In celebration of undergraduate research and scholarship, the  SJU CUR (Center for Undergraduate Research) led the university community in celebrating the 2023 Undergraduate Research Festival on April 24-27, 2023.

2023 CUR Undergraduate Research Festival Schedule of Events (April 24-27, 2023) at a Glance

Mon April 24,2023

 10 am Soft Opening, CUR Images of Research & Scholarship Exhibit-Competition, STC Atrium (UC)

Tues April 25, 2023 

         12:30 pm Ribbon Cutting to open Images Exhibit, Voting for Exhibit Awards begin, STC Atrium, 

  Refreshments served (UC) 

1:30 pm Elevator Research Talks, STC Atrium (UC)

 6:00-7:30 pm Alumni Research Career Panel, Forum Theater (HH)

Thurs April 27, 2023

          10 am, CUR Images of Research & Scholarship Exhibit-Competition, Campion Foyer (HH)

   4-5 pm Students setup posters Campion Banquet Halls, President's Lounge (HH). "Images" exhibitors stand by their entries to answer questions.

          5- 6:15 pm Symposium: Student Podium Talks, President's Lounge (HH)

  6:15-7:30pm  Symposium: Student Poster Sessions/Dinner, President's Lounge/Doyle North/Doyle South (HH)

2023 CUR Undergraduate Research Festival (by Day)

monday APRIL 24, 2023 - Soft Opening, Images of  Research & Scholarship Exhibit

10:00 am. IMAGES OF RESEARCH & SCHOLARSHIP EXHIBIT-COMPETITION SOFT OPENING (STC Atrium) "Images" participants mount poster entries at STC Atrium (HH). Entries viewable online 

• 1  Shayna Sit "A Non-Newtonian Liquid in Motion: A Flip Book"

• 2  Ciaran Dubeck "Measuring Minimum Toe Clearance"

• 3  Cecilia Petroconis "Morphology of neurons and glia from primary hippocampal cell culture" ***BEST RESEARCH IMAGE AWARD***

• 4  Deryk McGarry "Classical Billiards"

• 5  Garrett Walker "Boiling Clouds"

• 6  Dan Fauni "Fly Like A Hawk"  ***POPULAR CHOICE AWARD***

• 7  Dan Fauni "Quantum Hills and Valleys"

• 8  Mihaela Costin "Glial cells and RNA granules in the hippocampus after sleep deprivation"

• 9  Ivy Le "Achillea: Source to Remediate Parkinsonian Symptoms"

• 10  Nicole Bowen "Recently Discovered Mycobacteriophage FoulBall With a Unique Prolate Capsid Head"

• 11  Pedro Ramos "Cancer Cell Microtubule Dynamics" 

Tuesday April 25, 2023

12:30 pm  CUR RIBBON-CUTTING CEREMONIES/RECEPTION FORMAL OPENING OF CUR Undergraduate Festival STC Atrium (UC). "Images" participants present their posters.

1:30 pm  RESEARCH ELEVATOR TALK COMPETITION STC Atrium Elevator (UC)

• 1  Ian Rowe Nicholls "Social Class in Academia: Barriers to Working-Class College Faculty" Mentor: Dr. Elizabeth Lee

• 2  Maryam Khan "Investigating Drugs for Treatment of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer" ***BEST ELEVATOR TALK AWARD*** Mentor: Dr. Bela Peethambaran

• 3  Shayna Sit "Drag Forces on a Sphere in a Non-Newtonian Liquid" Mentor: Dr. Piotr Habdas

• 4  Esha Bhardwaj  "Importance and Applications of Bacterial Flow Cytometry"  Mentor: Dr. Taisuke Izumi

• 5  Marie DeCarlo "Estradiol administration may not restore spatial memory in ovariectomized female mice following sleep deprivation." Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Tudor

• 6  Alexandra Colman "Visualization of RNA granules in vitro using hippocampal primary neuronal cell cultures" Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Tudor

• 7  Alexa Lendzinski "Examining the beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge of medical providers towards weight management care of patients with Spina Bifida" Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Tudor

• 8  Joseph Kelly "Dorsomorphin as a pharmacological target for alleviating memory impairments induced by sleep deprivation”  Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Tudor

• 9  Garrett Walker "Potential Futures of Dihydromyricetin"  Mentor: Dr. Jason Wallach

