service, technology or creative work they are developing. Grants will support defined projects over a clear timeframe with identified outcomes that will help move a research project or innovative venture toward proof of concept toward commercialization.

A prerequisite to applying is attendance at one of the proposal writing workshops being offered by Linda Dickerson Hartsock, advisor, strategic initiatives ���ϲ����� Libraries, and former founding director of the Blackstone LaunchPad. Students should attend one of the following workshops to create a successful application:

• Tuesday, September 10, from 3 to 4 p.m. in Bird Library
• Wednesday, September 11, from 3 to 4 p.m. in Couri Hatchery, Whitman Room 116
• Thursday, September 12, from 3 to 4 p.m. Hybrid in Bird Library or via

Dickerson Hartsock is also available to help coach applicants through the process and can be scheduled for sessions on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons by emailing ldhart01@syr.edu.

Applications are due Friday, September 27, by 5 p.m. to ���ϲ����� Libraries. For a link to the application or to register for a workshop, please e-mail orangeinnovation@syr.edu to indicate your interest in the program.

Following a cross-campus committee review process, announcements and award letters will be made in October.

Nine student teams were the

So Darvin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the in the , has dedicated her research and teaching career to creating greater equity in esports and gaming.

Lindsey Darvin

Darvin has emerged as a national leader in this area, and she was recently named a finalist for the (NACE) Scholar of the Year Award. The winner will be announced at the July 17-19 in Winter Park, Florida.

“It’s such an honor to be nominated for this award,” Darvin says. “I was thrilled to learn I was a finalist and excited to know that the work I have been doing to drive greater equity in the gaming and esports spaces has been recognized by scholars and practitioners across the industry.”

Nationally, Darvin is making an impact as associate editor of the (JEGE); co-chair of the esports mini-track at the January 2025 , where her goal is to advance esports scholarship and promote JEGE and publishing opportunities in the space; and a regular contributor to Forbes Magazine, where she writes columns such as about how an all-women’s Fortnite tournament is driving equity in esports.

On the ���ϲ����� campus, Darvin has been awarded Falk College seed grants to examine the culture of gaming for gender minoritized participants, and to study the processes of building community in gaming spaces for minoritized participants.

She also received a to work with two undergraduate students on a multi-level review of the underrepresentation of women and girls in esports and gaming (the manuscript is currently being developed). Overall, Darvin has received more than $22,000 in grants and awards for esports and gaming research projects.

Starting this fall, the University is introducing an , offered jointly by the Falk College and . The course that Darvin teaches, Race, Gender and Diversity in Sport Organizations, will be a required course in this new major.

Below, Darvin shares more about her motivation to create greater equity in the esports and gaming space.

Julia Fancher, a rising junior majoring in physics and mathematics in the and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, has been named a 2024-25 Astronaut Scholar by the .

Founded by the Mercury 7 astronauts, the foundation awards scholarships to students in their junior or senior year who are pursuing a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) degree with intentions to pursue research or advance their field upon completion of their degrees. Astronaut Scholars are among the best and brightest minds in STEM who show initiative, creativity and excellence in their chosen field.

The Astronaut Scholarship includes funding of up to $15,000 toward educational expenses, a paid trip to the ASF Innovators Week and Gala in Houston in August, where Fancher will receive the award, and lifelong mentoring and engagement opportunities with astronauts, Astronaut Scholar alumni, industry leaders and the ASF.

Fancher worked with the University’s on her application. “Julia’s commitment to research in astrophysics since her first semester on campus at SU, combined with her extraordinary publication and presentation record, make her a superb fit for the Astronaut Scholarship,” says CFSA Director Jolynn Parker. “We’re thrilled that she’ll benefit from the program’s tuition support and excellent mentorship and professional development opportunities.”

“For 40 years, ASF has been at the forefront of nurturing the next generation of STEM leaders and fueling their passion for exploration and innovation,” says Caroline Schumacher, ASF president and CEO. “Each year, it’s thrilling to see the exceptional talent and dedication each new scholar brings to the ASF community. We welcome the 2024 class and look forward to supporting them in their quest to make their unique mark on our society.”

Fancher, who is also minoring in computer science in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, was recently named a 2024 Goldwater Scholar. When she was in middle school, her aunt gifted her Nathalia Holt’s 2016 book “Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars.”

“I was captivated by the stories of these women, and they inspired me to pursue STEM research,” Fancher says. She now plans a career researching theoretical high-energy astrophysics.

As a first-year student at ���ϲ�����, she joined the high-energy astrophysics lab of Eric Coughlin, assistant professor of physics. Under Coughlin’s guidance, Fancher researches tidal disruption events (TDEs), astrophysical transients that occur when a star is destroyed by the tidal field of a black hole. She uses a combination of numerical simulations and analytical methods to accurately model TDEs, which reveal properties of distant galaxies. “I want to continue contributing to our understanding of the sources of astrophysical transients and expand our knowledge of the universe,” she says.

Fancher’s research has overturned previously held convictions about the physical effects of shocks during the disruption of a star in a TDE and established the importance of self-gravity for understanding how stellar debris behaves once a star has been destroyed. She published this research as first author in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in December 2023. She is now testing a new model developed by Coughlin and Chris Nixon, associate professor of theoretical astrophysics at the University of Leeds, and she is creating a library of PHANTOM stars with realistic structures that will be publicly available for future TDE research.

With support from ���ϲ�����’s undergraduate research office (SOURCE) and a Young Research Fellowship, Fancher presented her work at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society and was a finalist in the Chambliss poster competition. She has presented posters at SOURCE research fairs and at the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at West Point. She is second author on a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in January 2024. Her publications and presentations have implications for how observational data from TDEs is interpreted and could lead to new insights into distant black holes and stellar populations in galactic centers.

Fancher supports local ���ϲ����� high school students through the ���ϲ����� Research in Physics (SURPh) program during the summer and mentors students through the Society of Physics Students. She also volunteers for Friends of Inkululeko, through which she works with learners in South Africa. “I want to ensure that students from a variety of backgrounds have the opportunity to explore their interests and are encouraged to pursue careers in STEM just as I was,” she says. Outside of the classroom and lab, she plays alto saxophone in the ���ϲ����� Marching Band and completed a half marathon last fall.

Fancher plans to enroll in a doctoral program that focuses on computational and analytical astrophysics, with the goal of joining a research university or national laboratory to conduct research in theoretical high-energy astrophysics.

“I aim to build my own astrophysics lab focusing on discovering possible mechanisms of observed astrophysical transients through a combination of analytical methods and computational modeling,” Fancher says. ‘The mentoring that the ASF provides will be invaluable as I work towards a career in research, and I am excited to meet the other scholars in my cohort as well. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to join this community.”

Created in 1984, ASF awarded its first seven scholarships in honor of the Mercury 7 astronauts—Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. Seven students received $1,000 scholarships. To fundraise and support future scholarships, the founders ̶ which included the six surviving Mercury 7 astronauts, Betty Grissom (Gus’s widow), Dr. William Douglas (the Project Mercury flight surgeon) and Henri Landwirth (an Orlando businessman and friend) ̶ began donating proceeds from their speaking engagements. The incredible efforts of these legends have shaped ASF’s mission to support and reward exceptional college students pursuing degrees in STEM. Forty years later, more than $9 million has been awarded to more than 800 college students.

As a university partner of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, ���ϲ����� can nominate two students for the Astronaut Scholarship each year. Interested students should contact CFSA for information on the nomination process (cfsa@syr.edu; 315.443.2759). More information on the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation can be .

The Retention and Student Success team receives the “Best Use of Results” award from Lois Agnew, associate provost for academic programs. From left: Hope Smalling, Radell Roberts, Lois Agnew, Kal Srinivas, Samantha Trumble, ShawnMarie Parry, Priyasha Sinha Roy ’24 and Prabin Raj Shrestha ’24

Academic Affairs and Institutional Effectiveness (IE) presented awards to several faculty and staff members, students, offices and programs during the One University Assessment Celebration on April 26, in the School of Education, Education Commons.

In her opening remarks, Lois Agnew, associate provost for Academic Programs, highlighted the importance of celebrating the various ways faculty, staff and students have engaged in assessment practices, illuminating our strengths but also reinforcing a commitment to continuous improvement. Awards were given in five categories:

• Assessment Champion: Recognizing campus community members who advocate for meaningful assessment to enrich the student experience and who have made outstanding contributions to the University’s culture of improvement.
• Outstanding Assessment: Recognizing a distinguished academic, co-curricular and functional area for overall robust assessment.
• Best Engagement Strategies: Recognizing programs/units for engaging faculty, staff and students to participate and contribute to the assessment process.
• Best Use of Results: Recognizing an academic, co-curricular and functional area for how assessment results are used in making decisions.
• Collaborative Inquiry and Action: A new award recognizing a unit that collaborates with others outside of their primary school, college or division to use assessment methods and data, resulting in actions to improve student learning and campus operations.

This year’s recipients included:

• Assessment Champion | Academic: Blythe Bennett, program manager, School of Information Studies
• Assessment Champion | Co-Curricular/Functional: Jessica Newsom, assistant director, Living Learning Communities
• Assessment Champion | Shared Competencies: Maureen Thompson, undergraduate director and associate professor, Department of Public Health, Falk College
• Outstanding Assessment | Academic Programs: Forensic Science Undergraduate and Graduate Programs, Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute, College of Arts and Sciences (A&S)
• Outstanding Assessment | Co-Curricular: Student Outreach and Support, Student Experience
• Outstanding Assessment | Functional: Future Professoriate Program, Graduate School
• Best Faculty Engagement Strategies: Human Development and Family Science program, Department of Human Development and Family Science, Falk College
• Best Staff Engagement Strategies: College of Professional Studies Dean’s Office
• Best Student Engagement Strategies: Living Learning Communities, Student Experience
• Best Use of Results | Academic: Film program, Department of Film and Media Arts, College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA)
• Best Use of Results | Co-Curricular: ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (The SOURCE)
• Best Use of Results | Functional: Retention and Student Success
• Collaborative Inquiry and Action: Barnes Center at The Arch

After the awards, 2023 Assessment Leadership Institute participants were recognized for their poster presentations detailing assessment activities over the past year:

• Keonte Coleman, director of assessment and program review and assistant professor, Newhouse School of Public Communications
• Nadeem Ghani, assistant teaching professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS)
• Dimitar Gueorguiev, Chinese studies program director and associate professor, Political Science, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
• Jody Nyboer, associate professor, School of Design, VPA
• Kathleen Roland-Silverstein, associate professor, presenting with Isabel Hampton ’24 and Katie Weber ’24, Sentor School of Music, VPA
• Darwin Tsen, Chinese language minor coordinator and assistant teaching professor, Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, A&S
• Andrea Willis, director of academic programs, College of Professional Studies

Recipients of the inaugural “Student Engagement in Assessment” grant were also acknowledged for their poster presentations showcasing the collaborative experiences of students, faculty and staff:

• Biomedical and Chemical Engineering: Tessa DeCicco ’25, Kerrin O’Grady ’25, Jade Carter ’24, Carly Ward ’24, Natalie Petryk ’21, Bridget Sides ’25, Mia Paynton ’25 and Doug Yung, associate teaching professor, Biomedical Engineering undergraduate program director, ECS
• Center for Learning and Student Success (CLASS): Student Success Advisory Council, which includes Eadin Block ’26; Margot MacKechnie ’26; Gary Shteyman ’26; Karen Toole, coordinator of academic support, Center for Disability Resources; Tasha Terzini, advisor, A&S; Kate Bussell, assistant director of academic expectations CLASS; and George Athanas, associate director, CLASS
• New Student Programs: Winnie Naggar ’24 and Butch Hallmark, interim director, New Student Programs
• Retention and Student Success: Prabin Raj Shrestha ’24 and Hope Smalling, functional business analyst, Retention and Student Success

Jerry Edmonds, senior assistant provost, shared final remarks. He noted that ���ϲ����� achieved “two important milestones this year. It is the fifth annual celebration highlighting the dedicated efforts of faculty, staff and students to assess and improve, as well as 10 years since the University embarked on a campus-wide initiative of systematically collecting evidence to inform decision-making across our campus.” He concluded with thanks and appreciation for everyone’s continued efforts.

Visit the�� for event photos, presentation materials highlighting recipients’ achievements and posters.

Story by Laura Harrington, associate director, Institutional Effectiveness��

“Based on feedback from students and faculty, the new award and changes to existing awards will make SOURCE funding more flexible for an even broader population of students,” says Kate Hanson, director of the SOURCE.

The new SOURCE Bridge Award will provide short-term, renewable support up to $2,000 for students at all levels to pursue mentored research experiences. The Bridge Award application cycle will occur three times each year: in July for fall semester funding, in October for spring semester funding and in April for summer funding. To apply, students should identify a faculty mentor and create a research plan for the following semester.

The flexible Bridge Award can support students in any phase of research, from those just getting started with a project or in a lab, to students working on a capstone or thesis, or students traveling to present at a conference, and more.

The SOURCE Fellowship application cycle will be held only in the spring, for $3,200-$7,700 (amount will depend on timeline) to fund summer and/or full academic year research. The fellowship’s guidelines now emphasize advanced student-led or student-designed original research and creative work that will substantially develop skills and culminate in a deliverable appropriate to the discipline.

In partnership with the Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising (CFSA), the CFSA-SOURCE Emerging Research Fellows Program (formerly the Young Research Fellows Program) encourages first-year students with a strong interest in research to apply for this two-year program that provides in-depth, guided research development, now including participation in a one-credit course on the research process.

Also new this year are awards to celebrate the wider undergraduate research community at the University. The SOURCE Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentoring and the SOURCE Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Research Support recognize both a faculty mentor and campus partner office or initiative that have made significant contributions to undergraduate research activity. The CFSA-SOURCE Graduation Recognition, beginning in spring 2025, will provide a cord for students who have participated in undergraduate research and/or national fellowships applications and programs.

Continuing programs include the Faculty Research Assistant Grant, the Explore Program, the Patricia A. Wood, M.D., Ph.D., Spinoza Award, SOURCE Symposia (three times annually) and the ACC Meeting of the Minds Program.

Undergraduate students in all majors are eligible for SOURCE programs.

More information about eligibility, application and other details of the programs can be found at the . Contact SOURCE at ugresearch@syr.edu.

When students in the College of Arts and Sciences enroll in Associate Professor class on writing and rhetoric, they likely think, correctly, that they will learn the foundations of good writing across various genres. However, they may not imagine that Berry’s vision for the class involves a less tangible side effect: building community. And that community fostered through the experience of writing and sharing work inspired Berry to found .

This year, for the second time, Berry will be awarded a $25,000 to fund his work with Project Mend, an online and print magazine of works by people impacted by the criminal justice system. This grant recognizes that virtually every participant at Project Mend, including Berry himself, has had their life touched by incarceration.

Project Mend team members (from left) Katherine Nikolau ’24, Michael J. Willacy and Patrick W. Berry giving a lecture at ���ϲ����� Stage.

“We don’t always acknowledge family members in the equation of justice-impacted people, but we have to when we’re talking about impact,” says Berry, whose father was incarcerated while he was growing up. “Project Mend brings a group of people together to work on a national publication called “Mend,” but also, as a part of that, to engage in humanities-based programming.”

“Mend,” whose second issue is currently underway, exists as both a print and open-source publication. Participants, all formerly incarcerated or from incarcerated-impacted families, come to campus weekly to work on it. “We do a range of activities, from reading manuscripts to designing layouts,” says Berry. Activities include meeting publishing professionals, learning how to edit documents, how to work with images and how to make pages. The year ends with a published issue. “It’s gotten popular, so now I have more manuscripts coming in from around the country,” says Berry.

Crucially, the grant funds stipends for all the participants. In addition, the money allows Berry to bring in speakers and guests from the field, and also to offer refreshments—something that he finds to be key for fostering community. The group marks the publication of an issue with a large launch party, both virtual and in-person. “We just had a launch event in February, with a great turnout—even [New York State Senator] Rachel May was there—and it was at the Central Library in downtown ���ϲ�����. People bring their families and friends and it’s really a celebration.”

Project Mend team members at the journal launch party in February.

Notably, this is not your typical prison publication. “You won’t see bars on the cover,” says Berry. There is no prison theme; writers are not required to talk about their experiences in prison or the problems of the criminal justice system. “Those pieces are in here, and they’re welcome,” says Berry, “but for example, one person wrote a love poem. One person wrote a sci-fi piece that’s a little out there.” Beyond pushing participants to stretch their writing skills, Berry says, “People are writing themselves into new identities. We wanted to create a space for that, to not always have their identity trace back to prison.”

In the same vein, Berry insists on the importance of separating the value of each individual’s experience from simple job training. “Sometimes the liberal arts seem like something that only the elite get access to. I think that is problematic,” he says. “We all need to take advantage of the rich opportunities that are available through learning, whether you’re a formerly incarcerated person or a ���ϲ����� student.”

Project Mend is made possible through collaboration with the Center for Community Alternatives and from an HNY Post-Incarceration Humanities Partnership, which is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation. Additionally, the project has been supported at ���ϲ����� by the Engaged Humanities Network, the Humanities Center, the SOURCE, the Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, and a CUSE research grant.

This story was written by Lesley Porcelli.

Five ���ϲ����� students have been selected for the 2024 Goldwater Scholarship, the preeminent undergraduate scholarship awarded in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics in the U.S. This is the first time ���ϲ����� has had five students selected for the cohort and the third consecutive year the University has had at least three scholars selected in one year.

The recipients are:

• Julia Fancher, a sophomore physics and mathematics major in the (A&S) and a member of the ;
• Sadie Meyer, a sophomore biomedical engineering major in the (ECS) and mathematics major in A&S;
• Kerrin O’Grady, a junior biomedical engineering major in ECS and neuroscience integrated learning major in A&S;
• Serena Peters, a junior chemistry major in A&S; and
• Gianna Voce, a sophomore computer science major in ECS and neuroscience Integrated learning major in A&S.

“The fact that five students from ���ϲ����� were selected as Goldwater Scholars this year is a testament to our University’s robust support for undergraduate research and the high quality of faculty mentoring here.” Jolynn Parker, director, Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising

All five are research grant recipients from the .

�ճ������was established by Congress in 1986 to honor U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, the five-term senator from Arizona. The purpose of the program is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers by awarding scholarships to students who intend to pursue research careers in these fields.

The Goldwater Foundation received 1,353 nominations this year from around the country and 438 students were selected for the scholarship.

Each ���ϲ����� Goldwater Scholarship nominee worked with the (CFSA) to prepare their application. A faculty committee, headed by James Spencer, professor of chemistry in A&S, selected ���ϲ�����’s nominees for the national competition.

“We’re so proud of Julia, Sadie, Kerrin, Serena and Gianna. They are exceptional young scientists and it is gratifying to see them honored with this award,” says Jolynn Parker, CFSA director. “The fact that five students from ���ϲ����� were selected as Goldwater Scholars this year is a testament to our University’s robust support for undergraduate research and the high quality of faculty mentoring here.”

Julia Fancher

Fancher, a physics major, is also minoring in computer science and draws on those skills to create effective theoretical models of astrophysical phenomena.

“I have always loved space, and I now get to use physics and math to learn more about distant galaxies and black holes,” she says.

As a first-year student, Fancher joined the high-energy astrophysics lab of Eric Coughlin, assistant professor of physics. With Coughlin’s guidance, Fancher researches tidal disruption events, which occur when a star is destroyed by the tidal field of a black hole.

Fancher has published two papers in national journals on this topic and presented her research at the local Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics and the national American Astronomical Society conference in January 2024, and was a finalist in the undergraduate AAS Chambliss poster competition. She participated in the “Education and Inclusion in Post-Apartheid South Africa” program through ���ϲ����� Abroad last summer.

Fancher plans to enroll in a doctoral program that focuses on computational and analytical astrophysics, with the goal of becoming a professor at a research university to conduct research in theoretical high-energy astrophysics.

“I aim to build my own astrophysics lab focusing on discovering possible mechanisms of observed astrophysical transients through a combination of analytical methods and computational modeling,” Fancher says.

