Spread throughout the Jaguar Student Activities Center, 72 undergraduate students from six of Augusta University’s colleges and schools took part in the 26th annual Undergraduate Research and Fine Arts Conference on April 2.

Organized and sponsored by the Center for Undergraduate Research and Scholarship and sponsored by the AU Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the full-day conference allowed undergraduate students opportunities to take part in poster sessions and oral presentations, putting their hard work on display and giving them the experience of what it is like to participate in research at a high level.

“This is such a great experience for our undergraduate students. They get super excited because they’re very proud to show their work, and it’s a tough challenge,” said Quentin Davis, PhD, director of CURS and co-chair of the URFA Conference. “Many of these students have been doing work on these projects for a year or 1 1/2 years, and they have to learn to fit it all either into a scientific poster or a 12-minute oral presentation.”

Each student was mentored by a faculty mentor who guided them through the research experience. In total, 41 faculty mentors participated, representing the departments of Art and Design, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Biological Sciences, Biomedical Research, Business, Cardiology, Cellular Biology and Anatomy, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Communications, Community and Behavioral Health Sciences, English and World Languages, Gastroenterology, History, Anthropology and Philosophy, Immunology Center for Georgia, Mathematics, Medicine, Neurology, Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine, Neurosurgery, Nursing, Oral Biology and Diagnostics, Physics and Biophysics, Physiology and Psychological Sciences.

The experience for students ranged from those who are just learning how to conduct and present research to those who have presented multiple times in front of small groups up to professional and international disciplinary conferences.

“Some students have presented a number of times and are pretty well seasoned, and then there are students who are here for the first time,” Davis said. “They’re just so eager and excited to share what they know and what work they’ve been doing. It’s an awesome experience.”

One of those who already had experience in presenting was Elizabeth Nelson-Twakor, who was part of a group of three undergraduate students who joined Deborah Jehu, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health Sciences in AU’s School of Public Health, on a recent trip to Washington, D.C., as part of the Council on Undergraduate Research’s Scholars Transforming Through Research program.

“Over the summer, I was able to participate in the Summer Scholars Program, and that really helped to refine my love for research and have a better understanding of its importance,” said Nelson-Twakor, an Honors Program student from the College of Science and Mathematics. “Being in that situation and having the chance to travel to D.C. really just helped to grow my love for research and to understand that it plays a big part in everything around us.”

Through the Scholars Transforming Through Research program, Nelson-Twakor and fellow team members Antinett Ampiah and Charlotte Downs learned how to better present their research, a skill they then put to the test in D.C. That experience gave her plenty of confidence as she looks ahead to what is next after she graduates in December.

“It really gave me a little bit more confidence about the things that I’m researching and helping out on, and it really prompted me to want to keep going and keep doing more,” she said. “I thought about maybe even getting into research after graduation during my gap year as a potential because I really love doing this, and I want to keep going.”

The URFA Conference was divided into two hour-long poster sessions with seven oral presentation sessions spread out over four hours.

One of the highlights of the day was the 4×4 Showdown Research Pitch Competition where students had four minutes to share four slides with no more than 20 words per slide. Modeled after the Three-Minute Thesis put on by The Graduate School, Davis recognizes that the challenge is a strong building block for the participants.

“It’s all about articulating what you know, and that’s not easy for most of us. It’s a challenge, but it’s a lot of fun,” she said.

As is the case with many full-time researchers among the university’s departments, centers and institutes, many of the students found themselves juggling multiple projects and presentations.

Emma Herndon and Victoria Makowski presented together on their project “DOpTC: A Low-Cost Water Quality Monitoring System” during the Physics Applications oral presentation block on the second floor of the JSAC, then hurried down to the Roscoe Williams Ballroom to take part in the second set of poster sessions. Herndon and Makowski worked with Wesley Cooke under the mentorship of Andy Hauger, PhD, on a project that will eventually test water quality in the Augusta Canal. Cooke presented shortly after Herndon and Makowski on his portion of the project, “Path Deviation of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle.”

“I’m a 30-year classroom instructor; there’s only so much learning that can happen out of a book,” Hauger said of the experience undergraduate students can gain from getting involved in research early. “These students need to get job skill development. I really think the real-world aspect of it, where you’re solving problems that haven’t necessarily been solved in this way before, is a crucial part of this.”