• 10  Walter Danker "Lack of REM sleep does not affect Raptor activity in multiple mouse brain regions" Mentor: Dr. Jennifer Tudor

6-7:30 pm ALUMNI RESEARCH CAREER PANEL EVENT Forum Theater, Campion Hall (HH) featuring:

• Jennifer McCann, PhD., Senior Scientist, Jannsen Research & Development

• Rebecca Colandrea, Ph.D. Candidate in Organic Chemistry and CBI Fellow, University of Delaware 

• Caitlyn Landau, Consultant at IQVIA, Omnichannel Marketing

THURSDAY april 27, 2023

10:00 am  IMAGES OF RESEARCH & SCHOLARSHIP EXHIBIT OPENING (Campion Foyer) "Images" exhibit will be moved to Campion Foyer (HH). Entries viewable online 

4:00-5:00 pm  Students: Mount Research Posters at Campion Hall. After mounting posters, students browse other posters and interact with other presenters. "Images" Presenters stood by their posters at Campion Foyer to answer questions.

5:00-6:15 pm SYMPOSIUM RESEARCH TALKS 

Maryam Khan           Investigating Novel Anti-Cancer Compounds to Inhibit Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells

Jordan McCarthy       Sleep loss impairs spatial memory and differentially affects mTOR signaling depending on 

sex and brain region

Louis Kontaras          Community Garden – A Dashboard That Provides Insights Into the Heart of Saint Joseph’s Growing Produce For Others

Ian Rowe Nicholls      Higher Education as a Class-Based Institution: A Study of Working-Class Academics

6:15-7:30 pm SYMPOSIUM RESEARCH POSTER SESSION / LIGHT REFRESHMENTS

BIOLOGY

1 Thomas McNulty       Discovering and Characterizing Mycobacteriophages Scrick (cluster B1) and Mudslide (cluster B4) at SJU.

2 Maryam Khan           Investigating Novel Anti-Cancer Compounds to Inhibit Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells

3 Ivy Le                       Deciphering the mechanism of phosphatidic acid (PA 32:0), a neuroprotective compound in 

alleviating 6-OHDA-induced stress in SH-S5Y5 cells

4 Akshara Narahari      Synergistic HIV Latency Reversal Efficacy of FDA-approved PARP Inhibitors with Vorinostat

5 Jackie Wurman         Investigating Serotonin Neuron Gene Expression Changes in an LPS Mouse Model

6 Jordan McCarthy       Sleep loss impairs spatial memory and differentially affects mTOR signaling depending on 

sex and brain region

7 Radha Gonsai           Using Fly Models to Show the Effect of Phosphatidic Acid in an In Vivo Model

8 Julia Iacovella           Adopting an ORFan and AIM(33)ing for a function

9 James Bilboa            Sleep is enhanced in male mice that overexpress calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV

10 Rachel Prutzman      Investigating astrocyte activation via chronic stress-induced inflammation in brain regions associated with MDD

11 Dan Vo                     Inconsistent behavioral phenotypes in a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome

12 Danielle Niblock         Isolating the Elusive Microbacteriophage  Noshow and Exploring its Unique Genome

13 Christina Scanlon      Understanding the Role of ROR1 in Chemoresistance in Triple Negative Breast Cancer

14 Caroline Curtin          Identifying arousal-promoting neuropeptides in Caenorhabditis elegans.

15 Ignacio Llorente Fernandez    Identification and Analysis of Gene Products from Sinorhizobium meliloti which Physically

Interact With Enzyme IIANtr

CHEMISTRY

16 Quynh Nguyen          Conferring RNA Polymerase activity to Klenow DNA Polymerase via site-directed mutagenesis

17 Ben Jefferis          Synthesis of nucleoside analogs with borono-substitution for HIV treatment

18 Mustafa Shakir          Investigating the importance of peripheral regions on RNA triplex stability

19 Owen O'Reilly           Investigations of Controlled RNA Junction Re-Stacking Via Adaptively Biased Molecular Dynamics Simulations