Sadie Meyer

Meyer grew up surrounded by research with widespread impacts on healthcare and recognized the importance of such work early on. She developed a strong purpose to advance new approaches to women’s health and infertility, specifically with a biomedical engineering perspective.

In her first semester on campus, wanting to get more involved with research, Meyer joined the laboratory of James Henderson, professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and director of the . The lab specializes in functional shape-memory materials and biocompatible platform development.

Meyer has learned material synthesis and combined mathematical approaches with experimental design to conduct characterizations of programmed shape memory polymer topography to serve as a dynamic cell culture substrate. Her current project analyzes bacterial response to shape-memory actuated 3D silk wrinkled surfaces as a strategy for biofilm prevention. Meyer is third author on a manuscript published in February 2024 in the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute journal, “Polymers.”��She will present her research at the 50th Northeast Bioengineering Conference on April 4 at the Stevens Institute of Technology. This summer, she will participate in a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Northwestern University’s Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental Resource Facility. There, she will study the ultrastructure of yeast mitochondria, working toward a better understanding of cellular function, health and evolution.

Meyer plans to enroll in a Ph.D. program with strengths in regenerative medicine, biomaterials and mechanobiology. “After earning my Ph.D., I will pursue a faculty position where I can oversee a lab of my own and conduct research to address challenges in fertility and reproductive health,” she says.

“Being selected for the Goldwater Scholarship encourages and supports my ambitions for further inquiry in my fields and makes a tremendous difference to my development as a researcher,” she says.

Kerrin O’Grady

In high school, O’Grady volunteered at a camp for neurodivergent children and adults. “I have seen the need for adaptive and customizable everyday devices for individuals with impaired motor control,” she says.

She is now pursuing degrees in biomedical engineering and neuroscience, with a minor in philosophy. “As a bioengineer, I am eager to support communities that may not have the same opportunities I have been afforded,” she says.

O’Grady has engaged in research in the Henderson Lab since the beginning of her sophomore year. There, she has focused on creating silk-wrinkled topographies on 3D shape-memory polymeric scaffolds and optimizing the attachment and proliferation of mammalian, specifically neuronal, cells on the scaffolds. Her current work focuses on using silk-wrinkled shape-memory polymeric conduits to aid in peripheral nerve injury repair.

O’Grady plans to enroll in a Ph.D. program in biomedical engineering, focusing on neuro-engineering. After completing her Ph.D., she aims to pursue a career focused on neural engineering research, working closely with the neurodivergent and physically disabled communities.

“I want to lead experiments and to create devices and repair in vivo damage, similar to the work that Argonne National Laboratory is conducting on repairing spinal cord damage by injecting a treatment directly into paralyzed mice,” she says. O’Grady will continue this work at the University of Victoria this summer through a Fulbright MITACS research internship. There, she will work in a lab on 3D bioprinting neural tissues from stem cells.

“The Goldwater Scholarship will help me in a financial sense and will provide me with a community of dedicated students who have similar passions and goals as me,” she says.

Serena Peters

Peters is pursuing a major in chemistry because of her interest in applications for environmental sustainability. She has contributed to a research project with Professor Jonathan French quantifying students’ sense of belonging in general chemistry courses. Currently, in Professor Timothy Korter’s lab, she is using high-complexity experimental and computational techniques to study the polymorphism of two antiviral compounds, acyclovir and ganciclovir.

Peters purposefully chooses assignments that allow her to delve deeper into the realm of sustainable chemistry. “Whether presenting on how zeolites can be employed for nuclear waste cleanup or writing a paper on innovative carbon capture strategies, I consistently integrate environmental chemistry into my academic pursuits,” she says.

Peters plans to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry with a concentration on applications for environmental sustainability. Her career goal is to work in aquatic cleanup as a research professor at a university.

“I aspire to guide undergraduates who, much like myself, may harbor uncertainties about venturing into the field of research. I hope to continue researching in the field of environmental chemistry, specifically using different forms of spectroscopy to analyze water contaminants. My goal is to foster a research environment that demonstrates that research is an inclusive pursuit open to anyone, regardless of their background or identity,” she says.

“The Goldwater Scholarship has helped me build my confidence. I long wondered if research was for me, partially since it’s such a male-dominated field. However, receiving this scholarship has shown me that I am capable and I deserve to be a researcher as much as anyone else,” Peters says.

Gianna Voce

Voce has always loved the problem-solving of computer science and its endless possibilities to intersect with other fields. “Computer science was originally inspired by the human brain and continues to be influenced by neuroscience, so seeing the parallels between my two majors is fascinating to me,” she says. “I love seeing the ways two seemingly disconnected fields interact and discovering new ways for them to do so.”

Voce transferred to ���ϲ����� from Clarkson University; she has sought out research opportunities since the summer before her freshman year, when she participated in a PreFrosh Summer Research Experience through Clarkson’s Honors Program. There, she studied the effects of commonly used fluorescent dyes on tendon mechanics, research that was published in the Journal of the Mechanics of Biomedical Materials.

In the summer of 2022, she participated in an REU at Texas State University focused on cybersecurity in connected vehicles. She helped create a reinforcement learning algorithm that could successfully identify which vehicles had been compromised by a cyberattack for networks that were more than 90% corrupted. She published and presented this research at the Association for Computing Machinery REUNS 2023 conference in Washington, D.C., and at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ International Conference on Consumer Electronics 2024 in Las Vegas. She will be studying abroad in Florence this summer through ���ϲ����� Abroad.

After transferring to ���ϲ�����, Voce joined the lab of Qinru Qiu, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, where she researches algorithms for neuromorphic computing. Her team focuses on developing software and artificial neural networks to run on Intel chips.

Voce plans to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science or neuroscience with a concentration in computational neuroscience. After obtaining her degrees, she plans to take a research position within the tech industry, working as either a computational neuroscientist or a machine learning engineer. “I aim to contribute novel insights toward the development of artificial intelligence systems that mimic the qualities of biological neural networks with the goal of increasing efficiency and accuracy in AI learning,” she says.

“The Goldwater Scholarship is an incredible honor that will not only assist me in my education but provide the opportunity to be a part of an amazing network of researchers that offer inspiration to pursue this career path,” Voce says.

CFSA seeks applicants for the Goldwater Scholarship each fall; the campus deadline is mid-November each year. Interested students should contact CFSA at��cfsa@syr.edu.

Angelica Molina (left), Adya Parida (center) and Yajie (Lannie) Lan discuss their respective journeys to ���ϲ�����, how they found not only success but a welcoming community on campus, their advice for fellow international students and how they plan on making a difference in their communities once they graduate.

Finding out you were accepted into ���ϲ����� to pursue your academic dreams is a joyous time—and the start of a new adventure.

On this “’Cuse Conversation,” three accomplished international students stopped by to discuss their respective journeys to ���ϲ�����, how they found not only success but a welcoming community on campus, their advice for fellow international students and how they plan on making a difference in their communities once they graduate.

Adya Parida ’25 traveled nearly 7,700 miles from her home in Ranchi, India, to study computer science in the (ECS).

Yajie (Lannie) Lan ’24 ventured more than 7,300 miles from her home in Chengdu, China, to earn an architecture degree from the .

Angelica Molina G’25 ventured more than 2,700 miles from her home in Cali, Colombia, to earn master’s degrees in public administration and international relations in the .

Check out episode 161 of the podcast featuring Parida, Molina and Lan. A transcript [PDF]��is also available.

“The range of symposia, presentations and events happening on campus this spring is a testament to the rapidly expanding culture of undergraduate research engagement at the University,” says Kate Hanson, director of the (SOURCE). “They highlight the contributions of undergraduate student research and creative work, provide opportunities for dialogue and conversation and offer the chance to learn about some of the fascinating work happening across campus.” The events are free and open to the public. Students are encouraged to attend and learn about the work of their peers.

Thursday, March 21, 4-6 p.m., Sheraton ���ϲ����� Hotel & Conference Center, Comstock Room

Students from multiple disciplines will give 10-minute “Orange Talk” presentations about their research, scholarly and creative work. Recipients of the new Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentoring and Outstanding Campus Partner in Undergraduate Research awards will be announced.

(Poster/Interactive Display Session)
Friday, March 22, 2-4 p.m., Sheraton ���ϲ����� Hotel & Conference Center, Regency Ballroom

Students will present their in-depth research and scholarly and creative work through poster sessions and interactive displays.

Students present their research at the fall SOURCE Research Expo. (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

Friday, March 22, 9 a.m.-5:45 p.m., National Veterans Resource Center

Events include a poster session and keynote address by State University of New York (SUNY) provost and SUNY Research Foundation president Ram Ramasubramanian. Also planned are oral presentations on communications and security, energy, environment, smart materials, health and well-being, sensors, robotics and smart systems. An ice cream social and awards announcements are also planned.

Friday, March 22, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Sheraton ���ϲ����� Hotel & Conference Center, Comstock Room

Lender Center for Social Justice 2022-2024 Faculty Fellow , professor of anthropology and the Ford-Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies in the , together with her student research team, will present findings on the social justice implications of artificial intelligence and how that issue plays out in ���ϲ�����. .

Chronos Conference (The Undergraduate History Journal)
Friday, April 5, 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Bird Library, Spector Room

Thursday, April 11, 1-3 p.m., Bird Library, Peter Graham Scholarly Commons

Undergraduate and graduate students from and the will offer poster presentations about their research on LGBTQ subjects and issues. The event is organized by the . is requested.

Friday, April 12, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Goldstein Student Center, Rooms 201 ABC

The 10th annual ���ϲ����� Neuroscience Research Day Conference is organized by the neuroscience program. The event showcases the breadth of neuroscience research happening at ���ϲ�����. is required.

This fall 2023 project at a SOURCE research event uses lego blocks to illustrate a concept. (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

Friday, April 19, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Life Sciences Complex, Milton Atrium

Students will showcase their research through both oral and poster presentations. Dozens of projects will illustrate the wide-ranging, strong research contributions undergraduates are making to advance the mission of the college.

Friday, April 26, 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m., Newhouse 3, Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium

Student and faculty research and creative activities will be showcased to encourage collaboration in the����and across campus. Presenters include undergraduate students Isabel Madover (visual communications) and Sophia Maciejewski (broadcast and digital journalism).

Friday, April 26 (time to be announced)

Student participants in the LSAMP Program will present their research.

Tuesday, April 30, 3-5 p.m.

This celebration of undergraduate scholarship is an annual recognition of student research achievement in the social sciences. Several awards will also be announced.

Architecture Directed Research Final Reviews-
Tuesday, April 30, and Wednesday, May 1,��Slocum Hall

McNair Scholars Research Symposium (date to be announced)

Consult ���ϲ����� for more information about additional upcoming research events and awards announcements. For more information on undergraduate research opportunities, visit the .

As vice president for research, supports and empowers ���ϲ�����’s internationally recognized creative and scholarly excellence, advancing centers and institutes that are global leaders in their fields.

In this role, Brown helps faculty and students pursue research and creative activities across the natural sciences, humanities, engineering, education, arts, social sciences and law fields. Brown also leads the and its component units, which serve as the backbone of the University’s research, scholarship and creative support enterprise. Collectively, these efforts help students and faculty expand their knowledge through innovation, creativity and discovery.

Duncan Brown, vice president for research.

Brown, who is in his second year as vice president for research, has been a physics faculty member since 2007 and is an accomplished physics researcher, recognized as an international leader in gravitational-wave astronomy and astrophysics before taking on this latest position.

“The main vision is to empower and amplify and tell the stories of the amazing research that’s happening here and the amazing creative activities that our faculty are pursuing. Faculty really want to do research and creative activities, and they want to engage our students and our students want to be part of this,” says Brown, who also serves as the in the .

On this “’Cuse Conversation,” Brown elaborates on his vision for the research enterprise at ���ϲ�����, explains what makes ���ϲ����� a premier research institution, examines the impact of the research being done by faculty and students and reveals where his passion for research came from.

Check out podcast featuring Brown. A transcript [PDF]��is also available.

Vice President for Research Duncan Brown supports and empowers the University’s internationally recognized creative and scholarly excellence, advancing centers and institutes that are global leaders in their fields.

Odette Marie Rodriguez, left, assistant director of SOURCE, with the 2023 Meeting of the Minds student participants.

Students interested in attending this year’s conference need to apply by Thursday, Jan. 25. All travel, lodging and meal expenses are funded for student presenters.

“Meeting of the Minds is a unique conference experience for students to present and receive feedback on their intellectually engaging research and creative work,” says Odette Marie Rodriguez, assistant director of the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE) who accompanies the students to MoM each year. “They’ll get the opportunity to meet students from across the country and even learn more about our host institution for this year, Notre Dame. Meeting of the Minds allows us to showcase the very best of undergraduate student researchers at SU and the SOURCE is proud to offer our support.”

A panel of ���ϲ����� faculty members and staff select the presenters based on the academic quality of the project, clarity of expression in the proposal, completeness of research/creative project, independence of the project and potential impact of the conference participation to help the student achieve their goals. The students selected will work with the MoM committee to prepare their oral or poster presentations.

Presentations last year included ensuring that older adults have the proper prescriptions; analyzing the effect of gender on xenophobic language in political communications; tracking a lack of diversity and equity in professional sports front offices; stormwater quality function of the established, extensive green roof at the ���ϲ�����CoE; and using zebrafish to determine the effect of bisphenol A (BPA) and alternatives on seizure susceptibility.

For more information about the 2024 MoM Conference, contact Kate Hanson, director of the SOURCE, at��khanso01@syr.edu���ǰ� .

Jana Rosinski, instruction and education librarian, working with students in the Special Collections Research Center.

SOURCE Explore introduces curious students with no prior research experience to research by providing hands-on, interactive workshops led by a faculty member or research staff member. This pilot program will take place from noon to 2 p.m. on Jan. 26, Feb. 2 and Feb. 9, with presentations by all participants on March 1. Students interested in participating should submit their application by Jan. 18^��. Space is limited to 12 participants in each of the workshops. Those selected who complete the program will receive a $250 stipend.

SOURCE is partnering with �� to offer the following SOURCE Explore short-term research experience workshops:

• SOURCE Explore: Finding Yourself in the Archives

For students at ���ϲ�����, maybe you’re from ���ϲ����� or somewhere nearby, or perhaps you’re from another state or even another country. Now that you’re here, you’re learning places on and off campus, being introduced to new topics and ideas through your classes and you’re becoming part of a larger community. There’s a history to ���ϲ�����, to the city of ���ϲ�����, to this region of New York, to the United States, the Americas and the world. Ideas and stories turn into books, letters about life are sent from one friend to another, photos are taken to capture a moment, inventions are dreamed up and then created, culture is made and re-made each day through humans just living on earth. History is made up of countless stories that need many to give it voice–your voice included.

Let your wonder wander through doing archival research in special collections. Over the course of one month, students will not only learn how to do research in archives and special collections but will get to explore something of themselves—their own experiences, their own interests, their own curiosities— within SCRC’s collections. Students will create a presentation of their researching experience to share in an informal forum, along with a publication of their project in the SCRC blog, in the SU Libraries’ SURFACE digital repository for scholarship and in a zine with their fellow research residency cohort.

Instructors include Jana Rosinski, instruction and education librarian, SCRC; Amy McDonald, reference and access services librarian, SCRC.

• SOURCE Explore: Mapping Stories, Making Change

Maps are powerful storytellers. They help us visualize and share pressing stories like the impacts of climate change, the global pandemic, housing inequalities and ongoing racial injustice (among many more). They help us locate people, places and events within our stories. They help us identify patterns, trends, divergences and relationships that nuance our stories and illustrate changes in our stories over time. Maps have the capacity to bring us together as communities to better understand the complexities of the world around us and our everyday experiences of the challenges we face. Perhaps, most importantly, maps create social change by centering stories that are too often left off the map.

By the end of this program, students will tell a map-based story with industry standard mapping software by developing a geographic research question, conducting background research, identifying relevant spatial datasets and analyzing and visualizing their data to answer their research question. Students will reflect upon the power of maps as storytellers throughout the research process in a research journal. Students will create an ESRI StoryMap (i.e., an online platform that allows for map-based visual storytelling) that documents their spatial story and answers their research question. Students will share their ESRI StoryMap and research experience in a presentation at an informal forum sponsored by SOURCE.

Instructors include Jonnell Robinson, associate professor of geography and the environment in the Maxwell School and College of Arts and Sciences and co-director of ���ϲ����� Community Geography; Andre Ortega, assistant professor of geography and the environment and co-director of ���ϲ����� Community Geography; and Meghan Kelly, assistant professor of geography and the environment and faculty fellow in ���ϲ����� Community Geography.

One of the visible examples of how the University is leading the way in research excellence is the , an interdisciplinary institute whose members examine complex biological systems, developing and designing programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation.

BioInspired serves as a framework for ���ϲ�����’s talented faculty and student researchers, supporting researchers from such disciplines as life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry. It collaborates with both industry partners and other academic institutions, including , and others.

Helping the current and next generation of ���ϲ����� researchers achieve their goals fuels , who served as BioInspired’s founding director beginning in April 2019, and , who took over as director on July 1. The two have frequently collaborated to provide a roadmap for successful research endeavors on campus.

Lisa Manning

“BioInspired is at the intersection of materials and living systems. The idea is there’s types of materials called biomaterials that interact with living systems, and there are types of materials that are bioinspired, which means they have features or functions or can execute tasks like intelligent new types of materials that act like living systems,” says Manning, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. “There’s this idea that organisms are actually secretly a material. By thinking about living systems as materials or having mechanical interactions, we can come up with new hypotheses that might even someday drive treatments for a disease.”

Jay Henderson

“We’re trying to figure out ways to solve really big problems like antimicrobial resistance to antibiotics or how we can better treat injuries when they occur,” says Henderson, professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “How can we use materials to try to do those things? Some of the biggest challenges facing our society might have solutions rooted in the materials we could use to address them, whether it’s treating an injury or a disease, or capturing energy in some way that it can’t currently be captured to address things like global warming or combating COVID. These are problems we’re going to continue to face in the future.”

On this “’Cuse Conversation,” Henderson and Manning share how BioInspired embraces an interdisciplinary approach to research, discuss the importance of introducing students to research opportunities early in their academic careers and explain how BioInspired and ���ϲ����� are helping more women and students from underrepresented populations get involved in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

They also explore the Cluster Hires Initiative—a key part of the intended to significantly invest in faculty recruitment and retention in areas of distinction for the University—preview the second annual BioInspired Symposium, scheduled for Oct. 19-20, and explain how they became passionate about research.

Check out featuring Henderson and Manning. A transcript [PDF]��is also available.

Jay Henderson and Lisa Manning discuss BioInspired’s interdisciplinary approach to research, the importance of introducing students to research opportunities early in their academic careers and what BioInspired and ���ϲ����� are doing to get more women and students from underrepresented populations into STEM fields.

Organizers of the community photographic project, “,” want to visualize just that and are asking ���ϲ����� families to share their family photos and stories on camera to create a living photo archive. Community members—particularly those whose histories have been marginalized—are invited to talk about their family histories at a recorded interview station, digitize their family photos for later exhibition and have new portraits taken with their family photographs.

Thomas Allen Harris

The project is designed to build a more inclusive history of the city. It takes place Oct. 13-15 through a��series of activities and events with Yale University artist and filmmaker and his . The initiative is being coordinated by students and faculty in the University’s Turning the Lens Collective. The group is composed of , associate professor of English; , a Ph.D. candidate in English; , a Ph.D. candidate in history; Sarhia Rahim ’26, a policy studies major and Aniyah Jones ’25, an English and textual studies and psychology major.

Three Weekend Events

Events include a film screening and discussion of “: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People,” with Harris (, from 6 to 8 p.m.). The with community members takes place , from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. A to celebrate the archived images and oral storytelling is planned on , from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., and includes music, poetry and special guests. All events take place at the Everson Museum at 401 Harrison St. in downtown ���ϲ�����.

Hallas says the project will build a testament to marginalized families from across the city, cultivate a more inclusive archival history of ���ϲ����� and recognize the people suppressed, forgotten or lost to a highway (the I-81 viaduct) that created a decadeslong economic and racial barrier in ���ϲ�����.

