{"id":8073,"date":"2021-10-06T09:13:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T13:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/?p=8073"},"modified":"2024-01-26T11:55:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T16:55:39","slug":"undergraduate-students-place-at-natural-science-symposium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/sans-news-releases\/undergraduate-students-place-at-natural-science-symposium\/","title":{"rendered":"Undergraduate students place at Natural Science Symposium"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Undergraduate students registered in the biology, environmental science, chemistry and physics 499 research courses showcased the work they researched under their faculty advisors.  The end-of-the-semester Undergraduate Research Poster Symposium took place December 5 in Carver Hall.  Fourteen students presented, while more than 30 students, who either co-authored the posters or did peer evaluations, attended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yasmin Roye took first place with her research poster titled, \u201cInvestigation of Neutrophil Sequestration Using a Lung Capillary Constriction Device.\u201d  Her advisor was Dr. Jennifer Bobenko.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy research from summer 2019 at Brown University looked at the causes of neutrophil accumulation in the lung,\u201d Roye said.  \u201cThis directly leads to lung tissue injury and occurs in patients with extended stays in the hospital (i.e. recovering from a heart attack), leading to more susceptibility to sepsis which already has a mortality rate of almost 40 percent.\u201d  Roye and Bobenko used in vitro <\/em>microfluidic channels modelled after the lung capillary bed (where neutrophils circulate) to study the mechanism by which the cells get stuck and accumulate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPreliminarily, we found that the neutrophil’s cytoskeleton (via vinculin proteins) is responsible for the stiffening response that causes the cells to accumulate,\u201d Roye said.  \u201cCurrent research includes using an in vivo<\/em> mouse model to confirm the results we obtained in vitro<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second place went to Justin Derickson with, \u201cSpace Research:  Rotational Stability of Objects in Microgravity,\u201d mentored by Dr. Kausiksankar Das, assistant professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Derickson along with three other students at UMES built a payload to conduct experiments under zero-gravity conditions. \u201cThe team built the payload from scratch at UMES and it flew a suborbital flight from Ottawa, Canada in 2019 to study solid body rotation dynamics in zero gravity,\u201d Das said.  \u201cJustin played a pivotal role in this collaborative project with researchers from MIT and the National Research Council of Canada.\u201d  He is also involved in other research projects on nano sensors, solar steam generation and plasma research, Das said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Das\u2019 teaching and research are supported by the National Science Foundation (HBCU-UP Award #1719425), the Department of Education (MSEIP Award #P120A70068) with a MSEIP CCEM grant. To learn more about the research group’s activities visit: https:\/\/sites.google.com\/view\/kausik-das\/research<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Othman Suleiman received third place for his research titled, \u201cBreaking the Boundaries of Microfluidic Mixing with Sharpie Dots,\u201d also with faculty mentor Das and fellow students Habilou Ouro-Koua and Ayobami Ogunmolsuyi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research team hypothesized that \u201cchanging the boundary conditions and the geometry of microfluidic channels using fractal geometries will considerably enhance mixing of two reagents while increasing the efficiency of the system even in low Reynolds number flow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Suleiman, his role in the project was building the channels and testing it side-by-side with Habilou to observe if there was a new result.  He spent time designing the fractals with different sizes and lengths in 2D and 3D and simulated the experiment hypothetically with computer software before it was tested in the real-world, \u201cwhich saved us time and effort.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suleiman and his team worked with Das over a two-year period.  Das was \u201cthe one who provided all the necessary resources to ensure our success,\u201d Suleiman said.  They found that \u201ckeeping the Reynolds number constant around 10, the data obtained clearly show that fractal geometries and boundary conditions variation have an impact in increasing mixing in microchannels.  With periodic hydrophobicity, we are able to improve mixing in the microchannels and the missing rate increases with increase in the number of slip dots.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll in all, this research project is one of my favorites since I was able to apply my skills designing and simulating to get the best outcome with less time and effort,\u201d Suleiman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr. Niemi, our vice provost, was very impressed with the quality of the research that our students have been doing along with their super advisors,\u201d said Dr. Madhumi Mitra, professor, Department of Natural Sciences and coordinator of the Fall 2019 poster session.  \u201cAll of the posters received excellent scores and our department has the best faculty.  It is truly an honor to belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judges for the symposium were:  Dr. Tracy Bell, Dr. Jennifer Bobenko, Dr. Maurice Crawford, Dr. Kausiksankar Das, Dr. Ligia DaSilva, Dr. Ali Ishaque, Dr. Behnam Khatabi, Dr. Eric May, Dr. Mobolaji Okulate, Dr. Joseph Pitula,; Amelia Potter, Dr. Margaret Sexton, Dr. Deborah Sauder, Dr. Maryam Taabodi, Dr. Victoria Volkis  and Dr. Simon Zebelo.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winners were based on the compiled scores from the judges, said Mitra.  There was a standardized evaluation rubric covering all the aspects of posters including: abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, conclusions, literature citation, appearance of posters, in addition to how well they responded to questions, English usage and grammar.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Yasmin Roye-First place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Justin Derickson-Second Place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Othman Suleiman-Third place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Undergraduate students registered in the biology, environmental science, chemistry and physics 499 research courses showcased the work they researched under their faculty advisors.  The end-of-the-semester Undergraduate Research Poster Symposium took place December 5 in Carver Hall.  Fourteen students presented, while more than 30 students, who either co-authored the posters or did peer evaluations, attended. Yasmin…Read more Undergraduate students place at Natural Science Symposium<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","wds_primary_category":18,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-8073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sans-news-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8073"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/sans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=8073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}