20 Sarah Herter         Preparation of cyclic borono-nucleoside analogs as novel HIV-RT inhibitors

21 Jacy Lieberum          Cobalt-Osazone Complexes as Catalysts for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

22 Enrique Ortiz de Montellano   Biodegradation of Industrial Textile Anthraquinone Dyes with Hydrogen Peroxide Using

Horse Hemoglobin and Horse Heart Myoglobin as Green Catalysts

23 James R. Hannigan   Synthesis of Coordinated Responsive Arrays of Surface-Linked Polymer Islands (CORALs)

24 Grace Barr            Potential of Horse Hemoglobin and Horse Heart Myoglobin as Green Catalysts in the Degradation of Industrial Textile Azo Dyes with Hydrogen Peroxide

COMMUNICATIONS/BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE & ANALYTICS

25 Louis Kontaras          Community Garden – A Dashboard That Provides Insights Into the Heart of Saint Joseph’s Growing Produce For Others

HAUB SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

26 Dylan Flynn           Using Logic Programming to Mitigate Supply Chain Issues

27 Aidan Elm             A Machine-Learning-Based Approach to Bridge Structural Health Monitoring with TensorFlow

28 Andrew Holmberg      Optimized Data Structures for Handling High-Volume Time-Series Bridge Sensor Data

29 Sofia Connor         Measuring the Social, Economic, and Environmental Impact of Business Schools

ENGLISH  AND IRISH STUDIES

30 Emma Yakscoe         The Waste Ground of the Celtic Tiger

HEALTH SCIENCES

31 Jane Kim              Association between Types of Health Insurance and Oral Health Status in Adults aged 18-64: 

National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2017–March 2020.

PHARMACEUTICAL AND HEALTHCARE BUSINESS

32 Sean P. Murphy         Constructing the Sweeney Archivum Database

PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES

33 Nathaniel O          Investigation of the use of surfactants for reducing leakage of bovine serum albumin from ethyl cellulose microcapsules

34 Jessica Shaw         Investigating the role of γ-amino butyric acid (GABA), GABA type A receptor and glutamic acid

decarboxylase (GAD 65/67) in Triple Negative Breast cancer (TNBC)

35 Stephanie Levy Use of Surfactant to Reduce Leakage of Bovine Serum Albumin from Ethylcellulose Microcapsules

36 Toàn Luong          Assessment and Evaluation of Neuroprotective Effects of Novel NMDA Receptor Antagonists Using C. elegans

37 Spencer Brackett      Optimizing the Detection of Vitamin C Transport in Colorectal Cancer Cells for the Design of Novel Targeted Therapy

38 Caitlyn Ulmer            Optimizing Cell Synchronization using Serum Deprivation and DAPI Staining to Study the 

Effects of Antipsychotics on Cell Cycle in TNBC

PHARMACY

39 Madison Fuller          Assessment of Neuroprotective Effects of an NMDAR Antagonist Using Rat Hippocampal Slices

40 Abdallah Elbready     Assessing the Perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, patterns and practice of primary care providers

regarding medical marijuana as they communicate to older adults.

PHYSICAL THERAPY

41 Benjamin Foster        Commercial  Immersive Virtual Reality, a Viability and Exploratory Study with Use for Post-Stroke Patients

42 Ciaran Dubeck          A Pilot Study Evaluating the Effect of a Low-Intensity Hip Flexor Training Program on Minimum Toe Clearance Variability

PHYSICS

43 Dan Fauni             Point Contact Spectroscopy in Doped Iron Pnictide Superconductors

44 Dan Fauni             Optimizing and constructing luminescent solar concentrators for lab usage.

45 Jessie Jin              A Computational Analysis Of Nonlinearly Driven Action Potential Activity

46 Joe Popp              Rheology of Colloidal Suspensions at a Microscopic Level

47 Ryan Creamer          Modeling Electrical Phenomena in Digital Microfluidics and the Lab-on-a- Chip Paradigm

48 Deryk McGarry         Classical Billiards

PSYCHOLOGY

49 Mark Smith           Reactions to Feedback Based on One’s Self Bias

50 Alexandra D'Andrea   Post-Concussion Depression Presents in Distinct and Unique Factors

SOCIOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

51 Ian Rowe Nicholls      Higher Education as a Class-Based Institution: A Study of Working-Class Academics

TEACHER EDUCATION

52 Jenna Zietowski         The Impact of Administrative Support on the Retention of Early Career STEM Teachers in High-Need Districts