“���ϲ����� is experiencing significant transformation and renewed hope for economic progress spurred by Micron’s multi-billion-dollar investment in a semiconductor megafacility, the city’s decades of commitment to refugee resettlement and the redevelopment of housing, transportation and industry when a community grid replaces the I-81 viaduct,” Hallas says. “Yet, in moving forward equitably, it’s necessary to remember and document the past. ���ϲ����� remains one of the most impoverished and segregated cities in the nation, specifically for its Black and Latinx communities. In its redevelopment of housing, transportation and industry, the city must not repeat the systemic violence of the past.”

Community members shared treasured photos with Jessica Terry-Elliot, right center, along with their memories of family.

Jessica Terry-Elliott, a project co-organizer, researches the application of various methodologies that comprise what scholars call “Black archival practices.”��She says Family Pictures ���ϲ����� will use oral history methods��coupled with the captured moments of Black life in photographs that are��often held in domestic��repositories.

“Using these methods to develop this project��is an actual application of Black archival practices,” Terry-Elliot says. “It will reveal the complexities of how Black life in ���ϲ����� was and is documented and remembered,��while at the same time constructing pathways to engage with memory for��the future.”

Collective member Charles is writing a dissertation on the Black visual archive in film. “I’ve discovered that family photographs play a tremendous role in shaping our identity and history beyond the purview of our institutional archives,” Charles says. “The photographs we all keep in our homes—hanging on walls or tucked inside family albums—contribute to a larger story. Yet, those items are not always seen as important historical knowledge. This project affirms our photographs are themselves invaluable archives that should be studied and celebrated as such.”

Collective member and undergraduate student Aniyah Jones ’25 looks over a collection of family photos.

Undergraduate students Jones and Rahim have supported the initiative through their ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE) appointments as research assistants on the project. A team of undergraduate students from the department of film and media arts and the Orange Television Network will staff the photo-sharing event and students in Hallas’ upcoming “Everyday Media and Social Justice” and Jessica Terry-Elliott’s “Public History” courses in spring 2024 will further the project after its launch.

��The collective is also coordinating with the Network’s WriteOut ���ϲ�����, a youth afterschool program designed to get students Interested In writing and storytelling, and Black and Arab Relationalities, a Mellon Foundation-funded research project led by College of Arts and Sciences faculty members and .

Wide Community Connections

Organizers are working with the Community Folk Art Center, Onondaga Historical Association and the North Side Learning Center and are collaborating with several other ���ϲ����� community organizations for future programming.

Many sources of funding have made the project possible, including the University’s departments of African American Studies; anthropology; communication and rhetorical studies; English; film and media arts; history; Jewish studies; Latino/Latin American studies; LGBTQ studies; policy studies; religion; sociology; television, radio and film; visual communications; women’s and gender studies; and writing. External funding has been provided by Humanities NY and the Allyn Family Foundation.

Also sponsoring the project are the Democratizing Knowledge project; Engaged Humanities Network; SOURCE; Special Collections Research Center; ���ϲ����� Humanities Center; The Alexa; Lender Center for Social Justice; Light Work and Orange Television Network.

In November, the Special Collections Research Center at Bird Library will host “Family Pictures in the Archive” (, 5 to 7 p.m.). The exhibition displays Black photographs from the University’s collections along with community photos archived during the Family Pictures ���ϲ����� events.

�ճ����, organized by the (SOURCE), celebrates the culmination of undergraduates’ summer efforts and the array of topics they examined through many research and creative programs across campus.

A student gives a poster presentation during the 2022 event. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

The University community is invited to attend two presentation events. Nine students are presenting their work virtually on Wednesday, Aug. 9, from 2 to 4 p.m. on Zoom. Another 100 students will present in a poster session Thursday, Aug. 10, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Panasci Lounge in Schine Student Center. A celebration picnic will follow on the Huntington Beard Crouse patio.

Students include participants in SOURCE initiatives as well as other programs, including the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP); Chemistry and BioInspired Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs; the SUNY Upstate Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program; Renée Crown University Honors Program; Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)-supported students and others.

Most of the presenters are undergraduates at ���ϲ�����, although visiting students from other colleges who have worked with ���ϲ����� or SUNY Upstate faculty through several programs will also share their summer work, says Kate Hanson, director of the SOURCE. Over 225 students across all the campus programs were research-active this summer, working both in-person and remotely.

Participating students are from a variety of disciplines, primarily STEM fields. Among the topics undergraduates have been examining this summer are:

• Adverse Childhood Experiences and Substance Abuse: A Literature Review and Future Directions
• A Frequency Feedback and Color Transfer Approach to Improved Coherence in Video Style Transfer With Diffusion Models
• Functional Characterization of Systemic RNA Interference in C. elegans
• Media Coverage of Sickle Cell Disease and Hydroxyurea Use, Access, Side Effects and Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Content Analysis
• Solid State Solar Collector for Electricity Generation in Concrete Sidewalks
• The Role of the KIT Tyrosine Pathway in Primordial Follicle Formation in Neonatal Mouse Ovaries

“The SOURCE Summer Research Symposium brings together students working with mentors and programs across the University to share and celebrate their summer research work,” says Hanson. “By engaging in research and creative activity during the summer months, students truly focus on their projects and make immense strides while developing valuable skills and building strong relationships with faculty mentors.”

Student Researchers

Catherine Solis, a senior biology and neuroscience major in the , has been researching the behavioral and cognitive effects of early life adversity in adolescent CD-1 mice through maternal separation with , associate professor of psychology. “I am focusing on how spatial and working memory deficits develop over time in the mice to adulthood in order to correlate how early life adversity in humans (neglect, abuse and the foster care system) affect human children in real life,” Solis says. “Ultimately, our lab aims to understand the environmental and social factors leading to the development of such cognitive disorders as ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder].”

Catherine Solis

Solis has also worked on projects in the lab studying the effects of both pharmacological and nonpharmacological solutions, and plans to begin drug studies to determine the difference in environmentally induced early life adversity mouse models and drug induced models.

She is a participant in the LSAMP program, which promotes educational opportunities for students from underrepresented communities to study and pursue careers in STEM fields.

“I have been with LSAMP for a year now and I’m excited to continue with it for my senior year; the program has greatly contributed to my professional development in college so far and preparation for graduate school applications,” Solis says. “LSAMP has allowed me to grow as a student and researcher, participate in and present at two national conferences and has led me to realize I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience after my undergraduate studies.”

Mrigayu Ghosh, a sophomore biomedical engineering and biochemistry major at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, has engaged in research with , associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering and Samuel and Carol Nappi Research Scholar in the , through the program. Shikha Nangia, the program’s director, played a pivotal role in securing funding for the grant.

Mrigayu Ghosh

Ghosh, a seasoned researcher through previous opportunities, has been working on the purification and characterization of extracellular vesicles from mesenchymal stem cells for applications in tissue regeneration.

“I’ve wanted to research stem cell biology for a long time, so I’m really fortunate to have this experience,” he says. “I love the potential of stem cell research and am looking forward to bringing back what I’ve learned to UT and continuing my research in Dr. Aaron Baker’s lab, which studies the mechanobiology of stem cells.”

After graduating from UT, Ghosh plans to pursue a Ph.D. and embark on a career as a professor. “I’m grateful to have enhanced my research, writing and presentation skills throughout this program as all the skills I’ve acquired will be highly relevant in my academic and professional career moving forward,” he says.

Quinn Carletta, a sophomore graphic design major in the , has been working with fellow students Michaela Fry and Mattea Vecera and , assistant professor of television, radio and film, on research for a documentary film through the . Carletta has worked to creating slide and presentation decks and social media content.

“Working with Professor Hamilton has given me a new perspective on how I can work with clients in the future,” Carletta says. “Similarly, it has impacted how I approach working on new projects since I have a better grasp on the questions to ask before starting a design request now.”

Other Presentations

The Summer REU fellows and their mentors spent the summer working on 12 cutting-edge computational social science research projects. They shared their findings during an interactive poster session on July 28.

Also on Thursday, Aug. 10, five McNair Scholars will present their summer research beginning at 1 p.m. in 241 Sims Hall. The University community is invited to attend.

During the annual ACC Meeting of the Minds research conference, held March 24-26 on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, undergraduate students from each ACC institution convened to present recent findings to their peers.

The nomination and selection process—conducted by the (SOURCE)—is extremely competitive, and only five students represented ���ϲ�����:

• Nathan Ashby, a senior biochemistry and neuroscience major in the ;
• Grace Brock, a senior political science major in the and College of Arts and Sciences;
• Jordyn Lee, a sophomore sport management major in the ;
• Katarina Sako, a junior neuroscience and biology major in the College of Arts and Sciences; and
• Husna Tunje, a junior environmental engineering major in the .

(From left): SOURCE assistant director Odette Marie Rodríguez poses with student researchers Jordyn Lee ’25, Katarina Sako ’24, Nathan Ashby ’23, Husna Tunje ’24 and Grace Brock ’23 during the annual ACC Meeting of the Minds research conference.

Students either delivered a 10-minute oral presentation followed by a Q&A (Brock and Sako) or they devised a poster displaying their research (Ashby, Lee and Tunje).

Get to know three of this year’s Orange representatives at the conference, their passions for their research topics and how this experience inspired them to go further with their research.

Katarina Sako ’24: Ensuring Older Adults Have the Proper Prescriptions

Last summer, Sako watched as her grandfather was admitted to a hospital after a series of fainting spells. While hospitalized her grandfather, who was on several medications at the time, was observed to have a really slow heart rate, and his physician recommended installing a pacemaker.

Before the pacemaker surgery could be scheduled, Sako’s grandfather started seeing a different physician—one who, after carefully reviewing his medical history, realized the fainting was caused by one of his medications.

Katarina Sako ’24

The experience inspired Sako to become interested in geriatrics, the branch of medicine focused on the health needs and care of older adults. Her research addressed a topic currently underutilized in skilled nursing facilities across the United States: deprescribing, or the “systematic reassessment of an elderly patient’s medications in an effort to promote a better quality of life and ensure that the benefits of the medications they’re taking outweigh the harms,” Sako says. “My grandfather was lucky, but he’s not the exception [to being overprescribed]. This is very common in elder care. The elderly population is expected to double by 2050, so this is an international issue in terms of properly addressing the needs of the elderly population.”

Knowing most people don’t know much about deprescribing, Sako set out to demonstrate what deprescribing is and why it’s an important topic to study. Her presentation clearly defined the problems facing elderly citizens who are receiving more than five medications, the harm overmedicating can cause and how her research would help resolve the issue.

Sako says besides learning from her fellow presenters, the most influential portion of the conference was the Saturday evening keynote speaker: Brandy Faulkner, Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies and collegiate assistant professor of political science at Virginia Tech.

“She talked about being fearless with your research, being open to new ideas while remaining diligent in your research. She made me realize that when I’m investing in my research project, I shouldn’t have to modify my goals and I should always keep the interests of my target population in mind. She reframed how I should mature as a researcher going forward,” Sako says.

Grace Brock ’23: Analyzing the Effect of Gender on Xenophobic Language in Political Communications:

Political races have become increasingly personal over the years, with candidates relying more and more on language that tends to divide rather than unify when reaching out to voters.

In her home country of England, Brock knows firsthand how contentious some of the populist radical right-wing parties—those that are anti-immigration and pro-nationalist—have become.

Grace Brock ’23

Brock, a native of Cornwall, England, whose studies in Maxwell focus on comparative politics, wanted to analyze the effect of gender on xenophobic language when it came to political communications distributed in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

“I’ve always been interested in xenophobic language and where those beliefs come from. When you look at these populist radical right-wing party officials, you see how people could take on these beliefs because how they’re communicated to people can be quite convincing. But these politicians are expressing some extreme, dangerous views,” says Brock, who is also a student-athlete on the University’s and teams.

Turning to a major source of campaign communications, Twitter, Brock spent more than 100 hours over two months reviewing tweets from eight populist radical right party officials over a yearlong period to see how different candidates discussed issues involving immigration and non-native individuals.

Brock studied both tweets and campaign speeches from male and female politicians to see how often their rhetoric involved xenophobic language, and whether there were observable differences in how female and male candidates spoke about issues of immigration.

“I found that male party officials were utilizing a lot more xenophobic language than the female officials [on social media], but when I looked at the speeches, I didn’t really find a difference in the utilization of xenophobic language,” Brock says. “There’s a concept in literature called strategic descriptive representation, which suggests women are being brought into the parties to attract more female voters. Since the tweets were targeted more at voters, but the speeches were targeted at smaller, more elite audiences, I concluded that when women are communicating with voters, they’re modifying their use of xenophobic language. But with the lead audiences, there isn’t really a difference.”

Brock says she felt great pride representing the University at the conference, and the Q&A provided her with important takeaways that will impact her research moving forward.

Jordyn Lee ’25: Tracking a Lack of Diversity and Equity in Professional Sports Front Offices

When Lee heads home after completing her sophomore year, she will intern for two different sports organizations: with event operations for Fastpitch Nation Softball Park, a sports complex in Windsor, Connecticut, and with USA Boccia, a national organization dedicated to promoting a highly competitive seated Paralympic sport where athletes with disabilities and able-bodied athletes participate in a throwing sport.

Jordyn Lee ’25

Lee, a lifelong tennis player, hopes to work for a professional sports organization or league once she finishes her sport management degree. As someone who grew up playing and following sports, Lee knows the front offices of these leagues and teams predominantly feature male executives.

When she arrived on campus, Lee noticed that her sport management classes contained mostly males, but she was determined to follow in the footsteps of recent female sport management graduates who have landed key jobs with professional sports teams and leagues. Those experiences of being in the minority in the classroom, combined with her personal experiences in sports, inspired Lee’s poster presentation delving into the lack of diversity and equity among the front offices of teams in both the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA).

“Just speaking with the other participants at the Meeting of the Minds gave me new insights into my research and [the knowing] that the possibilities are endless,” Lee says. “This experience inspired me to keep doing what I’m doing, to keep going with this research, and to expand it to include other sports leagues, like the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), to compare their front offices to the NBA teams. I left this conference more determined to raise awareness of this issue and make changes in these professional sports organizations.”

Tessa Murphy, associate professor of history in the Maxwell School, and Michael Fudge, professor of practice in the School of Information Studies, collaborated on a project to create a publicly accessible, searchable database of more than 16,000 former enslaved people in St. Lucia in 1815.

Beginning as early as the 15th century, the lives of more than 12.5 million men, women and children of African descent were forever altered as they were forced into the trans-Atlantic slave trade, uprooted from their homes and brought against their wills to territories around the world, including the British Crown colonies and the colonies in the United States.

When these slaves were brought to former British Crown colonies in the Caribbean, territories including St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Dominica and Grenada, oftentimes their arrivals were marked with entries into detailed registries that documented their first and last names, their ages, occupations, specific places of origin and even familial connections to others enslaved on the same plantation or in the same household.

Tessa Murphy

is an associate professor of in whose research and teaching interests concentrate on��the history of the colonial Americas, including the Caribbean, Central and South America.

Wanting to capture the important details found in these registries, to both broaden our understanding of slavery and explain the experiences of people who rarely had the opportunity to leave a record of their lives, Murphy collaborated with , a professor of practice in the , and student research assistants on a unique, interdisciplinary research project to create a publicly accessible, searchable database of more than 16,000 former enslaved people in St. Lucia in 1815.

“” reconstructs the life histories and genealogies of people enslaved on the expanding frontiers of the British Empire in what is commonly referred to as the age of abolition.

“The database is going to be such a powerful research and teaching tool. I used examples from the database in an upper-level history seminar that I’m teaching right now, where I distributed examples to different students and had them analyze these as primary documents. I asked them ‘What do you get from looking at this sheet that you didn’t know before about the realities of slavery?’ There are multi-generational family trees that you can derive from these. They’re quite bureaucratic documents, and when you look at them, they might seem to be just listing facts, but when you really engage with what they’re telling you, they’re testifying to the violence that underlay this system. And that really informed the daily lives of the people whose names are being recorded here,” says Murphy, who recently was awarded a in support of her work.

Michael Fudge

“This was a really unique opportunity to practice what we really talk about in the School, which is being interdisciplinary and being transdisciplinary, where we crossover and help work with other disciplines that need to have their data and their information made more accessible and easier to interpret and understand. What’s really fascinating about this particular project is the amount of data. The traditional inaccessibility of the data from a search perspective and the effort that we put into making it much more accessible and searchable. It’s going to be transformative for a lot of people,” adds Fudge, who is also the program director for the iSchool’s Information Systems master’s program.

On this “’Cuse Conversation,” Murphy and Fudge discuss how the project came to be, the arduous task of compiling their database, the challenges of digitally capturing historical records from more than 200 years ago, how this database can serve as a teaching tool for the descendants of these former slaves, and how the project provided students in both Maxwell and the iSchool with valuable real-life experience.

Note: This conversation was edited for brevity and clarity.

Check out episode 135 of the “’Cuse Conversations” podcast featuring Tessa Murphy and Michael Fudge. A transcript [PDF]��is also available.

The YRF program expects active participation in group mentoring for two years, including engagement with incoming members during the fellow’s final YRF year.

Fellows can draw on their research funds at any point during their undergraduate career. Faculty mentors are eligible for a two-time grant of $750 in research funds. The program is supported by the and the��.

“The YRF program brings together students from different areas of study who share a drive to engage in research or creative activity that responds to some of our biggest collective challenges,” says , director of the SOURCE. “The fascinating conversations among our group really highlight the value of diverse perspectives and a supportive cohort of motivated peers to help the students move forward in their work.”

“The CFSA and SOURCE teams support these developing researchers with funding, mentoring in research and external fellowships and opportunities, and engagement with useful speakers and resources; the faculty mentors support the YRF students by guiding their research and creative activity and mentoring them in the practices of the discipline,” Hanson says.

Miguel Guzman

Miguel Guzman, a junior in the , is a 2021-23 YRF and has been working in the laboratory of , associate professor of in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Miguel Guzman ’24

Guzman has focused his efforts on developing the next generation of therapeutics by lipidation, a class of post-translational proteins modification, to bio-actively produce calcitonin-based bio-degradable nanoparticles.

Calcitonin is a small peptide used for osteoporosis treatment, which must be administered every one or two days. However, calcitonin-based nanoparticles can act as “an extended-release” formulation that reduces its persistent administration. In the market, there is only one FDA-approved lipidated large protein which shows that lipidation is still an unexplored area of research.

“Given its vast potential for drug delivery, the Young Research Program has fostered my desire to continue working with engineered lipidated proteins and learning about their enormous therapeutic potential,” says Guzman, who plans to pursue post-graduate studies in biomedical engineering. “Overall, the YRF program has taught me thorough academic inquiry, creativity and, above all, how the Mozhdehi laboratory can make an impact in our community.”

Adya Parida

Adya Parida, a sophomore in the , says YRF has impacted her studies and research outlook tremendously.

“I did full time research with (assistant professor of ) in the College of Engineering and Computer Science last summer, which helped me apply my skills on a hands-on project and taught me how to learn new skills and collaborate with a team. I had to present a research poster for the first time and SOURCE helped me every step of the way,” she says.

Parida is currently working with , associate in the , on international trade treaties. “I love seeing how I can apply my technical skills to projects even outside my major,” she says.

Evelina Torres

Evelina Torres is a sophomore majoring in in the Maxwell School and the and in in the Maxwell School, with a minor in public communications in the .

Evelina Torres ’25

Their research is focused on how social barriers affect time privilege. They plan to, pending approval, conduct research at parks and recreation centers in the City of Houston and at La Casita in ���ϲ����� this summer.

“I will utilize my YRF research in part of my coursework as a citizenship and civic engagement major, and I feel that it is preparing me for exciting opportunities, from scholarships to graduate programs,” they say. “Through making mistakes and hearing feedback when making my research surveys and plans, I feel that I am gaining valuable skills in research design that I wouldn’t otherwise have. I’m already thinking about what I would do to conduct research in graduate school.”