While working on the water quality monitoring system, Herndon and Makowski were also deeply involved with other areas on campus. For Herndon, an ecology major, her two projects were closely related by water quality, while Makowski’s other project was based around digitizing the university’s herbarium with Gina Kelley.  

Herndon’s other research project, “Looking for Success: Monitoring multi-level restoration of Noyes Cut,” was a continuation of work performed by Jessica Reichmuth, PhD, a former associate professor of biology at AU. Reichmuth and Stacy Bennetts, PhD, began working on the project around 2014 by monitoring fish diversity to check on the health of the system. It was sort of by chance, walking through Science Hall when she was a first-year undergraduate student, that Herndon saw a poster looking for a student to help with the university’s aquarium.

“I didn’t know we had an aquarium in Science Hall, but I emailed Dr. Reichmuth, and she put me in contact with people who were actually working in the aquarium at the time. She kind of got me in, and then she was teaching marine ecology at the time, and she let me go on a trip with them while they were taking samples and getting fish data for a different project, and my life was changed. I didn’t know you could do that for a living,” Herndon said.

After that, Herndon said she took every course she could with Reichmuth, and that relationship eventually led her to get involved with Hauger and his work in the Physics Department, as well as taking part in an internship with the Phinizy Center for Water Sciences and Phinizy Swamp Nature Park.

“She was very integral in all of that, and so I owe a lot to her. That internship really gave me the basis for all of my research experience, and I’m really grateful for it,” Herndon said. “It means a lot to me that I got to have my hands in different projects, because I was seeing a lot of medical research and data being produced at this university, but I wanted to be able to show other people that this is just as important an area of science, especially nowadays, as we’re worrying about climate change affecting our waters and our food sources.”

Her work on both projects helped Herndon secure a spot in a scholarship program, which paid for the rest of her undergraduate career.

“The excitement I felt when I got to tell my dad I got into a scholarship program from doing stuff like this and all my tuition was covered from that scholarship program, that meant a lot,” said Herndon. “It means a lot to be able to show this to people and say, ‘Look what I did.’ It’s really important being a woman in STEM and being able to represent while knowing this could be world-changing data eventually.”

Cooke, a dual major in physics and computer science, took home the top prize for Physics Application Oral Session Winner for his presentation, Path Deviation of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle. While Herndon and Makowski worked on the water quality testing aspect of their project, Cooke worked to turn a child’s kayak into an autonomous vehicle that was able to navigate Lake Olmstead while conducting water sampling. The hope is that the next group will be able to refine their work with Hauger to eventually navigate the Augusta Canal.

“I think we have a really kind of unique thing set up here,” Cooke said. “I think being able to go through the entire research process as an undergrad versus a grad student, it’s really a cool experience, and I think it just helps you be a more well-balanced student in general.”

URFA winners

• 4×4 Showdown – Riya Patel, Impact of Blood Pressure Variability on Cerebrovascular Function in Mice

• Best Overall Oral Session – Julianna McGahee, Burnout and Compassion Fatigue Within Nursing

• Best Overall Poster Session – Gavin Feinberg, Size Dependent Endocytosis of Peripheral Membrane Proteins

• Poster Session A Session Winner – Gavin Feinberg, Size Dependent Endocytosis of Peripheral Membrane Proteins

• Poster Session B Session Winner – Makism Daikov, Histamine Regulates Cell Function in the Kidney

• Health and Human Experience Oral Session Winner – Julianna McGahee, Burnout and Compassion Fatigue Within Nursing

• Physics Application Oral Session Winner – Wesley Cooke, Path Deviation of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle

• Medicinal Chemistry Oral Session Winner – Sophia Ying and Nihal Amineni, Ursolic Acid-Based Hybrid Conjugates: A New Avenue for Cancer Therapy

• Genetics and Cellular Biology Oral Session Winner – Tanvi Patil, Loss of PKG2 Contributes to Constipation in Elderly Mice

• Neurobiology and Cognition Oral Session Winner – Tej Murudkar, NLRP3 Deletion Improves CBF and Functional Outcomes in VCID Models

• Health, Society, and Technology Oral Session Winner – Madina Afzali, Validation and Assessment of Electronic Gas and Bloating Diary

• Art and Literature Oral Session Winner – Cheo Saromines, The Percy That Could Have Been: Devaluing Underdogs in the Lightening Thief