Undergraduate Research

Undergraduate research publications & presentations

2025

 Peer-reviewed publication coauthored

• Enrique Perez (Grad student) and Hania De La Fuente published their article on phytoremediation of heavy metals in the journal "Plants" (MDPI).

• Allison Norton and Mason Oelke has submitted their manuscript to "Applied Microbiology" (MDPI).

Undergraduate Honors thesis advised 

• Allison Norton

• Mason Oelke 

• Justin Contreras-Portillo

Research Presentation (External)

Talk

• • Allison Norton presented her talk on salt stress in radishes in a regional conference (AR-INBRE) funded by NIH.

Poster

• • Stephanie Nelms presented a poster on the effect of potassium chloride stress in radishes in Arkansas INBRE conference.

  • Justin Contreras-Portillo presented a poster on the effect of calcium chloride stress in radishes in Arkansas INBRE conference.

Mentored a total of 10 undergraduate students in Fall 2025 on INBRE (NIH) funded projects related to salt stress in radishes. All of them achieved some form of publication (posters/talks).

Research Presentation (Internal)

Talk

• Madyson Johnson, Kaitlyn Coffman, Valerie Rivas & Elizabeth Barrett presented their talk on bibliometric analysis of research trends related to HIV

• Nathan Surles presented a talk on DELLA protein and CBL-CIPK signaling pathway

Poster

• Kaitlin Edwards, Kayle Dacus & Autumn Wilbanks presented a poster on cellular and molecular mechanism of heavy metal phytoremediation

• Stephanie Nelms, Kai Herring, Luke Hanke, William Foley presented a poster on silicon as a candidate for plant synthetic biology

Mentored a total of 12 undergraduate students in Spring 2025 and all of them achieved some form of publication (posters/talks).

2022

• Alyson Zelaya, Sabrina Vazquez, Melissa Sims & Jenna Skinner presented their undergraduate research poster on bacterial growth under microgravity in American Society of Microbiology metting (Texas Branch)

2019

• Sharena Thibodeaux presented her undergraduate research poster on peanut root at the Plant Biology 2019 conference, San Jose, California)

2018

• Aishah Trahan published her undergraduate research on soybean root in the Proceedings of the 2018 Undergraduate Research Conference organized by University of Louisiana at Lafayette