The deadline for applications for the YRF 2023 cycle is Thursday, April 6. The program is open to students in all disciplines. To be eligible students must:

• Be a first-year student;
• Have a minimum 3.75 grade point average;
• Have the endorsement of a faculty member willing to serve as a faculty mentor for the two-year program; and
• Have a demonstrated commitment to research/creative inquiry.

To apply, visit the . The faculty mentor recommendation link can be found��.

If you have questions or need more information, call the SOURCE at 315.443.2091 or send them an email.

The SOURCE provides funding opportunities and serves as a hub to foster and support diverse undergraduate engagement in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry across all disciplines and programs at ���ϲ�����. CFSA’s mission is to make students, alumni and faculty aware of nationally competitive fellowship and scholarship opportunities; to help students and alumni identify scholarship opportunities appropriate to their interests and backgrounds; and to assist them through all stages of the application process, from planning to submission to interviews.

The symposia will feature research, scholarly and creative work presentations, poster sessions and exhibitions planned by schools, colleges and departments across campus to celebrate undergraduate student accomplishments. During the events, students will share their faculty-mentored work and engage in discussions with their fellow students and mentors.

“This spring’s undergraduate research symposia, celebrations and presentation events highlight experiential inquiry and provide opportunities for the campus community to engage with projects that have challenged students to apply their knowledge and skills to work that contributes to new bodies of knowledge,” says , director of the��

The SOURCE Symposium events will feature two forms of presentation:

• Orange Talks are fast-paced oral presentations that focus on the “why?” of the students’ research and creative work; presenters will showcase their projects ranging from hacking present forms of architecture with the past; intersections of fashion and emerging technology; next-generation calcium-ion batteries; how transphobic stand-up comedy impacts the attitudes of young adults; and a film exploring Native American community and representation.
• The Poster Session will feature 84 student poster presenters from across campus with a huge range of projects from students working independently, in teams, or as research assistants. This dynamic event will allow the campus community to meet students, hear the highlights of their work, have fascinating conversations, and experience the incredible range of experiential learning at the University.

The entire campus community is invited to attend the events.

A complete list of the programs in March, April, and May with event and registration details can be found (check back for updated information):

• : March 29 from 4-7 p.m. in Schine 304ABC.
• : The symposium will include Orange Talks: March 30 from 12:30-2 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, 114 Bird Library; and a poster session: March 31 from 2-4 p.m. in the Panasci Lounge, Schine Student Center.
• : April 7 from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. in Schine 304ABC.
• McNair Scholars Research Symposium: April 14 and April 21.
• : April 19 from noon-2 p.m., location TBD. Register to present by March 31.
• : April 21, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3.
• Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Festival: April 21
• Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Spring Symposium: April 28
• : May 2, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Hall of Languages.
• Maxwell School Celebration of Undergraduate Scholarship: May 2, 3-5 p.m., 220 Eggers Hall.

Students interested in funding for summer 2023 and/or academic year 2023-24 should submit an Intent to Apply form by Thursday, Feb. 16. A fully completed application is also due by Thursday, March 2. Applications can be submitted through . More details about the opportunity are available on the . A list of recipients from the fall ’22 application cycle can be found .

Application Components

Application components include a project proposal, budget, resume, transcript and recommendation from the desired faculty mentor. The SOURCE assists students in developing competitive application materials with workshops and drop-in hours to give feedback on draft materials. Students who are interested in applying should contact SOURCE for assistance and more information.

The grants are administered by the University’s Office of Research through SOURCE using Invest ���ϲ����� funds. Those fellowships and additional Renée Crown University Honors Program Awards support student-designed and faculty-mentored independent research and creative projects with funding of up to $7,500. In fall 2022, 60 students were awarded SOURCE Fellowships (including six SOURCE-LSAMP Fellowships, funded by the LSAMP Program) and 18 students were awarded Honors Program Crown Awards.

SOURCE Fellowships have been awarded since spring 2019, with over 700 students funded for their research and creative activity in all disciplines.

New Sciences/Professional Award

The spring application cycle will also award the interdisciplinary Patricia A. Wood, M.D., Ph.D., Spinoza Award, funding that is intended for students who want to explore philosophical aspects of issues that arise within the sciences or other professional disciplines.

Students in the SOURCE undergraduate research program presented their projects at a poster information fair. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

Sample Projects

Examples of students currently funded in the program and studying these topics include:

• Brianna Estrada (College of Arts and Sciences), with Sarah Woolf-King, associate professor of psychology, on “Associations Between Sexual/Gender Minority Stress and the Drinking Outcomes of Non-Binary College Students”
• Chelsea Clark (Visual and Performing Arts) and Kaili Johnson (Management), with Jody Nyboer, assistant professor in environmental and interior design and the M.F.A. design program, on “Evermore: Research Study and App Development,” on learning how Millennial and Gen Z audiences understand and engage with NFTs (non-fungible tokens, or digital assets)
• Ryan Ally��(Visual and Performing Arts), with Laura Heyman, associate professor of film and media arts and art photography program coordinator, “The Guyanese American Dream,” a pictorial look at the lives of Guyanese people from the perspectives of lifestyles in their home country and after emigrating to Queens, New York
• Zicheng Zhang (School of Architecture) with Joseph Godlewski, associate professor of architecture, “Adaptive Misuse: Hacking Present with the Past,” examining how adaptive reuse and creative misuse as a design approach to answer the question of how, in a culture of transience and rapid obsolescence, the architectural past informs and inspires architectural practices of today
• Michael Perry (College of Arts and Sciences/College of Engineering and Computer Science), with Venkata Gadikota, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, on “Reducing Nonadaptive Group Testing Algorithmic Complexity Over Hyper-grid Structures,” which looks at leveraging the complex intrapersonal connections between individuals to improve upon current information theoretical bounds for group testing

Faculty applications for the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement . Funding can be obtained for research assistants to work up to three semesters (summer 2023 through summer 2024). Applications can be entered at the

The program to work as research assistants in a faculty mentor’s ongoing or new research/creative projects. The program is administered through the University’s Office of Research using Invest ���ϲ����� funds. The research assistantship program was piloted in spring 2020 and fully established in fall 2021. Awards are offered in annual fall and spring application cycles.

Priority Consideration

To encourage students to begin research work early in their educational careers, priority is given to mentors who are working with first- or second-year undergraduates. Priority consideration is also given to mentors who are working in the humanities, social sciences, arts, communications, journalism or management fields to boost participation in areas having traditionally lower rates of undergraduate research activity, according to Kate Hanson, SOURCE director.

Students in the SOURCE undergraduate research program presented their projects at a poster information fair. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

503 Undergraduates Funded

To date, 503 undergraduates have been funded as research assistants in 251 separate faculty projects, with 173 unique faculty members, says Hanson. Since its inception, the number of S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications students and School of Information Studies students supported by SOURCE funding have both doubled, and the number of participating Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs students involved has quadrupled, she adds.

“Our growing numbers signal the program’s popularity for both student learning and faculty research productivity,” Hanson says. “When talented undergraduates are paired with thoughtful faculty mentors doing innovative and cutting-edge work, it sparks creativity and collaboration that are truly beneficial for both. Students build their skills, receive unparalleled training in the research practices of the discipline and typically grow into their own independent research work all while making often significant contributions to the project. Creating paid positions has allowed students the time and resources to pursue these valuable research opportunities.”

The 2021 MoM participants with SOURCE assistant director Odette Marie Rodriguez. From left to right: Daniel Nagle, Camila Tirado, Odette Marie Rodriguez, David Williams, Maggie Sardino and Michael “MP” Geiss

Students interested in attending this year’s conference need to apply by Wednesday, Jan. 25. All travel, lodging and meal expenses are funded for student presenters.

“The Meeting of the Minds Conference is a unique opportunity for undergraduate researchers to meet and connect with passionate students from across all ACC schools,” says Odette Marie Rodriguez, assistant director of the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE). “Students not only have the opportunity to share their own original research and receive valuable feedback, but they will also have the chance to collaborate with students and faculty during a fast-paced and energetic weekend filled with presentations and lectures on new and innovative work happening across disciplines. The SOURCE is honored to be able to support exceptional student researchers in this remarkable opportunity.”

To apply, students submit an application and need to identify a faculty member mentor who will need to complete a recommendation on their behalf. It is important to note that both the and are due Thursday, Jan. 19.

A panel of ���ϲ����� faculty members and staff select the presenters based on the academic quality of the project, clarity of expression in the proposal, completeness of research/creative project, independence of the project and potential impact of the conference participation to help the student achieve their goals.

Daniel Nagle ’23, who is studying sport analytics in the Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, participated in MoM last year and found it a valuable academic experience.

Daniel Nagel presented on “Optimization of Formula 1 Driver Pairs.”

“I enjoyed being able to see research from a vast range of fields that I have no exposure or expertise in,” says Nagle, who presented on “Optimization of Formula 1 Driver Pairs.” “The ���ϲ����� staff prepared all of us to have strong presentations and specifically gave me very helpful feedback, which benefitted my honors presentation later in the spring.”

Other research and presentations last year included “Screening for Organic Micropollutants in Septic-Impacted Groundwater and Drinking Water Supplies on Long Island” by MP Geiss ‘23; “A Blueprint for Re-renewal: The Future of Public Housing” by Maggie Sardino ‘23; “Understanding the interaction between secondary cell wall biosynthesis and abiotic stress” by Camila Tirado ‘23 and “Transforming Education: A Digital Toolkit for Student Success” by David Williams ‘22.��

For more information about the 2023 MoM Conference, contact Kate Hanson, director of the SOURCE, at��khanso01@syr.edu���ǰ� visit the��.

Matt Cufari, a senior physics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, a computer science major in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, a Coronat Scholar and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, has been named the recipient of the 2022 LeRoy Apker Award from the American Physical Society.

The prestigious award, given to just two students per year, recognizes outstanding undergraduate research and is the highest honor awarded to undergraduate physicists in the United States. Cufari is the first ���ϲ����� student to receive the award in its 44-year history.

“Receiving the Apker award is a tremendous honor. I’m incredibly grateful for the encouragement from Professor Coughlin and Professor Ross in pursuing physics at SU and in applying for this award,” says Cufari. “The support and contributions of Professors Coughlin and Ross, and Professor Chris Nixon at the University of Leicester, cannot be overstated.”

Cufari is recognized for verifying the Hills Mechanism as a viable method to generate repeating partial tidal disruption events (TDEs). At ���ϲ�����, he studies TDEs under the supervision of , assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences.

His work investigates an exciting new field of repeating partial TDEs—where a star is on a bound orbit about a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy and is repeatedly stripped of its outer envelope through tidal interactions with the black hole. “The mass lost by the star feeds the black hole and generates an ‘accretion flare’ that illuminates the galaxy,” says Coughlin. “The detection of these events—now numbering on the order of tens per year but predicted to be many more in the future as survey science becomes more advanced—yields fundamental insight into the properties of black holes and stars in galactic nuclei.”

Cufari’s work highlights a mechanism for placing the star onto its tightly bound orbit, where the star was originally part of a binary star system and “captured” by the black hole—the Hills Mechanism. In an article in the April 20, 2022, issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, Cufari used a combination of analytic arguments and numerical simulations to demonstrate that this mechanism can generate repeating partial tidal disruption events and applied it to a specific system, known as ASASSN-14ko. “This work is fundamental and theoretical and promotes a new pathway for creating periodic and energetic outbursts from supermassive black holes,” says Coughlin.

This summer, with undergraduate research grant funding from , Cufari traveled to the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. There, under the direction of Chris Nixon, associate professor of theoretical astrophysics, he performed simulations of partial TDEs and analyzed the properties of partially disrupted stars.

“Matt Cufari is a superstar student. As with previous Apker winners, we anticipate a long and distinguished career in physics,” says , professor and chair of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, who nominated Cufari for the award. “We anticipate that Matt will not be the last ���ϲ����� Apker winner, but he is an extraordinary first one.”

Cufari developed a passion for plasma theory and nuclear fusion as a high school student when he began doing research at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics. There, he worked on a project to develop a theoretical framework for images of charged fusion products.

His studies at ���ϲ����� have given him skills in designing physical models of complex systems and solving problems mathematically. “In addition to my work in physics, my coursework in computer science has helped me to understand technologies like reinforcement learning and apply them to my research,” he says.

In his first semester at ���ϲ�����, Cufari joined a research project in the quantum information lab of , professor of physics, developing a parameter estimation software for superconducting circuits. Since his sophomore year, Cufari has worked with Coughlin researching theoretical astrophysics.

In May, Cufari was named a 2022-23 Astronaut Scholar by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. Earlier this year, he was selected for a 2022 Goldwater Scholarship.

He is a member of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, the American Astronomical Society and the Society of Physics Students. Cufari plans to earn a Ph.D. in physics and pursue a career in astrophysics research.

Vice President for Research Duncan Brown. Photo by Marilyn Hesler

As the new vice president for research, Duncan Brown steps into a role in which he will orchestrate, support and enable the research, scholarship and creative activities that are central to the mission of the University. He notes that these activities form the ideas that society needs now and in the future.

“It is a critical moment to bring our research and scholarship to bear on both local and global challenges. We need the humanities, public communications and creative arts to help address the problems society is facing,” he says. “We need the fields of science and engineering to address the environmental challenges we’re facing. We need people in the social sciences to address an aging population and food production and distribution. We need people from policy and law to address the policies and legal underpinnings of the technologies we are creating and the framework of society. And at ���ϲ����� we can bring together experts in these and other areas to address society’s greater challenges.”

Brown’s role is to lead the and its component units. That includes providing support to the University’s centers and institutes; advocating for advancements in infrastructure to support the University’s broad range of basic and applied research and creative activities; and empowering our faculty in their scholarly excellence.

Operationally, he helps to support over $100 million in external funding and supervises the work of the , , , and the (SOURCE). He reports to Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer .

An internationally recognized leader in gravitational-wave astronomy and astrophysics, Brown joined the University in 2007 as an assistant professor in the in the College of Arts and Sciences. Since 2015, he has served as the , a role that he will continue to fill as an active researcher while serving as vice president for research.

In this Q&A, Brown provides insight into his vision for the Office of Research and how he intends to support faculty, students and staff to strengthen and grow research activities across the University community.

The campus community is invited to attend two showcase events. Ten students are presenting their work virtually in two sessions on Wednesday, Aug. 10, from 2 to 4 p.m. Participation links can be referenced on the . ��Another 101 students will present in a poster session Thursday, Aug. 11, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Panasci Lounge at the Schine Student Center. A celebration picnic follows at the Huntington Beard Crouse patio.

Many Campus Partners

Students included participants in SOURCE initiatives as well as other programs, including the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program; Chemistry, Engineering, iSchool and Biomaterials Research Experience for Undergraduates programs; Renée Crown University Honors Program; Women in Science and Engineering supported students; the McNair Scholars program; the SUNY-Upstate Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program; and others.

Most of the presenters are undergraduates at ���ϲ�����, although visiting students from other colleges who have worked with ���ϲ����� or SUNY-Upstate faculty through several programs will also share their summer work, says Kate Hanson, director of the SOURCE. Over 200 students across all the campus programs were research-active this summer, working both in-person and remotely, she says. That is a significant level of growth in summer research activity since the SOURCE’s first summer in 2019 with about 100 participants.

Students present their work at the SOURCE Symposium poster session held in the Panasci Lounge at the Schine Student Center in the spring. Photo by Marilyn Hesler

The SOURCE initiative began after ���ϲ����� announced a commitment of $1 million annually in Invest ���ϲ����� funds to support a new center for undergraduate research to strengthen the University’s position as a preeminent and inclusive student-focused research institution.

Among topics undergraduates have been examining this summer are:

• Access to wellness facilities for women
• Vitamin D supplementation to reduce neurodevelopmental phenotypes of Rett Syndrome
• Stimuli-responsive biomaterials for wound healing
• Assessing water quality data in relation to cemeteries in the Finger Lakes watershed
• Combating disinformation for ���ϲ����� residents of the south side
• The role of nanoparticles and organic acids in northern forest soil
• Persuasion in audio-based social media
• The role of fish-oil supplements on paternal obesity
• Museums and intangible cultural heritage

“This event is a chance for the University to showcase the amazing and innovative work students have been doing this summer with dedicated faculty mentors, and to celebrate the growing community of summer undergraduate research the University supports,” Hanson says. “We hope for continued growth in the numbers of participants to create more opportunities for students to get involved in research, scholarship and creative projects.�� It is wonderful to see students developing important research and presentation skills and we are grateful to the faculty mentors that guided the students’ intellectual and creative growth.”

Students’ Specific Interests

Three students who participated in the program this summer illustrate the breadth of topics undergraduates can pursue according to their individual interests.

Andrea Hoe

Andrea Hoe��’23, in the School of Architecture, has been testing the compressive strength of lunar regolith composites using urea and carbon nanotube additives. Working with Assistant Professor of������in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, she is developing ��potential materials for use in building structures�� on the moon. She plans to attend a graduate space architecture program and work for a space company as an architect or designer of extraterrestrial structures.

The test-fail-test nature of her experiments “has been very impactful,” Hoe ��says. “It’s very challenging, but I’ve learned how to develop solutions to each problem that I face. This experience has strengthened and validated my interest to go into the space field in the future.”

Alternatively, April Santana’s “lab space” in the South Side community of ���ϲ�����, where she’s been doing person-to-person outreach to help shape her examination of the impact of misinformation and tools to combat it. Santana ’24, who majors in magazine, news and digital journalism, works with in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on a grant supported by the Knight Foundation and SOURCE. They are investigating how community members receive misinformation.

April Santana

This is the third time ��Santana has participated in SOURCE research. As a freshman, she examined how materials developed in the civil rights era portrayed minority groups. In her second project, she undertook a political science look alternative social media groups and their impact on minority groups’ decisions whether or not to be vaccinated.

This year, her work has focused on community-based journalism, although all three opportunities have been beneficial, she says. “They have definitely helped me, first by allowing me the opportunity to do research, which is never something I thought I’d be doing. I always thought that was more for master’s or Ph.D. students.” Santana particularly likes the community-based aspect of her current efforts, she says. “It’s helping me with what I want to do—immersing me in the work of reporting.”

Hunter Mirer

Hunter Mirer ’23, a dual major in biochemistry and neuroscience in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been developing a process to stain zebrafish embryos to examine phenotypes in their spinal cords in the lab of , professor and biology department chair.

Mirer credits the lab environment for helping him recognize his scholarly weaknesses and confront them before he advances to medical school. He plans to take the MCAT exams this fall. “What I’m mainly gaining now is learning how to develop a higher level of understanding in specialized subjects. This has shown me that it’s going to take a lot more understanding than what I recognized when I first said I want to be a pediatric neurosurgeon,” he says.

The lab has helped him develop research skills, Mirer says. “I have ADHD, and the way science was taught in high school it was hard for me to learn. The research lab has helped so much because it’s hands on and actively working toward goals, and I have the resources of the other faculty and students there as well. It has helped solidify me wanting to be a doctor and my interest in science.”

Three ���ϲ����� juniors—Cordiana Cozier, Matthew Cufari and Ellen Jorgensen—have been selected for the 2022 Goldwater Scholarship, the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship awarded in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics in the United States. This is the first time ���ϲ����� has had three scholars selected in one year.

Cozier is a chemistry major in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S); Cufari is a physics major in A&S and computer science major in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program; and Jorgensen is a double major in Earth sciences in A&S and environment, sustainability and policy in the Maxwell School and a member of the Crown University Honors Program.

The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986 to honor U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, the five-term senator from Arizona. The purpose of the program is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers by awarding scholarships to students who intend to pursue research careers in these fields.

The Goldwater Foundation received 1,242 nominations this year from around the country and 417 students were selected for the scholarship.

Each of the ���ϲ����� Goldwater Scholarship nominees worked with the Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising (CFSA) to prepare their application. A faculty committee, headed by James Spencer, professor of chemistry, selected ���ϲ�����’s nominees for the national competition.

Cordiana Cozier

Cozier, a Louis Stokes Alliance Minority Participation (LSAMP) Scholar, plans to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry, with a focus on synthetic organic chemistry. She hopes to eventually teach at the university level and research and develop organic materials that can serve as cancer therapeutics.

At ���ϲ�����, she has developed a robust understanding of the field of chemistry through coursework including organic chemistry, physical chemistry and inorganic chemistry. “These courses have taught me how chemistry can be used to formulate therapeutics, and have expanded my knowledge of the way research in organic chemistry is dependent on knowledge of other subfields,” she says.

During summer 2021, Cozier completed an internship at MassBiologics, a biopharmaceutical lab focused on the prevention of infectious diseases such as Lyme, tetanus and COVID-19, and worked on a project to isolate anti-IgA nanobodies using a synthetic yeast library. In fall 2021, she joined the organic chemistry lab of Nancy Totah, associate professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, where she is assisting in research on the development of synthetic strategies for natural products.

Working in Totah’s lab, alongside graduate student Fortune Ogochukwu Ononiwu, has shown Cozier the ways that her education relates to and prepares her for research that can have a lasting impact on society. Cozier says that the work she is doing on dihydropyrones can provide new strategies for the preparation of complex molecules and benefit medicinal chemistry and drug development programs by increasing structural diversity in drug-like scaffolds. “To see the way in which this project and similar projects will have broad impacts within the science and medical world is what drives my passion for chemistry. I have always wanted to create something that drives change or benefits the society around me and chemistry has become that outlet and place for me to do so.”

As a woman of color, Cozier also wants to develop opportunities aimed at increasing diversity in the field of organic chemistry research. Through her African American studies minor, she has gained a nuanced understanding of the challenges minorities face in academia and within society, and how important mentorship and representation is to overcome discrimination.

“For this reason, I have engaged in numerous activities focused on mentoring underrepresented students in STEM at SU,” she says. She is an undergraduate associate for WiSE Women of Color in STEM.

As an LSAMP Scholar, Cozier attends workshops every other week focused on professional development and the mental health of students of color in STEM. She has also tutored under-resourced high school students in local public schools in science and math. At ���ϲ�����, Cozier has participated in Orange Seeds, Literacy Corps and as a tutor for student-athletes.

Cozier is very passionate about equal access for all who are interested in pursuing a STEM career. “It is so important to me that my career goals to earn my Ph.D. in organic chemistry are being supported by this prestigious opportunity,” she says. “I am incredibly honored to have received this scholarship, which only serves to motivate me more within my future career as a chemist.”

Matthew Cufari

Cufari, a Coronat Scholar and member of Tau Beta Pi, plans to earn a Ph.D. in physics and pursue a career in astrophysics research. His research interests are in drawing connections between laboratory plasmas and astrophysical plasmas to better understand phenomena like tidal disruption events and accretion disk formation.

“I’m interested in the dynamics of highly energetic phenomena which don’t readily occur in our solar system, like accretion onto black holes, the tidal disruption of stars and supernovae,” Cufari says. “These phenomena are exciting, luminous and abundant in the universe. Studying these phenomena is necessary to improve our understanding of the behavior of matter in exotic states and the physical processes which drive those behaviors.”

Cufari developed a passion for plasma theory and nuclear fusion as a high school student when he began doing research at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). There, he worked on a project to develop a theoretical framework for images of charged fusion products.

His studies at ���ϲ����� have given him skills in designing physical models of complex systems and solving problems mathematically. “In addition to my work in physics, my coursework in computer science has helped me to understand technologies like reinforcement learning and apply them to my research.”

In his first semester at ���ϲ�����, Cufari joined a research project in the quantum information lab of Britton Plourde, professor of physics in A&S, developing a parameter estimation software for super conducting circuits. Since his sophomore year, Cufari has worked with Eric Coughlin, assistant professor of physics in A&S, researching theoretical astrophysics.

Cufari’s first project with Professor Coughlin, on eccentric tidal disruption events, culminated in a paper which was accepted for publication in the Astrophysics Journal. He presented his results to the broader community of astrophysicists this month at the conference of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.

Cufari and Coughlin are investigating chaotic three-body interactions between a supermassive black hole and a binary star system through a National Science Foundation REU. They recently had an article accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that explains how to reproduce the periodic nuclear transient ASASSN-14ko using these encounters. Cufari was also recently awarded a ���ϲ����� undergraduate research grant (SOURCE) to fund his research this summer.

“The Goldwater Scholarship has already connected me to a network of scholar alumni who are a source of mentorship and advice going into graduate school and beyond. The scholarship also includes an opportunity to attend a research symposium this summer to meet and network with other scholars in the Goldwater community,” Cufari says.

Ellen Jorgensen

Jorgensen, a Coronat Scholar who also is minoring in physics, plans to pursue a career as a climate reconstruction researcher at a university or a national lab.

“To me, understanding our climate is the most important task I can participate in as a scientist. It’s so exciting that we can reconstruct climates of millions of years past ��with the smallest samples of sediment,” Jorgensen says. “More than that, we can use those assessments of our past to make projections for the dynamic climate we will face in the future.”

Jorgensen has taken advanced coursework in climate dynamics, mapping software and anthropogenic climate change. For the past three years, she has worked in the Paleoclimate Dynamics Lab (PDL) under the guidance of Tripti Bhattacharya, Thonis Family Professor: Paleoclimate Dynamics and assistant professor of Earth and environmental sciences in A&S, analyzing alkenones–biomarkers in the sedimentary record to calculate sea surface temperatures from the mid-Pliocene. That project culminated in a publication currently under review at Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology on which Jorgensen is the fifth author.

In a new project in the PDL, Jorgensen is working with leaf waxes left behind by plants during the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition to investigate rainfall patterns from that time. She has also sought experiences beyond the PDL to gain insight into paleoclimate research in other time periods and parts of the world. In summer 2021, she completed a NSF research experience for undergraduates (REU) at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University researching Heinrich events (events of iceberg discharge in the North Atlantic during the last glacial period) through the analysis and carbon dating of foraminifera. This coming summer, as a NOAA Hollings Scholar, she will participate in an internship at a NOAA field office related to climate dynamics.

At ���ϲ�����, Jorgensen has been a volunteer with the Office of Sustainability Management to manage the campus’s compost. Through that role, she helped facilitate the reduction of waste contamination by sorting recycling, compost and waste during athletic events at the stadium. She was also a staff writer for Blackstone Launchpad, highlighting campus entrepreneurs who integrate sustainability into their ventures.

“The Goldwater Scholarship affirms my commitment to pursue climate research at ���ϲ����� and beyond as I continue my career as a scientist,” Jorgensen says. “I am extremely honored by this award and could not have reached this achievement without the support of my mentor, Dr. Tripti Bhattacharya; the EES department; CFSA; and my family.”

CFSA seeks applicants for the Goldwater Scholarship each fall; the campus deadline is mid-November each year. Interested students should contact CFSA at��cfsa@syr.edu.

One of those interactive installations is . Led by Heath Hanlin, associate professor of film and media arts in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Kairos translates enormous amounts of scientific data to present global warming hotspots to audiences in a multisensory virtual reality (VR) environment. “I have been working on this for three years, with the idea that this project would engage with science museums,” says Hanlin. “The logistics of presenting VR in a museum are kind of daunting.”

Hanlin reached out to Emily Stokes-Rees, associate professor of museum studies and director of the School of Design. “The initial conversation was about how to make a VR experience visitor friendly, including elements of interpretation for people who aren’t actively using the VR. We talked about the user experience, crowd control, the way it flows through and timing of how people view the exhibit,” says Stokes-Rees.

With a team of students, Hanlin and Stokes-Rees will be collecting data about how the experience works in the context of an interactive exhibit.�� Their goal is to understand how the VR environment and experience can be structured and integrated the mission of science museums. “The Museum of Science and Technology in ���ϲ����� has been a great partner and has helped us learn from their experience with technology, but it’s been limited due to the pandemic,” says Stokes-Rees. “I can’t imagine a better way to work the bugs out of the system than the ACCelerate festival,” adds Hanlin. “The students immediately grasped the opportunity here and started asking the right questions.�� ACCelerate will give us real-world data that we can apply to iterate on how we present this powerful experience focused on climate change, with the ultimate goal of educating people and inspiring them to take action.”

Bruce Kingma, professor of entrepreneurship in the School of Information Studies and Whitman School of Management, is taking his Innovation, Design and Startups program students to lead an interactive invention experience designed to spark creativity in festival-goers.�� “I teach the creativity course and the first assignments that students encounter is to create a new toy that meets the needs of a demographic similar to that of a favorite toy they had in their childhood,” Kingma says. “The students come up with just amazing things and we have video clips of these presentations from the last few semesters.”

Inspired by these ideas, kids who visit the ACCelerate festival will be able to fill out an idea sheet with a new toy idea. “We’ll pick three of the best ideas and the winners will receive some ���ϲ����� swag,” says Kingma. He sees the ACCelerate experience as a great way to think about creativity, “The whole goal of the IDS program is to create new ideas, encourage innovation, and help students start new ventures. We want to enable students to make their ideas real,” he adds.

The University’s third team isn’t an exhibitor. Seth Gitner, associate professor of magazine, news and digital journalism and visual communications in the Newhouse School, will mentor a team of visual communications students who will be creating journalistic coverage of the festival. “It replicates the experience of being parachuted into an event, which is always an interesting endeavor because you don’t know what they’re going to get, says Gitner.” Gitner is deliberately leaving the desired outcome vague. Students might choose to do a photo documentary or a video, but he sees it as their choice. “As a journalist you have to talk to people, get the story, figure out your angle, connect with your characters. I will be in an executive producer role, there for support and advice. But this is really the students running their own show and figure out how they are going to convey what it’s like to be at this event and what stories come out of it.”

“We’re excited to support five faculty and 20 ���ϲ����� students—through competitive grants provided by the Office of Research and the SOURCE—to enable their participation in the ACCelerate Festival,” says said Ramesh Raina, interim vice president for Research. “The Office of Research is proud that we can give students a mechanism to partner with faculty in new ways to experience hands-on learning themselves, and to create ways for the public to learn in turn. It’s a wonderful opportunity to gain exposure to new research and creative ideas from other ACC schools, as well as to show off some of the incredibly innovative work that ���ϲ����� is known for.”

The YRF program expects active participation in group mentoring for two years, followed by engagement with incoming YRF members during the fellow’s final undergraduate years. Fellows can draw on their research funds at any point during their undergraduate career. Faculty mentors are eligible for a two-time grant of $750 in research funds. The program is supported by the and the��.

Brianna Gillfillian, a sophomore majoring in computer science in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS), is a current YRF fellow. She is working with ECS Dean Cole Smith on research related to cybersecurity.

Brianna Gillfillian

“I am working on network interdiction, which simulates how an actual network operates and ways in which it could be disturbed, such as nodes being attacked,” she says. “This has enabled me to understand data transmission a lot better and how I can optimize various network issues in the real world.”

Gillfillian says her SOURCE research experience has been excellent. “I am really grateful that I was selected to be a part of this program,” she says. “While I initially wasn’t sure how research could fit in with computer science studies, I gave it a try and it was one of the best decisions I have made. It gives me a competitive edge, has helped me with time management and has given me more insight into my course of studies outside of the usual curriculum.”

Jeremy Shinder, a sophomore film major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, has used his YRF funding to conduct archival research for development of a screenplay, and to enter one of his short films, “” (2021) into juried competitions.

Jeremy Shinder

Shinder’s screenplay highlights the relationship shared between two very different spiritual leaders of the American civil rights movement. As part of the screenplay development, he visited the�� Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was given access to thousands of resources. “Being able to touch exquisitely preserved documents dating back almost a century was jaw-dropping. Likewise, as a filmmaker, viewing some of the earliest photographs ever taken, hearing remarkably crystal-clear audio clips recorded using what at the time was considered ground-breaking equipment is, simply put, breathtaking. My trip to the archives was 10 times better than I ever anticipated.”

“I will always be indebted to the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union College for providing me with the strong foundation that will influence the historical accuracy of my script,” Shinder says. “I think it must be true when they say that knowledge is power. For me, spending six hours in a library, reading more than I have ever done in my life, might be one of my proudest moments as a scholar. This moment will forever serve as what we writers call the ‘inciting incident’ at the dawn of my professional career.”

The deadline for applications for the YRF 2022 cycle is Thursday, March 31. The program is open to students in all disciplines. To be eligible students must:

• Be a first-year student;
• Have a minimum 3.75 grade point average;
• Have the endorsement of a faculty member willing to serve as faculty mentor for the two-year program; and
• Have a demonstrated commitment to research/creative inquiry.

To apply, visit the .

Faculty mentors must:

• Meet with the student at least twice per semester;
• Complete a brief progress report each semester; and
• Consult on and approve student budget requests.

Faculty mentors are typically tenured or tenure-track faculty. For faculty with other kinds of appointments, please contact the SOURCE.��The faculty endorsement link can be found��.

If you have questions or need more information, call the SOURCE at 315.443.2091 or email Odette Rodriguez at orodri02@syr.edu.

The SOURCE provides funding opportunities and serves as a hub to foster and support diverse undergraduate engagement in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry across all disciplines and programs at ���ϲ�����. CFSA’s mission is to make students, alumni and faculty aware of nationally competitive fellowship and scholarship opportunities; to help students and alumni identify scholarship opportunities appropriate to their interests and backgrounds; and to assist them through all stages of the application process, from planning to submission to interviews.

Patricia A. Wood

A newly endowed fund set up to support undergraduate interdisciplinary research recognizes the importance of connecting diverse fields of thought in generating new ideas. It also reflects the experiences and passions of William Hrushesky ’69 who graduated cum laude with majors in philosophy, zoology, fine arts and anthropology, and was a teaching assistant in biology and histology.

The fund will be the Patricia A. Wood, M.D., Ph.D., Spinoza Award Fund, in honor of Hrushesky’s late wife and their shared passion for the ideas of the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and his fearlessness in breaking boundaries to explore new ideas.

“Be not astonished at new ideas,” wrote Spinoza, “for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.”

Similarly, Wood carved new paths in cancer research, exploring the concept of medical chronobiology to create innovative approaches to cancer care. Together, Wood and Hrushesky found connections not previously explored in medical research.

In recent years, Hrushesky provided gifts toward what was known as the Spinoza Award, offered by the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (The SOURCE) to an undergraduate exploring philosophical aspects of issues that arise within the sciences or other professional disciplines. To establish the award, he had contacted Danielle Smith, director of�� She told him about the course Linked Lenses: Science, Philosophy, and the Pursuit of Knowledge, co-taught by philosopher Samuel Gorovitz and paleontologist/oceanographer Cathryn Newton and connected him with Gorovitz. That led to Hrushesky’s initial donations.

One award recipient brought philosophical principals to the blending of theater and technology; two others together redesigned the interior of spacecraft. This new $50,000 endowment from Hrushesky ensures that such creative pursuits will continue in perpetuity, aligned with the mission of the .

Hrushesky explains that the new fund will provide ongoing support for the kind of exploratory critical thinking that turns learning into understanding: “During the Enlightenment, the intimate connections among science, philosophy, art, music and literature became vividly obvious; these deep and broad connections are now atrophying. This��award must go to ambitious students who see how these things are intimately connected, rather than separated. Patricia had that kind of encompassing perception, which fuels great creativity. She developed and gained approval for the first cellular gene therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, saving tens of thousands of American children’s lives each year. My intent is for her example to inspire future students to emulate her and for my gift to inspire other donors to establish endowments to support student research in other ways.”

The endowment supports the kind of creative thinking fostered in courses like Linked Lenses.

“Creativity is often fueled by the blending in new ways of ideas, images, perceptions, or processes that might have been thought to be unrelated to each other,” says Gorovitz, founding director of the current Honors Program (2004-2010). “I’m convinced that any two items we identify are related to each other, if we can just see deeply and imaginatively enough to recognize, or invent, the relationships.”

Gorovitz explains that students must be encouraged “to abandon the idea that you have to have it all figured out before you start speaking, writing, drawing or composing. You may have a bunch of ideas; they may seem inconsistent with each other. You should let them tumble out in any order, don’t filter or censor. That comes later.”

This creative process is energized by The SOURCE, where the new endowment will be housed. Founded swiftly by Newton in collaboration with 60 colleagues, it was launched in 2019 to drive discovery and innovation and helps coordinate support for the interdisciplinary and inclusive research that Newton says is so vital to student success.

“Each of us has superpowers, right? My own gifts are not necessarily the same as all the members of the team, and that’s frankly what makes us strong,” says Newton, professor of interdisciplinary sciences, dean emerita of Arts and Sciences, and until recently special advisor to the Chancellor and provost for faculty engagement. “When you encourage original thought and creative work, and you look for ways to combine things that haven’t formerly been combined, you can have a powerful impact on the success of all students across diverse constituencies.”

Hrushesky says his beloved wife was always open to new ideas, welcoming contradicting arguments and data in the rigorous formation of evidence-based scientific breakthroughs. Her commitment to independent thinking and intellectual rigor was similar to that of Spinoza, a brilliant young ex-communicated Spanish/Jewish immigrant whose family and community fled the Spanish Inquisition to Holland near the end of the 16th century.

Both Wood and Spinoza provide a compelling intellectual model for students, says Hrushesky.

Now retired from academia, Hrushesky is co-owner of Oncology Analytics, a company whose mission is to ensure that cancer patients have access to evidence-based, data-driven guidance to receive the right diagnostic tests and treatments at the right time for the right reasons. He and his colleagues are creating a suite of decision support products to help cancer patients from the moment of diagnosis through end-of-life care.

“We are deeply grateful to Dr. Hrushesky for his vision and commitment to supporting undergraduate research that is dynamic, innovative and meaningful,” says Ramesh Raina, interim vice president for research. “These awards, named for individuals who were both thinkers and doers, will impact generations of students who want to make a positive difference in our world.”

Students interested in applying for the Patricia A. Wood, M.D., Ph.D., Spinoza Award will apply through The SOURCE Grant application process in either fall or spring. Visit����for instructions.

Hector Rendon

Representations of indigenous populations in the news media is the focus of a funded research project spearheaded by , assistant professor of communications in the Newhouse School.

The project, to be conducted from January to May, is funded by a grant from the .

Rendon will hire two undergraduate students to help conduct research about representations of Indigenous populations in TV news stories. Examining the country’s four major news networks—ABC News, NBC News, FOX News and CNN—the team will seek to identify patterns of news media coverage of Indigenous populations, and compare specific patterns of Native American representations among networks.

“This is a great opportunity for undergraduate students from Newhouse who want to develop research skills,” Rendon says. “I believe that this kind of project, focused on social justice, can have a positive impact on the students’ careers, and also on the community, because this will help us further our understanding about how Native American populations are generally portrayed by the news industry.”

Once the team finishes the research project, Rendon says the intention is for the study to be published in an academic journal with the student researchers as co-authors. “Publishing in an academic journal while still at the undergraduate level will give our students a great advantage in their careers,” Rendon says.

The SOURCE’s mission is to foster and support diverse undergraduate participation in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry. Student participants progress from training in research or other creative skills to designing and revising the structure of their projects to research, creative and professional contributions that are original and timely.

The will be held April 1-3, 2022, at the University of Virginia. Students from all disciplines can apply to present their original research or creative project, which must be under the mentorship of a faculty member.

���ϲ����� students can apply by completing a . The deadline to apply is Monday, Jan. 31. Faculty mentor recommendations are due Wednesday, Feb. 2.

The conference offers a distinctive academic experience and the opportunity to connect with other student researchers across the ACC.

“I’m thrilled that the Meeting of the Minds Conference returns to an in-person event this year,” says Kate Hanson, director of the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (The SOURCE). “It’s an amazing opportunity for bright and curious students from ACC schools to learn from each other’s innovative research and creative work across all disciplines.”

“Our students have an incredible experience each year at the Meeting of the Minds Conference. It’s a dynamic event featuring the best of undergraduate student research in all disciplines from the ACC institutions,” Hanson says. “Students have the opportunity to present their work, get valuable feedback, and meet students and faculty from across the ACC universities.”

A panel of ���ϲ����� faculty members select the presenters based on the academic quality of the project, clarity of expression in the proposal, completeness of research/creative project, independence of the project and potential impact of the conference participation to help the student achieve their goals.

Five ���ϲ����� students participated in last year’s conference, which was held virtually. Their research and presentations included “Russian Caviar: A Delicacy in Jeopardy;” “Roles of Routine, Flexibility and Gender in Online Freelancing;” “Evaluating the Functional Consequences of Novel Mutations in the Pantothenate Kinase 2 Gene;” “Understanding the Correlation Between Stressors and Academic Performance of Puerto Rican College Students in the United States During Hurricane María” and “Differential Reactions to African-American and Caucasian Women’s Postnatal Maternal Stress.”

For more information about the 2022 MoM Conference, contact Hanson at khanso01@syr.edu or visit the .

Dr. Hrushesky, a distinguished clinician and medical researcher, studied philosophy as an undergraduate at ���ϲ�����, and especially admired the intellectual rigor, scope and independent thinking in the work of the renowned 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, after whom this award is named. Spinoza was a brilliant young ex-communicated Spanish/Jewish immigrant whose family and community fled the Spanish Inquisition to Holland near the end of the 16th century. Future grants in this program will be renamed the Patricia A. Wood, M.D., Ph.D., Spinoza Award, in honor of Dr. Hrushesky’s late wife, who was a multi-talented medical researcher, entrepreneur and patient advocate, and a vivid and vibrant paragon of creativity, graciousness and generosity.

The Spinoza Award has inspired its student recipients, as well as their faculty mentors, to bring the innovative and challenging ways of thinking inspired by Baruch Spinoza to the fields of architecture and emerging theater.

Miquon Jackson ’21

Miquon Jackson (A&S ’21), a 2021 recipient, developed and presented an e-theater adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm” in June 2021 with a team of professional actors. His original plan was for live theater; the COVID pandemic required him to invent an entirely new approach to the interplay between theater and technology as an exploration of the human condition. Jackson worked with faculty mentor Samuel Gorovitz, professor of philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences. The experience provided Jackson in-depth reflection bringing principles of philosophy to the themes of the play, and also concrete experience leading a team through the co-creation of a theatrical event.

“Confronting Ibsen’s text with my fellow artists (and Americans at large) has made a significant difference in my life,” says Jackson, who graduated with a degree in philosophy. “My essence, both as a thinker and as an artist, has undergone a significant change. I look forward to utilizing my theatrical skills to make philosophical changes in our splintered society.”

Natasha Liston-Beck ’20

Natasha Liston-Beck ’20 (School of Architecture) and Yundi “Wendy” Zhang ’20 (School of Architecture) 2020 Spinoza recipients, co-created an architecture thesis project with the support of the award and their thesis advisory group faculty mentors, professors Sinead MacNamara, Julie Larsen and Britt Eversole.�� Their project, “Continuous Interior Space Architecture: An Omni-orientational Archive of Interfaces,” examined new possibilities for space architecture design, envisioning the closed world of the spacecraft as a digiphysical reality where these physical and digital spatial experiences are utterly entangled. This inquiry prompted them to consider various aspects of decision-making under uncertainty, and ethical aspects of conflicting priorities in a new kind of context.

Yundi “Wendy” Zhang ’20

After graduation, Liston-Beck interned with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, doing software development for spacecraft iterative design and analysis. She now works as an architectural designer with BRPH, an architecture and engineering firm in Huntsville, Alabama, engaging with projects ranging from rocket test stands to education facilities and entertainment districts.

Zhang worked with a startup in Hong Kong on 3D printed clothing after her graduation, and is pursuing a post-graduate degree in architectural technologies at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. The critical thinking skills developed through their collaborative research project have served both well in their ambitious post-graduate pursuits.

Students interested in applying for the 2022 Patricia A. Wood, M.D., Ph.D., ��Spinoza Award will go through the SOURCE Grant Application process either in fall or spring. Visit for instructions. The research proposal must include explicit plans to explore philosophical issues in relation to the sciences or other professional disciplines. Students from any major are eligible, provided only that they will consider the philosophical aspects of the area they pursue.

Zachary Ginkel, a senior biology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, is studying acoustic detection of lameness in horses and mentored by Professor Susan Parks.

Ashanti Hunter and Michelle Ho

Isabelle Collins, a senior fashion design major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts working with Professor Todd Conover, is studying authentically sustainable fashion during a semester abroad at the University of the Arts in London.

All were spring 2021 recipients of undergraduate research grants from SOURCE, ���ϲ�����’s undergraduate research center that fosters and supports diverse undergraduate participation in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry.

Undergraduate research grants help breathe life into student participation in the research and discovery enterprise of the University and support students from all disciplines across campus. During the 2020-21 academic year, SOURCE and the Renée Crown University Honors Program funded 167 awards for individual or team projects.

Zachary Ginkel

Students interested in research funding for the spring 2022 semester are invited to apply for SOURCE and Honors Program grants this fall. This cycle includes application to the Spinoza Grant, which supports undergraduate research that explores philosophical aspects of issues within the sciences or other professional disciplines.

The SOURCE and Honors Program grants are for student-designed projects, guided by a faculty mentor, with a timeline that could include spring 2022 only, or spring and/or summer 2022. Awards will be up to $5,000 for spring projects or up to $7,500 for spring and summer projects, and budgets may include supplies, participant compensation, essential research travel, conference fees, student payroll or summer stipend. Applications must include a research proposal, timeline, budget, transcript, resume and recommendation from the faculty mentor.

Deadlines

��A required Intent to Apply form is due by Thursday, Sept. 30, and the complete application is due Thursday, Oct. 14. .

SOURCE and the Honors Program will offer multiple proposal-writing workshops and drop-in hours to review and give feedback on draft application materials. The schedule can be found on the .

Another application cycle will be held in February/March 2022 for SOURCE and Honors Program grants.

Within their research, Hunter and Ho are exploring and documenting the experiences of women of color who are K-12 school principals and district administrators. They hope their findings can help promote diversity in these roles and break down barriers.

“My research project is going well. I’ve been exposed to conversations that I probably wouldn’t have engaged in if it wasn’t for this research project,” says Hunter. “As a woman of color and future educator, I think it’s extremely important for me to understand these perspectives so that when I am in the field, I can create some expectations and prepare for what I may encounter.”

Regarding their research, Hunter says slow and steady wins the race. “The progress of the research isn’t moving too fast, however, I think it’s perfect because it allows me time to work effectively, to become more creative and to work on becoming a better listener.��“

Ho says that she and Hunter have made progress toward creating portraits for some of their participants. “Our portraits will be used for our University Council for Educational Administration conference this fall and hopefully a School of Education event in the spring where we can highlight our participants and their incredible stories.”

The SOURCE grant has helped Hunter and Ho fund technological supplies and to reach out to more participants. “Since there is such limited literature on women of color as district leaders, having the ability to have more participants involved has enriched our findings,” Ho says. “Ashanti and I are so grateful to Kate and Odette at SOURCE for believing in our project.”

Ginkel, a pre-veterinary student, is studying equine lameness, a broad term used to describe a deviation in a horse’s gait. “Detecting lameness can prove difficult since horses are herd-prey animals and they hide their injuries well,” Ginkel says. “Veterinarians are always searching for new diagnosis methods.” Ginkel worked at an equine hospital in Wisconsin this summer. There, he recorded footfalls to determine if an asymmetric gait is a viable classification method for lameness.

“The funding I received from SOURCE gave me that opportunity. Being involved in undergraduate research so closely aligned with my postgraduate plans has been such a gift. Not only does my application to veterinary school have an edge, but I also got clinical research experience,” he says. “It is hard to understate how lucky I am to have that. Thanks to the support from everyone in the Bioacoustics and Behavioral Ecology Lab and the funding ���ϲ����� has given me, I have the resources to succeed as a pre-veterinary student that I would not have otherwise gotten.”

Isabelle Collins

Collins is working to bring awareness to the importance of sustainability in the fashion industry. She is exploring the process of zero waste and circular design production and using sustainable materials to create a fashion collection with environmental inspiration. She has visited numerous museums and galleries in London to aid in her research and understanding of art and fashion history.

“So far, I have chosen an inspiration for my collection based on environmental influence and developed initial fashion illustrations for it,” she says. “I have also made samples using cotton and hemp fabrics that I would like to use in the final garments. Right now, I am working on a new series of illustrations based on a sample I made overlaying some sustainable cotton fabrics.

“The SOURCE grant has been an amazing resource for my research. I have been able to purchase and fully explore materials that I have been interested in working with.

�ճ����grant has also helped me to travel to conduct research,” Collins says. “And when I start constructing the whole collection in the spring semester back at ���ϲ�����, the SOURCE grant will help me to buy all the supplies needed to put it all together, creating a fully sustainable and ethically made collection.”

The campus community is invited to attend any of the symposium events. Virtual presentations are Tuesday, Aug. 10, from 1 to 5 p.m. Registration will be available on the . ��The poster session will be held Wednesday, Aug. 11, from 10 a.m. to noon on the first floor of Bird Library.

Thirty-seven students will present at the virtual session; 77 students will present posters at the poster session. The students are either conducting their own research under the guidance of faculty mentors or working as research assistants to faculty mentors.

The campuswide symposium includes students from SOURCE and other programs on campus: the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program; Chemistry, Engineering, and Biomaterials Research Experience for Undergraduates programs; Renée Crown University Honors Program; Women in Science and Engineering-supported students, and others. There are also a few students visiting from other campuses.

“It’s been a busy and engaging summer for undergraduate research students, who have worked both remotely and in-person with their faculty mentors,” says Kate Hanson, director of SOURCE. “Sharing research and creative work is an essential step in the research process. The symposium will be a wonderful opportunity for them to share their innovative work with the campus community.”

Presentation topics will also include militarism and African independence; policy solutions for bridging the digital divide in ���ϲ�����; defining immersive theatre; local renewable energy implementation in Bonaire; restricted and repetitive behavior as a predictor of anxiety in young autistic people; and the social-spatial impact of COVID-19 on sharing economy accommodation platforms.

Catherine Campbell, pictured at a poster session in 2019, was one of twelve students to be accepted into this year’s WiSE Summer Undergraduate Research Support Program.

Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) awarded research funds to twelve student researchers through its 2021 Summer Undergraduate Research Support Program. The program seeks to promote research participation among women in STEM fields, with awards supplementing students’ existing grants to conduct research during the summer of 2021.

Catherine Campbell, one of the selected students, received WiSE funds to augment the Parker Award for Women in Science, which she received through the Renée Crown University Honors Program. During the summer, Campbell is working with the SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid protein to complete her honors capstone project.

“I study the phase separation of intrinsically disordered proteins in the Bah Lab, a part of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department at Upstate Medical University,” says Campbell. “Through WiSE, I have received funding that will help me stay the summer in ���ϲ����� and allow me to meet like-minded students also pursuing research.”

As part of the WiSE research program, selected students work with faculty mentors for ten weeks of full-time research on a variety of projects across ���ϲ����� and Upstate Medical University labs. Students are also involved in a series of WiSE developmental workshops and each present a poster with their findings at the SOURCE/College of Arts and Sciences and College of Engineering and Computer Science undergraduate research conferences in August.

The 2021 WiSE Summer Research awardees are listed below:

• Catherine Campbell, medicinal chemistry and physics
• Elizabeth Cultra, environmental engineering
• Alexandra Hayes, public health
• Oduduabasi James Isaiah, chemical engineering
• Katherine Loveland, biology, minor in medical anthropology
• Xinyue Mao, mathematics
• Emily Marsh, biology
• Alex Middleton, communication sciences and disorders, minor in LGBT studies
• Nathania Pabon, neuroscience and psychology
• Alexandra Patten, biology and forensic science
• Michelle Shanguhyia, medicinal chemistry and forensic science
• Aijing Wu, mathematics, minor in computer engineering

To learn more about the WiSE Summer Undergraduate Research Support Program and other WiSE programs, .

Two teams of University faculty and undergraduate students—and one potential alternate—will be selected to exhibit their creative and innovative projects at at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. on April 8-10, 2022. Project leaders should submit their proposals using the on or before July 6, 2021. Submitted projects will be reviewed by the ACCelerate planning team, the directors of the SOURCE and the ���ϲ����� Art Museum. Submissions will be evaluated based on the following ACCelerate criteria:

• Exhibits must have the potential to actively inform and engage the festival audience—including domestic and international visitors of all ages and backgrounds—about research or creative activities from ���ϲ�����.
• Exhibits should have ability to be engaging to a public audience despite placement in well-lit, noisy and high-traffic corridors.
• Installations must fit within a space that is 8 feet deep and 12 feet wide (8×12) with no need for wall hangings or other external support.
• Installations must be able to be assembled within four hours or less (evening before the festival).
• Installations cannot include water, open flames, insects, food, chemicals or gases (in order to protect museum objects).
• Exhibits should have enough personnel to staff the exhibit (may operate in shifts) from 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Fri. Apr. 8, 2022, through Sun. Apr. 10, 2022.
• Exhibit materials must be shipped to the museum (shipping information will be provided). Carry-in items in the museum are limited to those things that can fit in a briefcase or backpack and must go through a security check.
• Projects must include undergraduate students in the design and exhibit of the project. Faculty whose proposals are selected for participation in the festival but do not currently have undergraduate participants will work with Kate Hanson at the SOURCE to identify student partners and include them in exhibit design.

For consideration, please submit your exhibit description, budget, list of exhibit personnel, CV for the PI and Co-PI and any supplemental materials.�� Specific requirements can be found at the .

Selected projects will receive:

• A stipend of up to $5,000 per project from the Office of Research toward exhibit shipping expenses and personnel travel ($2,500 for one faculty member, $5,000 for two or more faculty members). Office of Research funding can only be used toward shipping costs and University faculty travel expenses.
• The SOURCE will provide travel funds of up to $1,500 for up to two��undergraduate students per project.
• Steering committee members will work with school and college dean’s offices of awarded faculty to identify additional funding for project expenses beyond the awards provided by the Office of Research and the SOURCE.

Questions can be directed to: Christina Leigh Docteur, Elisa Dekaney or Kate Hanson.

The Meeting of the Minds (MoM) Conference is an annual showcase of some of the most outstanding scholars from the Atlantic Coast Conference’s 15 institutions. Normally, the students present their research and creative work in-person at the host school.

Bronwyn Galloway ’21 was one of five ���ϲ����� students who participated in the ACC Meeting of the Minds Conference (photo courtesy of Thomas Joseph Shaw ’22).

But this year’s two-day event, hosted by the University of North Carolina, was held virtually because of the pandemic and students were asked to keep their presentations to five to eight minutes. The five ���ϲ����� students who presented at the conference were seniors Bronwyn Galloway, Emily Michaels, Ifeyinwa Ojukwu, Nicole Pacateque Rodriguez and Dorbor Tarley.

“Our representative students from ���ϲ����� each delivered polished and insightful presentations of their work that truly highlighted the range of innovative research being done by our undergraduates,” says Kate Hanson, director of the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE). “It’s an interdisciplinary conference, so presenters must explain the significance of their work to a non-expert audience while also sharing the depth and nuance of their projects. Nicole, Dorbor, Bronwyn, Ify and Emily all achieved this balance in their extraordinary presentations.”

Galloway spent this past school year working on her 40-page thesis that explores the significance of caviar in Russian foodways and outlines the historical factors that led to the current decimated state of sturgeon populations worldwide. Galloway was allotted five minutes for her presentation and says it was “good practice to focus on the key points.”

“What Kate (Hanson) emphasized for our group was for everyone from SU to stay for the entire two-day conference and ask questions and attend other SU students’ presentations as if we were there,” Galloway says. “I appreciated that, and it made it more of an event instead of a five-minute slot.”

Nicole Pacateque Rodriguez’s virtual presentation examined the impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rican college students.

Pacateque Rodriguez’s research was about understanding the correlation between stressors and the academic performance of Puerto Rican college students in the United States during Hurricane Maria in 2017.

“It was a little scary when I first heard back, especially when I learned I had to summarize everything in eight minutes, but it went amazingly well,” Pacateque Rodriguez says. “I was very proud of my work, and I am very grateful I was able to share it with the rest of the conference.”

The students were selected by an internal ���ϲ����� committee to participate in the conference, which provides students with an opportunity to hone their research presentation skills. Here are the students, their projects and their faculty mentors:

• Bronwyn Galloway ’21, Russian language, literature and culture major, College of Arts and Sciences, Renée Crown University Honors Program. “Russian Caviar: A Delicacy in Jeopardy.” Faculty mentor: Professor Erika Haber.
• Emily Michaels ’21, psychology and information studies major, College of Arts and Sciences and School of Information Studies, Renée Crown University Honors Program. “Roles of Routine, Flexibility, and Gender in Online Freelancing.” Faculty mentor: Professor Steve Sawyer.
• Ifeyinwa Ojukwu ’21, biology and psychology major and public health minor, College of Arts and Sciences, Renée Crown University Honors Program. “Evaluating the Functional Consequences of Novel Mutations in the Pantothenate Kinase 2 Gene.” Faculty mentor: Associate Professor Frank Middleton (Upstate Medical University).
• Nicole Pacateque Rodriguez ’21, psychology major and sociology minor, College of Arts and Sciences and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, McNair Scholars Program. “Understanding the correlation between stressors and academic performance of Puerto Rican college students in the United States during Hurricane María.” Faculty mentor: Professor Kevin Antshel.
• Dorbor Tarley ’21, human development and family science major, David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, Renée Crown University Honors Program, McNair Scholars Program. “Differential Reactions to African-American and Caucasian Women’s Postnatal Maternal Stress.” Faculty mentor: Associate Professor�� Matthew Mulvaney.

For Galloway, the MoM Conference was the culmination of a yearlong journey that started with finding a thesis topic that would merge her Russian major with her interest in food studies. Working with Haber, her mentor, Galloway focused on an ethnographic approach that explored the history of caviar from its emergence in Russian cuisine to its modern symbolism as the ultimate delicacy to its current jeopardized status because of habitat destruction and overfishing.

Bronwyn Galloway utilized an ethnographic approach to explore the history of caviar (photo courtesy of Thomas Joseph Shaw ’22).

“I’m really glad I was able to present my research to an external audience,” says Galloway, who has written a book manuscript on Russian cuisine that she’s hoping to publish eventually. “It was an honor to represent ���ϲ����� at the conference and even if it wasn’t the same as usual, Kate (Hanson) and everyone involved did their best to make it as special as they could.”

In her research on the connection between Hurricane Maria stressors and academic performance, Pacateque Rodriguez determined that the responses of governments and colleges to natural disasters should incorporate Psychological First Aid. The common thread through her presentation–and the other presentations from the ���ϲ����� students–was that their research is intended to make the world a better place, and that’s what the conference is all about.

“It was an amazing experience, and to be able to listen to students presenting on various topics was very educational,” Pacateque Rodriguez says. “I learned so much through this process and I am very grateful I was able to present in this conference.”

The symposia will feature research, scholarly and creative work presentations, poster sessions and exhibitions planned by schools, colleges and departments across campus to celebrate undergraduate student accomplishments. During the events, students will share their faculty-mentored work and engage in fascinating discussions with their fellow students and mentors.

This year’s symposia will be virtual—another example of the innovative ways students have adapted to the pandemic.

“Students have moved their work forward in truly difficult circumstances amidst the global pandemic and nationwide social injustices,” says Kate Hanson, director of the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (The SOURCE). “Beyond this, research plans were adapted to suit remote and virtual work, COVID restrictions, cancelled plans and revised timelines.

“Students adapted in wonderfully innovative ways: reviewing lab data at home from their laptops, visiting archives digitally, conducting interviews via Zoom, modifying physical design work with new software, planning filming amidst social distancing and masking, and so much more,” Hanson adds. “Faculty mentors continued to generously guide and support the students amidst their own research and teaching disruptions.”

The entire campus community is invited to attend the events, which will continue April 30 and run through May 17.

“The end-of-year presentations are all in virtual spaces, and we hope that the campus community will support them by attending and learning more about the exciting discoveries and progress made by our outstanding students,” Hanson says.

A complete list of the programs with event and registration details can be found (please check back for updated registration information).

Here are the remaining events for this year with registration links (the iSchool Research Symposium was held April 9):

• McNair Scholars Research Symposium: April 30 and May 7, 12:30-4:45 p.m. ET. Updated information will be posted .
• Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Festival: April 30, 9-11 a.m. ET. Use to access the Gather.town site the day of the festival and read more about Gather.town and the innovative work that will be highlighted at the festival.
• SOURCE Research Symposium: The schedule of presenters is and registration for each Zoom session here: , 3-6 p.m. ET; May 4 for and , 6-8:30 p.m. ET; , 11 a.m.-2 p.m. ET; and ,��1-4 p.m. ET.
• School of Architecture Thesis Events: Thesis Reviews May 3 and May 4 (updated information will be posted ); Thesis Awards Jury Discussion and Prizes May 21 (updated information will be posted ).
• Falk Student Research Celebration: May 4 through May 7 (asynchronous). Updated information will be posted .
• Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Academic Year REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) Symposium: 9 a.m.-noon ET May 12 (RSVP to Chelsea Bouldin at cnbouldi@syr.edu to receive the Zoom link to attend the virtual symposium). This annual symposium recognizes the participation of Elite Scholars in research programs on and off campus.
• Renée Crown University Honors Program Thesis Presentation Day: May 17, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. ET . Updated information will be posted .
• Maxwell School Celebration of Undergraduate Scholarship: May 17, 3-5 p.m. ET . Updated information will be posted .

Laurel White, First Place Slepecky Awardee

Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) announced two STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) undergraduate researchers were recognized for their resilience, advancement and research excellence at the annual Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Ceremony. Laurel White, a physics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, received the first place award of the 2021 .

White was nominated by her mentor Duncan Brown, Charles Brightman Endowed Professor of Physics, and unanimously selected given her outstanding work in the area of physics. The title of her reviewed honors thesis is “The Effect of Spin Priors on the Determination of the Neutron Star Equation of State Using Gravitational-Wave Signals.” This project focuses on challenges with the parameter estimation used to analyze gravitational-wave signals.

Brown notes that the work White has done has led to the significant discovery that it will be more difficult than previously thought to get an accurate measure of the equation of state with current second-generation detectors, due to the challenges of extracting the tidal deformability from the waveform and the impact of prior assumptions on the neutron star mass and spin distribution. It is expected that this research will lead to two articles before White’s graduation this year, adding to White’s list of publications. White was also previously selected as a 2020 Goldwater Scholar and a 2019 recipient of an , and will be joining the physics Ph.D. program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after graduation.

“I am very honored to receive the Slepecky Prize. Physics, like other STEM fields, is severely lacking in female participation, and mentorship has been cited as a critical tool for fixing the gender imbalance. I share Norma Slepecky’s belief in mentoring, and I have experienced firsthand how it can positively impact a young researcher,” White says. “I hope that I can leave the same legacy of serving as a role model and advocate for women in STEM.”

Aliza Willsey, Second Place Slepecky Awardee

A second student was also recognized for her research. Aliza Willsey, a senior in aerospace engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, received the second place Slepecky Prize. Willsey was nominated by Jeongmin Ahn, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Willsey’s research explores the benefits and results of the mycelium membrane. Her work titled “Investigation of Mycelium Growth Network as a Thermal Transpiration Membrane for Thermal Transpiration Based Pumping and Power Generation,” for which she was the lead author, has been published in .

“My experience with research has definitely been the most rewarding thing I’ve been able to take part in at ���ϲ�����,” Willsey says. “It is very meaningful to me to be able to carry on Norma Slepecky’s legacy and be awarded for my research as a woman in STEM. I think this prize is a great way to motivate young women to pursue a career in STEM and take on their own research projects.”

White and Willsey were both recognized during the annual Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Ceremony, which was sponsored by WiSE, the Humanities Center and the Department of Biology at ���ϲ�����. The annual ceremony featured ���ϲ����� alumna Ahna Skop ’94, who gave the lecture “Took Creative for Science.” The lecture is available for .

About the Norma Slepecky Undergraduate Research Award

The prize is given in honor of�� who was a passionate professor, researcher and an advocate for undergraduate student research at ���ϲ�����. She also actively supported efforts to increase the number of women in science and engineering. Similar to Slepecky, WiSE programs support the persistence and excellence of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The Slepecky Prize is meant to honor young scientists in STEM that have shown persistence toward degree completion, resilience, advancement and research excellence.

In high school, Ellen Jorgensen was highly involved in the Green Club in her school and led initiatives that focused on waste reduction. She also developed education initiatives for her peers to give them a sense of responsibility regarding the environment.

“In high school, my passion for the environment developed out of concern for the planet and frustration with the lack of urgency around me. At that point, my love for science in the classroom and my dedication to environmental action seemed separate,” she says. “Today, the convergence of these passions forms the foundation of my academic and professional goals. … While I wasn’t aware of climate sciences as a career path back in high school, I now see it as a calling.”

Jorgensen, a sophomore double major in earth sciences and environment, sustainability and policy in the College of Arts and Sciences, a Coronat Scholar and a member of Renée Crown University Honors Program, is a recipient of a 2021 , which will help support her studies.

Named for Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings of South Carolina, the prestigious award provides tuition support ($9,500 per year) and paid summer internships with NOAA to recipients. The award is designed to support students working in areas related to NOAA’s programs and mission. ��Students apply as sophomores, do an internship in their junior year, and receive support and mentorship throughout their undergraduate career.

“Receiving NOAA’s Hollings scholarship is an honor and affirms my passion for climate and environmental science. I am very excited to participate in their internship program to explore applications of climate science in the field,” says Jorgensen. “While I have certainly worked hard to reach this achievement, it is much more a testament to the immense support I have received from CFSA; the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences; my faculty mentor, Dr. Bhattacharya; and above all, my family.”

Jorgensen is also pursuing a minor in physics and says her majors and minor allow her to balance her focus on scientific studies of the climate with a grounding in policy. She is currently engaged in research in the Paleoclimate Dynamics Lab of Tripti Bhattacharya, Thonis Family Professor: Paleoclimate Dynamics and assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences.

Jorgensen works with Bhattacharya constructing temperature proxies for the mid-Pliocene, a period that may serve as a predictor of the challenges ocean ecosystems will face in the coming century. Their research uses alkenones, biomarkers produced by haptophyte algae sourced from ocean sediment, to generate new records of ocean temperatures. In the fall of 2020, Jorgensen focused on samples from a site off of the coast of southern California, extracting alkenones from these samples. “Working in an active laboratory, I have gained a much greater understanding of mechanisms by which discoveries are made in the field of earth sciences,” she says.

Jorgensen also received a grant last summer from the University’s Office of Undergraduate Research (SOURCE), which she used to review literature on alkenone temperature proxies and paleoclimate reconstruction. This summer, she will pursue new channels of paleoclimate research through a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program in a lab at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Jorgensen is also involved in several community sustainability efforts. During the summer of 2020, she worked on a farm in North Carolina through WWOOF, an organization that provides small organic farms with volunteer help, to support sustainable, small scale food production and sell organic produce to local communities. During the academic year, Jorgensen is a volunteer with the University’s Office of Sustainability Management and manages the compost pile used by members of the University’s housing community. Currently, she is involved with the Student Association’s sustainability committee, with whom she has helped develop waste-reduction campaigns such as the promotion of reusable menstrual products for Earth Day later this month.

In all the work she does, whether in the lab or in the community, Jorgensen knows the importance of good communication. “I know that communication skills are an integral tool for a scientist aiming to make change,” she says. She sharpened her skills as the editor in chief of her high school newspaper and in her role as a writer at the University’s Blackstone LaunchPad, where she wrote stories about entrepreneurial projects.

After graduating from ���ϲ�����, Jorgensen plans to pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in earth and environmental sciences. “I will center my career around my passion for innovative climate research while opening pathways for communication with communities who will benefit from the research,” she says. Ultimately, she plans to lead her own laboratory focused on predictive climate sciences.

Jorgensen worked with the�� to apply for the NOAA scholarship. CFSA offers candidates advising and assistance with applications and interview preparation for nationally competitive scholarships.

“Ellen’s clear focus on understanding and mitigating climate change—a focus that structures her academic, campus, and community work—made her a clear fit for the NOAA Hollings Scholarship,” says Jolynn Parker, director of CFSA. “She is poised to make the most of the extraordinary mentorship and support that NOAA provides to Hollings Scholars.”

The 2022 NOAA-Hollings Scholarship application will open on Sept. 1. Interested students should contact CFSA for more information: 315.443.2759; cfsa@syr.edu.

The YRF program expects active participation in group mentoring for two years, followed by engagement with incoming YRF members during the fellow’s final undergraduate years. Fellows can draw on their research funds at any point during their undergraduate career. Faculty mentors are eligible for a two-time grant of $750 in research funds. The program is supported by the and the��.

Candice Hatakeyama. This photo was taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and does not reflect current public health guidelines.

Candice Hatakeyama, a senior musical theater major in the Department of Drama in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, is an alumna of the YRF program. Her YRF funding helped her to develop a musical adaptation of the novel “A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki, of which excerpts were debuted on Facebook Live in December and watched by more than 1,000 viewers.

Hatakeyama had read “A Tale for the Time Being” in high school and thought it would translate well into musical theater. In her first year at ���ϲ�����, she learned about the YRF program and that it was open to all majors.

She worked on the piece for a year and a half and intended to hold a live staged reading in April 2020—until COVID-19 hit. “We had to scrap that format, but luckily because of shifting to a virtual format we were able to reach out to alumni and individuals from other universities to participate,” Hatakeyama said in an interview with CFSA Assistant Director Melissa Welshans. “Part of my project is a desire to uplift Asian American voices and Asian American performers, and by using a virtual format we were able to create the show with an all-Asian cast.”

YRF provided up to $4,000 to Hatakeyama for the project, which enabled her to purchase editing software and give a stipend to actors. “It was great to offer financial support to actors, most of whom were living in New York City and out of work because of the pandemic,” she says.

Brian Cimmet, professor of musical theater in the Department of Drama, served as Hatakeyama’s faculty mentor. “I enrolled in a couple of independent studies with him where he provided feedback on the project. I also received helpful feedback from frequent meetings with other Young Research Fellows,” Hatakeyama says. “It was really cool to see all the amazing work they were doing, too. Even though we were all in different fields, there was a lot of mutual support and excitement with each others’ projects. Everyone was really open to feedback and advice from other fellows.”

Serena Omo-Lamai ’20. This photo was taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and does not reflect current public health guidelines.

Another YRF past participant is Serena Omo-Lamai ’20, who studied bioengineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. She conducted research at Upstate Medical University, investigating the effects of the bacterial enzyme chondroitinase ABC delivered within biodegradable nanospheres on oligodendrocyte progenitor cell migration to spinal cord lesion sites. She was also a member of the laboratory of Alison Patteson, assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, where she analyzed the effects of polyacrylamide gel stiffness on the growth and swarming properties of bacterial cells.

“The YRF program provided me with a wealth of resources and a broad support network which motivated me to engage in undergraduate research,” Omo-Lamai said in an interview last year. “My experiences have solidified my goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering.” She is now doing just that, pursuing a Ph.D. in bioengineering and biomedical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

The deadline for applications for the YRF 2021 cycle is Friday, April 16. The program is open to students in all disciplines. To be eligible students must:

• Be a first-year student;
• Have a minimum 3.75 grade point average;
• Have the endorsement of a faculty member willing to serve as faculty mentor for the two-year program; and
• Have a demonstrated commitment to research/creative inquiry.

To apply, visit the .

Faculty mentors must:

• Meet with the student at least twice per semester;
• Complete a brief progress report each semester; and
• Consult on and approve student budget requests.

Faculty mentors are typically tenured or tenure-track faculty. For faculty with other kinds of appointments, please contact the SOURCE.��The faculty endorsement link can be found��.

If you have questions or need more information, call the SOURCE at 315.443.2091 or email Kate Hanson at��khanso01@syr.edu.

The SOURCE provides funding opportunities and serves as a hub to foster and support diverse undergraduate engagement in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry across all disciplines and programs at ���ϲ�����. CFSA’s mission is to make students, alumni and faculty aware of nationally competitive fellowship and scholarship opportunities; to help students and alumni identify scholarship opportunities appropriate to their interests and backgrounds; and to assist them through all stages of the application process, from planning to submission to interviews.

Dorbor Tarley

“These implicit and explicit biases make it difficult for health care professionals to listen, believe and respect Black women when they engage with the health care system,” says Tarley, a human development and family science major in the Falk College. “As a result, there is a delay in treatment, refusal of services and an overall lack of consideration for Black women’s bodily autonomy.”

Research funding from the ��(SOURCE) helped further Tarley’s research—Differential Reactions to African American and Caucasian Women’s Post-natal Maternal Stress—over the summer.

Her focus has been on creating two identical scenarios with race as the independent variable to test perceptions of maternal health concerns and determine if participants think the target mother should seek medical attention and their overall described concern for the mother.

“The SOURCE funding has allowed me to work intensively on my research project over the summer as well as pay participants for taking the survey,” says Tarley, who works under the mentorship of Associate Professor Matthew Mulvaney. Using a crowdsourcing marketplace to collect data from a large population, Tarley is recruiting about 300 participants.

Tarley is one of the 119 students who received either a SOURCE Grant or a Renée Crown University Honors Program Award for the summer or the academic year. Students and their faculty mentors were given the opportunity to revise or postpone their awards in the context of the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic.�� More than 70 students creatively and constructively revised their project plans to allow for remote research work during the summer.

Their projects come from a variety of fields within the humanities, STEM and arts. Some of them included The Governance of Urban Food Forests: A Comparative Study of Select US Cases; 3D Anatomy Learning Tool; Temples of Consumerism: Shopping Malls in Bangkok; Stability vs Chaos: Analyzing the Behavior of Dynamical Systems.

“The flexibility and resilience that students demonstrated amidst the many challenges of this summer was truly impressive,” said Kate Hanson, Director of the SOURCE. “They applied their creativity and problem-solving skills to move forward in their research and creative projects while working remotely, all supported by superb and committed faculty mentors.”

With the pandemic, students shifted the approaches and questions of their research. Along with her research into maternal health, Tarley is researching health discrepancies in COVID-19 to find a conceptual overlap between those deaths and the deaths of Black mothers, looking for similar themes of discrimination and racial and ethical bias. Tarley also refocused her research from using college students’ reactions to Black and Caucasian mothers to reactions from a general population, using the crowdsourcing marketplace.

This summer, the students with SOURCE funding also participated in small groups led by SOURCE student research mentors; research skills workshops, including Crafting a Research Elevator Speech and Writing an Abstract; and a two-part Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in Research Workshop led by Associate Professor Jeff Mangram and Associate Teaching Professor Chandice Haste-Jackson. They also presented in a SOURCE Summer Works-in-Progress Virtual Symposium, Aug. 10-13.

The ���ϲ����� Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation () program also supported students this summer, ��who conducted remote research projects, weekly skill development meetings, and presented in the Summer Research Symposium Aug. 5.

The supported remote research students who took a research methods seminar, participated in skills workshops, and presented at the Summer Research Symposium Aug. 5-7.

Students interested in applying for upcoming , up to $5,000, can find out more about what’s available on the SOURCE website. Students need to indicate their intent to apply by Oct. 8. Applications are due Oct. 22.

Again this year, students may also apply for the Spinoza Grant, established through the generosity of an anonymous physician-scientist. It supports undergraduate research that explores philosophical aspects of issues within the sciences or other professional disciplines. The donor studied philosophy as an undergraduate at ���ϲ�����, and especially admired the intellectual rigor, originality, scope, and independent thinking in the work of the renowned 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, after whom this award is named. Spinoza was a brilliant young ex-communicated Spanish/Jewish immigrant whose family and community fled the Spanish Inquisition to Holland near the end of the sixteenth century.

The 2019 Spinoza Grant recipients, architecture students Yundi Wendy Zhang and Natasha Liston-Beck, explored spacecraft design and human/machine interaction in their thesis “Continuous Interior Space Architecture: An Omni-orientational Archive of Interfaces.”

For students interested in pursuing research funding from the SOURCE, Tarley says they should go for it.

“Do not let the application process and the fear of getting a ‘no’ stop you from applying. The passion for your project and your research will speak for itself,” says Tarley, who also participated in the McNair Summer Research Program. ��“If you are interested in research or a creative project and do not know where to start, the people at the SOURCE office are great to talk to.”

Along with Hanson, students had also just begun working with SOURCE’s newly appointed Assistant Director Bridget Lawson, who passed away recently. Lawson brought her deep commitment to supporting students in their academic and personal development to the SOURCE’s work, Hanson says. A scholar and activist working for social justice, Lawson’s positive impact on the SOURCE will be felt for years to come.

Lawson had recently stepped into a new professional role as the assistant director of the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (The SOURCE). For three years prior, she was the coordinator of academic services for the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP).

Leonese Nelson, program director for CSTEP, says Lawson’s impact “reached beyond the campus community to the greater ���ϲ����� community. She was a true advocate for students.”

Lawson held a bachelor’s degree in human services from Cazenovia College and a master’s in social work from ���ϲ�����. She was near completion of a Ph.D. in cultural foundations of education in the School of Education, and her degree will be conferred posthumously.

“Bridget Lawson was my friend, colleague and a mentor of mine,” says Hugh Burnam, Lawson’s friend, former classmate and officemate. “Bridget was a couple years ahead of me in the program, so I relied on her for advice and support. When I became overwhelmed, messed up or stumbled in some way, she shot me a quick look, and many times said something along the lines of, ‘Boy, get your act together!’ She made me laugh and became my first friend in my Ph.D. program which means so much to me.”

Throughout her doctoral studies, Lawson worked as a graduate assistant for initiatives such as Early College High School at Nottingham, Say Yes to Education and Writing Our Lives.

Jeffery Mangram, associate professor in the School of Education, was at the helm of the Early College High School project and recalls Lawson’s contributions as an assistant instructor. “She held historical, institutional and social knowledge about the ���ϲ����� City School District and the South Side of ���ϲ�����. She became touchstones for so many of the 100 students or so we worked with, listening to and counseling the students on not only academic issues but also personal issues. She was proud to have graduated from the ���ϲ����� city schools and living, still, on the South side of ���ϲ�����. She modeled for the students (and for all of us) the dignity and grace of being an African American woman.”

Through Writing Our Lives, Lawson worked with Marcelle Haddix, Dean’s Professor of Reading and Language Arts and department chair, and formed an academic bond and a friendship. “���ϲ�����, the School of Education and the entire ���ϲ����� community will feel the gravity of this loss for some time,” Haddix says. “As her advisor and friend, I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to know Bridget and to work closely with her. She was an exemplar of what it means to be of service to one’s community.�� She was that silent force and presence, always there and giving of herself.”

Beyond her contributions to ���ϲ�����, Lawson had worked for the ���ϲ����� City School District as a substitute teacher, for the Center for Community Alternatives, the Dunbar Association, Contact Community Services and SUNY Oswego. She dedicated her life to creating opportunities for academic success initiatives, preparing students for research opportunities and facilitating diversity, equity, community-based and social justice activities.

“Bridget was always happy to see me and others, I could not have been more proud to have worked with this remarkable woman,” says Mangram. “The loss is both sad and tragic. She had so much knowledge and grace to share with all of us.”

Joshua Schiowitz

Joshua Schiowitz, a senior film major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and political science major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School, is researching the changing political, cultural and economic dynamics of the Rust Belt through a multimedia project that incorporates narrative journalism, photography and documentary filmmaking. He is working on a short film that explores the anti-democratic politics and environmental injustice at the center of school consolidation in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Serena Omo-Lamai

Last summer, Serena Omo-Lamai, a senior bioengineering major in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, conducted research at Upstate Medical University, investigating the effects of the bacterial enzyme chondroitinase ABC delivered within biodegradable nanospheres on oligodendrocyte progenitor cell migration to spinal cord lesion sites. She is currently a member of the laboratory of Alison Patteson, assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, where she is working on analyzing the effects of polyacrylamide gel stiffness on the growth and swarming properties of bacterial cells.

Candice Hatekeyama

Candice Hatakeyama, a junior musical theater major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, is working on adapting Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being” into a musical.

All three are members of the Young Research Fellows (YRF) program. Young Research Fellows, guided by a faculty mentor, engage in two years of group mentoring in early research and creative inquiry development and have access to up to $5,000 in funding towards research expenses upon submission of approved budgets. Faculty mentors are eligible for a one-time grant of $750 in research funds. The program is supported by the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE) and the .

The SOURCE provides funding opportunities and serves as a hub to foster and support diverse undergraduate engagement in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry across all disciplines and programs at ���ϲ�����. The CFSA’s mission is to make students, alumni and faculty aware of nationally competitive fellowship and scholarship opportunities; to help students and alumni identify scholarship opportunities appropriate to their interests and backgrounds; and to assist them through all stages of the application process, from planning to submission to interviews.

Omo-Lamai, Schiowitz and Hatakeyama all say YRF has been crucial to their success in their respective studies.

“The YRF program has provided me with a wealth of resources and a broad support network which has motivated me to engage in undergraduate research,” Omo-Lamai says. “The experiences I have had have further solidified my goal of obtaining a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, which I plan to pursue after graduation.”

“YRF has been extremely helpful to me, particularly because of the mentorship of Kate Hanson (director of the SOURCE) and Jolynn Parker (director of CFSA), and because of the program’s flexibility to let students pursue non-traditional research and creative work—including multimedia projects like mine,” says Schiowitz. “I feel I’ve become a better researcher and artist because of this freedom to explore.”

Hatakeyama is currently in the process of putting together a staged reading of her musical. “I am very excited and motivated by the Young Research Fellows Program because of the freedom it gives me to explore, create and even fail,” she says. “In the real world, creating a musical takes many years, and one of the biggest pitfalls is often finding the funding to put on those readings and initial stagings of the project that are so integral to the creative evolution of the piece itself. The funding that the YRF program provides will assist in putting on a presentation of my work that will undoubtedly propel me forward in the synthesis of this piece.”

The cycle is now open for the next YRF cohort, with a deadline of Monday, April 13. The program is open to students in all disciplines, and to be eligible students must:

• Be a first-year student;
• Have a minimum 3.7 grade point average;
• Have the endorsement of a faculty member willing to serve as faculty mentor for the two-year program; and
• Have a demonstrated commitment to research/creative inquiry.

Faculty mentors must:

• Meet with the student at least twice per semester;
• Complete a brief progress report each semester; and
• Consult on and approve student budget requests.
• Faculty mentors are typically tenured or tenure-track faculty. For faculty with other kinds of appointments, please contact the SOURCE.

The faculty endorsement link can be found .

If you have questions or need more information, call the SOURCE at 315.443.2091 or email Kate Hanson at khanso01@syr.edu.

A discussion by senior Gaelyn Smith on representations of Black identity in the film industry. A presentation by junior Matt Disbrow on the study of IQ, reaction times and the expression of autism spectrum disorder. And a look by fifth-year architecture student Hanneke Van Deursen at the concept of the Filipino “dream house.”

These are just a few of the research and creative projects by students that will be presented during several “Orange Talks”—short “TED-style” talks—and a poster session Friday, Nov. 15, at Bird Library. The Orange Talks will be held from 4 to 4:45 p.m. in Room 114. The poster session and reception will be held 4:45 to 6 p.m. in Room 550.

The ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement

The campus community is invited to attend the Orange Talks, which will include five-minute presentations by five students, and the poster session, which features projects by about 30 students, all from a range of disciplines. The Orange Talks will be emceed by Julia Riley, a senior biochemistry and neuroscience student.

Many of the student presenters are funded by grants from The (SOURCE), which fosters and supports diverse undergraduate participation in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry. There’s broad representation from the schools and colleges displaying a rich variety of research areas.

The talks and poster session gives students a chance to present their projects and focus on the broader significance of their work in a concise and compelling format, says Kate Hanson, director of The SOURCE.

“Designing a five-minute talk or a poster asks the student to tell the story of their research clearly and without jargon,” Hanson says. “Also, it’s a moment of reflection for the students and their faculty mentors and an opportunity to celebrate all their hard work.”

The SOURCE Advisory Council members will be providing feedback to the presenters. Organizers hope event attendees will provide constructive feedback.

This is also an opportunity for other students interested in research to learn about student work and talk to research-active students about the experience.

Other topics as part of the talks and poster sessions include biochemistry research on protein saposin B; Spanish-language theater and social justice; enzymes and biofuels; plus-size fashion for Italian women; and the link between streamflow behavior and watershed characteristics in headwater streams, and many more.

All undergraduate students can apply for academic and summer grants from THE SOURCE up to $5,000 to pursue their creative and research ideas, under the guidance of a faculty member.

Students interested in applying for the next round of SOURCE grants can apply by Feb. 27 for funding during the summer of 2020 and the 2020-21 academic year. Students should register on The SOURCE website and come in to The SOURCE office in Bird Library to talk to a student research mentor if they are interested in applying. Any student conducting research, whether or not they need funding, is asked to register their activity on .

Ohemaa Dixon, an art photography student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, was awarded funding from the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement.

Dixon, an art photography student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, was awarded the funding from the (SOURCE) for her project on the relationship and the effects of the broader cultural context of the French Republic on contemporary Black art archives in France.

“This funding has allowed me to explore the world of research independently but with the backing and guidance by my university,” says Dixon, who is under the faculty mentorship of Associate Professor Laura Heyman. “It has allowed me to expand what I can do as a student, and I am forever grateful.”

The SOURCE, located in 238 Bird Library, is offering all undergraduates students the same opportunity to apply for an academic-year grant of $5,000 and pursue their creative and research ideas, under the guidance of a faculty member. The office, which awarded its first cohort of students in April, fosters and supports diverse undergraduate participation in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry.

Fall deadline

The fall deadline to apply for a of $5,000 is Oct. 15, and the spring deadline is Feb. 27, 2020. Information on eligibility requirements and how to apply can be found on the website. The office provides student research mentors to help guide students at any phase of the process and , on such topics as “Getting Started on an Undergraduate Research or Creative Project”; “Crafting a Research Elevator Speech”; and “Writing an Effective Proposal.”

The office also helps coordinate applications for the Honors Program Awards ($5,000) and the Lender Center Student Fellowships. Information on those programs and how to apply can also be found on the website. There’s also a new special award opportunity, the Spinoza Award, which supports students doing work at the intersection of philosophy and science. The Spinoza Award is made possible through the generosity of ���ϲ����� alumnus Dr. William Hrushesky ’69, a graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences.

“These grants give students a chance to see an interesting problem or issue that they care about, engage with a professor try to find a solution and work with the expertise of a professor—and they have the resources to delve deeply into that question,” says Kate Hanson, director of The SOURCE. “It’s definitely for the curious student.”

The center supports students engaging in research activity in all phases who may be working in a lab and might be working in an area of a professor’s larger research agenda, working as part of a team or designing their own research project.

Brandon Fascia ’20 was awarded SOURCE funding for his project working on young adults with a history of concussion. His work for the study takes place in the Human Performance Lab, where he is able to gather data on human subjects.

Benefits of SOURCE awards

Students learn problem-solving skills, how to manage a large project that extends beyond a semester and how to work effectively with a faculty mentor, which all can assist in helping them move into the job market, graduate program or fellowship, Hanson says.

Brandon Fascia ’20, who is majoring in health and exercise science in the School of Education, was awarded a $2,800 summer grant for his project working on young adults with a history of concussion.

Concussions cause damage to the brain, which lowers cognitive performance on tests and objectives, which is due to altered neural connectivity, Fascia says. Recently, beetroot juice has been studied because it dilates blood vessels in the body and allows for better circulation of blood with nutrients in it.

Fascia is working on his hypothesis that beetroot juice may improve blood flow to the brain and enhance cognitive performance in young adults with at least two or more concussions in the past five years. “So far, there have not been any statistically significant changes in blood flow or cognitive performance. As more participants complete the study, the results may change,” he says.

Primary investigator

Fascia, who is under the guidance of Dean’s Associate Professor Kevin Heffernan, designed his own study—something he never saw himself as having the opportunity to do. He also took the lead as “primary investigator” in the Human Performance Lab for the study and was able to gather data on human subjects.

“My ���ϲ����� experience has been enhanced by this funding, because not only has it given me the opportunity to grow as a researcher, but it has also opened my eyes to more career paths I am now interested in,” Fascia says. “Along with this, I now have a research study to show for all of my work at ���ϲ�����.”

Fascia would tell other students interested in exploring their fields in more depth to consider pursuing funding from The SOURCE.

“It is not the easiest thing to balance school, life, work and also a research study. But, if you’re willing to put in the work, and you love learning about your field of study, then this is something you want to pursue,” Fascia says. “The SOURCE funding has been a game-changer for me, and I am truly honored to have received it.”

Dixon also encourages other students to go after their ideas and explore—as with the 103 students first awarded grants and pursuing their interests all over the world.

“That one idea you have that always floats in the back of your mind and you wonder if you can do it, make it happen!” says Dixon, who is a student research mentor.

For more information, visit , call 315.443.2091 or e-mail ugresearch@syr.edu.

View while hiking to Walcott Quarry. (Photo by Emily Judd)

The idea came about in Feb. 2018 when Cathryn Newton, special advisor to the Chancellor and Provost for faculty engagement at ���ϲ�����, invited Matt James, professor of geology at Sonoma State University, to give a lecture on his recent Galapagos book, “Collecting Evolution,” in celebration of Darwin Day. At the event, James mentioned that every summer for over a decade he brought his students to the famed Burgess Shale. The lecture room, full of geologists, audibly gasped in exhilaration. On the spot, James agreed to lead a trip if Newton would design and co-lead a deeply Orange version for students, faculty and alumni.

James and Newton held true to their promise this summer, and the 15 scientists embarked on what participant Emily Judd, doctoral student in the Department of Earth Sciences, called a “paleontologist’s pilgrimage.”

Trilobite fossil at Walcott Quarry. (Photo by Emily Judd)

Each day was filled with a new adventure. Throughout the Banff Yoho and Jasper National Parks, the group explored fossil beds of the Cambrian age that preserve even soft-bodied animals, giving a window into early marine communities. The fossils include both surviving groups of organisms and highly experimental forms that have no modern counterparts. One of the��most anticipated geological spots they visited, the Burgess Shale, is an estimated 508 million years old, representing one of the oldest sites with rare soft-bodied preservation.

“I went into the Earth sciences because of opportunities like this. Geology and paleontology are unique sciences because of how hands-on and experiential they are, and doing fieldwork is the cornerstone of being an Earth scientist,” says Judd. “Field trips like this reinforce concepts taught in the classroom, give me ideas about how to more effectively teach concepts in the future, spur new research questions and reinvigorate my passion for the Earth sciences.”

The 15-person group was atypical; it included undergraduate through doctoral students, faculty and staff and Board of Trustees Vice Chair Michael Thonis ’72. Each member of the group brought a different lens to the trip, with expertise ranging from paleoecology and evolutionary biology to structural geology and geochemistry. This breadth of experience created even more learning opportunities for all involved.

Thonis, a 1972 graduate of the Earth sciences program at ���ϲ�����, has stayed closely involved with the Department of Earth Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences and ���ϲ����� since graduating. “Trilobites on Ice” for him was a perfect way to continue his connection to both the University and geology.

Daniel Phillipi, doctoral student; Moon ’19; and Wanyi Lu, doctoral student, were three trip participants. Their longest hike, pictured above, was 22 kilometers to Burgess Shale. (Photo by Emily Judd)

He says of the experience: “We remind ourselves in geology to ‘let the rocks speak to us.’��In British Columbia, we visited the finest fossilized examples of the earliest multicellular life, right alongside some of the most significant examples of recent alpine glaciers and their unfolding histories.��I have read about both of these, but seeing them in person was far more powerful and inspiring.��The rocks spoke to me.”

The youngest of the bunch was Lindsay Moon ’19, who was able to go along on the trip only two��months after graduating the Earth sciences undergraduate program. Moon viewed this trip as an unparalleled way to kick start her career, right before leaving to be commissioned as an officer of oceanography in the United States Navy.

“The learning opportunities on this trip were endless and being able to sit and listen to the experts in my company talk passionately about what they love was invaluable,” says Moon. “I know that my appreciation for the things I have seen and experienced on this trip will only deepen as my career evolves and grows, making this opportunity truly priceless”

Although at different points in their lives, the group worked as a collective, experiencing these once-in-a-lifetime moments together that many geologists study but rarely witness. For each participant, different moments struck different impactful chords of their never-ending quest for knowledge.

Moulin at Athabasca Glacier. (Photo by Emily Judd)

For Judd, the most memorable part of the trip was hiking across the Athabasca Glacier. Her doctoral research focuses on reconstructing climatic conditions in Antarctica millions of years ago, so it has been a lifelong goal to visit the continent. The Athabasca Glacier gave her a close feeling to what that bucket list trip may be like.

“The ice field itself was a sensory overload. Rushing streams of ��light blue glacial water weaved across the surface of the ice, occasionally disappearing into moulin, which is deep and often massive holes in the ice, or giving way to giant crevasses elegantly carved by the running water,” says Judd. “You could literally hear a creaking, as the ice moved at a glacial pace under your feet, and every so often, ice from the mountain glaciers above would calve into the valley below, generating a thundering boom.

I can genuinely say, without hyperbole, that it was the best day of my life.”

Naiya Campbell’s grant provides an opportunity for her to explore black excellence in media with faculty mentor Kendall Phillips. (Photo by Colleen Ferguson)

“Euphoria” is how Cathryn Newton,��senior advisor to the Chancellor and provost for faculty engagement, described the atmosphere at Bird Library last Thursday afternoon, when scores of undergraduate research and creative grant recipients gathered to celebrate their success. The 103 students whose projects were selected represent the first cohort of awardees funded by ���ϲ�����’s new Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement, known as The SOURCE. An additional 23 students were funded through Renée Crown University Honors Program awards.

There were high fives, hugs and balloons as joyful students, faculty mentors and staff shared sentiments of gratitude and pride. “Their enthusiasm and energy is truly infectious,” said Kate Hanson, newly appointed director of The SOURCE, which was created through a collaboration of the Student Association, the University Senate Research Committee, the Renée Crown University Honors Program, the Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising, and University faculty.

Several distinguished alumni attended the event to congratulate the students and reinforce the value of undergraduate research. Among them was Dr. Sharon Brangman ’77, a trailblazing physician and renowned expert in the field of ethno-geriatrics who has been a member of the faculty at Upstate Medical University since 1989. “It is important that undergraduate ���ϲ����� researchers know that they are joining a wonderful lineage of successful pioneers who started their careers with research in college,” said Hanson.

Other notable guests highlighting the significance of undergraduate research were Jeffrey Mangram ’88, G’89, Ph.D.’06, professor of education and provost’s faculty fellow; Linda Ivany ’88, professor of earth sciences; Samuel Gorovitz, professor of philosophy and founding director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program; and Barry L. Wells, special assistant to the Chancellor.

“It’s an amazing feeling to have people not only believe in what I’m doing but invest in my future,” said Naiya Campbell, a junior communication and rhetorical studies major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA). The Miami native received an academic-year grant to research the creative forces of her generation through the lens of race, media and storytelling.

Prentice Bufkin Jr. celebrates his academic-year grant for his project titled “Piezography, Activism, and the “Black” Dialogues: When My Body was Finally My Own.” (Photo by Colleen Ferguson)

Amelia Lefevre, a junior writing major in the College of Arts and Sciences, titled her grant proposal “Healing Place, Bringing Justice.” “As a single mom and nontraditional 30-year-old bachelor’s degree student, I’m very excited to be supported in this way,” Lefevre said. “This is important for my professional development, and I believe my work will produce significant contributions for creating social justice.”

Aadrien Thayaparan, a junior civil engineering majoring in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, received a summer grant to develop a digital sensor he will deploy in Skaneateles Lake to test water quality, algae presence and other issues.

Prentice Bufkin Jr., said: “It means a lot to me to be in the first cohort of SOURCE research scholars. It’s a culmination of hard work and personal growth that has been rewarded in a way that gives me an opportunity really embrace and demonstrate my abilities.” The junior studio arts/printmaking major in VPA will focus on the use of piezography, a process employed in photography to increase tonal range.

Each student will be working in partnership with a faculty mentor who will guide their research and original creative work to completion. The SOURCE office in Bird Library is staffed with student research mentors who will provide additional one-on-one assistance to students as their projects progress. This advocacy is especially meaningful in fulfilling the intent of the University’s Academic Strategic Plan, which is built on a strong commitment to multicultural support.

“Our mission of diversity and inclusion was beautifully shown,” said Newton, who led a team of faculty, administrators, students and staff in launching the program after years of planning and a $1 million annual commitment from the University. “Our team is excited about working with the students to refine their timetable and specific research needs,” she noted. “We envision a lively campus this summer!”

Spring 2019 SOURCE Grant Recipients

Chancellor Kent Syverud praised the collective effort by multiple constituents—including the Student Association, the University Senate Research Committee and the Renée Crown University Honors Program—and the leadership of Cathryn R. Newton, senior advisor to the Chancellor and Provost for faculty engagement, who was charged with bringing together the best ideas of students, faculty and staff.

“I am grateful to Professor Newton, our students, faculty and staff for working so tirelessly to turn this vision into a reality,” says Chancellor Syverud. “There is evidence that this kind of commitment to undergraduate research will help us recruit, retain and graduate a more diverse and talented student body, and prepare them for post-graduate success.”

Reporting to both Provost Wheatly and Vice President for Research John Liu, the new center will expand access to undergraduate student research grants. Newton will oversee the implementation of the center until it is fully staffed.

“The enthusiastic and visionary work of students, faculty and staff has created an engine of advocacy for undergraduate research and creative work that will be recognized and respected across the campus,” says Newton. “This initiative delivers on multiple aspects of the Academic Strategic Plan, including support for discovery, innovation, student success and a commitment to diversity and inclusion. Undergraduate research and original creative work have powerful impacts on the success of all students, and these trends are even more pronounced across diverse constituencies. This elevates the climate of creativity for students on our campus in lasting ways.”

“The creation of the Center for Undergraduate Research is a vital step in supporting a more expansive and interdisciplinary research enterprise across the University,” says Wheatly. “By providing more centralized and coordinated support, we are encouraging increased research productivity across all University constituencies.”

The Center for Undergraduate Research will work across colleges and schools to foster and support diverse undergraduate engagement in faculty-guided scholarly research and creative inquiry, helping students identify and pursue internal and external research opportunities and support. It will also bring new efficiencies for proposal planning, undergraduate conferences, poster sessions and other activities to train, support and mentor students interested in research.

“Given the immense power of mentoring and original work in post-graduation success, this will have broad and long-lived effects,” says Newton. “Because our center defines research and creative inquiry broadly, it will impact students across disciplines and programs and open up avenues of research well beyond the STEM fields. Students will learn to understand disciplinary methodologies and norms, develop a repertory of research and communications skills, and communicate their findings to reach broader audiences beyond the classroom. They will see how new knowledge and discovery can impact the world.”

Cynthia Harris ’18, a recent graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences, was involved in conceiving and implementing the center. “Undergraduate research expands your horizons in so many ways: it vastly increases your network of people, and therefore the number of views to which you are exposed,” Harris says. “Having this million-dollar investment will greatly expand the experiences—and the networks—of students across the curriculum, and this will prepare them better for their lives and careers.”

Liu says this commitment to undergraduate research will further create a culture of curiosity and discovery on the ���ϲ����� campus: “By providing a more robust and focused path to scholarship and meaningful research, our undergraduates will be better positioned for competitive funding that supports further academic inquiry.”

About ���ϲ�����
���ϲ����� is a private, international research university with distinctive academics, diversely unique offerings and an undeniable spirit. Located in the geographic heart of New York state, with a global footprint, and nearly 150 years of history, ���ϲ����� offers a quintessential college experience. The scope of ���ϲ����� is a testament to its strengths: a pioneering history dating back to 1870; a choice of more than 200 majors and 100 minors offered through 13 schools and colleges; nearly 15,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students; more than a quarter of a million alumni in 160 countries; and a student population from all 50 U.S. states and 123 countries. For more information, please visit .