Research

Graduate Exhibition award winners announced

Simone Sukhdeo, first place winner in the Health and Life Sciences category of the 2016 Graduate Exhibition, explains her research to a judge. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Forty-two graduate students received awards for their research and creative scholarship in the 31st Annual Graduate Exhibition, held March 18 and 20 on Penn State's University Park campus. A complete list of winners is available below.

More than 200 graduate students participated in the 2016 Graduate Exhibition which included 202 graduate student participants in the research poster presentation option, eight in the visual arts option, 12 in the performance option, and eight in the video option. More than 180 individuals also volunteered to serve as judges. 

"Graduate students are the pillars of Penn State’s research enterprise and essential contributors to the intellectual diversity of the University" said Regina Vasilatos-Younken, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School. “We are proud of the accomplishments of Penn State graduate students, whose participation made the 31st Graduate Exhibition a success."

Graduate students who participated in the visual arts option will have their works displayed in the HUB-Robeson Art Gallery from March 18 – April 24. The winning videos can be viewed on YouTube.

The Graduate Exhibition will be held next year on March 24 and 26, 2017, and registration will open in November 2016.

2016 Award Winners

First place winners receive $500; second place winners receive $250; and third place winners receive $100.

Arts & Humanities

First Place

  • Cansu Tari. The College of Arts and Architecture/ARCHITECTURE. "FRAMING A TURKISH CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT SYSTEM"

Second Place

  • Richard Desinord. The College of Arts and Architecture/MUSIC. "Active Stasis: Repetition, Allusion, and The Façade of Discontinuity In Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat (1918)"
  • Dhaval Chheda. The College of Arts and Architecture/ARCHITECTURE. "Developing earthquake resilient structures, using recycled polyester fabrics, to provide low cost housing for the region of Kutch, in Western India."
  • Kyle King. The College of the Liberal Arts/ENGLISH. "Sports Spectacle, Athletic Activism, and the Rhetorical Analysis of Mediated Sport"

Third Place

  • Shivaram Punathambekar. The College of Arts and Architecture/ARCHITECTURE. "ARCHITECTS ANONYMOUS: Developing a user-friendly, participatory, open-source platform to generate region-specific climatic building design strategies for the ‘anonymous architect’"
  • Qian Wu. The College of the Liberal Arts/APPLIED LINGUISTICS. "Learning Chinese as a Second Language in a Semester Abroad in China"
  • Laura Michael Brown. The College of the Liberal Arts/ENGLISH. "Region and Remembrance: Public Memories of the Civil Rights Movement in Greensboro, North Carolina"

Data Visualization Award

Offered by the University Libraries’ Data Learning Center

  • Richard Desinord. The College of Arts and Architecture/MUSIC. "Active Stasis: Repetition, Allusion, and The Façade of Discontinuity In Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat (1918)"

Engineering

First Place

  • Virginia Aragon Sanabria. Intercollege Graduate Degree Programs/BIOENGINEERING. "Endothelial Junction Disruption by a Mechanism of VE-cadherin Disassembly and Cell Contractility within a Vascular Tumor Microenvironment"

Second Place

  • Jingyao Gu. Intercollege Graduate Degree Programs/ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION CONTROL. "A Case Study: Potential Analysis of Industrial Symbiosis Application on a Chinese Industrial Park"

Third Place

  • Aaron Long. The College of Engineering/ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. "Analysis and Implementation of the Foveated Vision of the Raptor Eye"
  • Gulten Izmirlioglu. The College of Agricultural Sciences/AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING. "Ethanol fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae from potato waste hydrolysate in biofilm reactors"
  • Elnaz Kermani. The College of Engineering/CIVIL ENGINEERING. "Simulation of Flow through Porous Media using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Method"

Health & Life Sciences

First Place

  • Simone Sukhdeo. The College of the Liberal Arts/ANTHROPOLOGY. "The relationship between patterns of subchondral bone apparent density and trabecular bone structure in the hominoid knee"

Second Place

  • Elizabeth Adams. The College of Health and Human Development/NUTRITION. "How kids define candy, snacks, and meals: A qualitative study to inform public health policy"
  • Kahina Ghanem. Intercollege Graduate Degree Programs/PHYSIOLOGY. "What Can the Domestic Hen Teach Us About Ovarian Function?"
  • Freddy Magdama Tobar. The College of Agricultural Sciences/PLANT PATHOLOGY. "The importance of endophytes in developing molecular detection methods: The case for race 4 of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense causing Panama disease on bananas"

Third Place

  • Weslie Khoo. The College of Agricultural Sciences/FOOD SCIENCE. "Efficacy of Chewing Gum as a Delivery System for Water and Fat Soluble Vitamins"
  • Alexandra Serpi. The Eberly College of Science/BIOLOGY. "Immune response of Tobacco Hornworms following consumption of Horsenettle trichomes"
  • Yurika Matsui. Intercollege Graduate Degree Programs/MOLECULAR, CELLULAR, AND INTEGRATIVE BIOSCIENCES. "Large Tumor Suppressor 1 (Lats1) Regulation in Growth Control"

Performance

First Place

  • Carrie Greer. The College of Arts and Architecture/THEATRE. "“Depuis le Jour” from Louise and “The Audience Song”"

Second Place

  • Yin Yu. The College of Arts and Architecture/PIANO PEDAGOGY AND PERFORMANCE. "Das Jahr (The Year) and A Calendar Set"

Third Place

  • David Phillips. The College of Arts and Architecture/PERFORMANCE. "Trio Con Brio – Ronald Villabona Valbuena, violin; David Phillips, viola; Pai Liu, cello; Serenade in C Major, Op. 10"

Physical Sciences & Mathematics

First Place

  • John Leeman. The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences,/GEOSCIENCES. "Laboratory Observations of the Spectrum of Fault Slip: Implications for Slow Earthquakes"

Second Place

  • Juan Callejas Moreno. The Eberly College of Science/CHEMISTRY. "Electrocatalytic and Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Using Iron Phosphide Nanoparticles"

Third Place

  • Nicholas Holschuh. The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences,/GEOSCIENCES. "Investigating the Potential for Reconfiguration of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets"
  • Alison Franklin. The College of Agricultural Sciences/SOIL SCIENCE. "Presence of three antibiotics in wheat plants and groundwater at The Living Filter: a wastewater reuse site"

Social & Behavioral Sciences

First Place

  • Austin Barrett. The College of Health and Human Development/RECREATION, PARK AND TOURISM MANAGEMENT. "Much has Changed Since the ‘90s, but not Americans’ Love for Local Parks"

Second Place

  • Roshan Nayak. The College of Agricultural Sciences/AGRICULTURAL AND EXTENSION EDUCATION. "On-Farm Food Safety Practices and Farm Science Centers in India: Programming Needs and Barriers"
  • Michael Evans. School of Nursing/NURSING. "Somatic Awareness and Self-Symptom Recognition in Advanced Heart Failure Patients"
  • Fatemeh Abdollahi. The College of the Liberal Arts/PSYCHOLOGY. "Syntactic Processing in Child and Adult Second Language Learners: a neurocognitive investigation"
  • Maria Del Rosario Castro Bernardini. The College of Agricultural Sciences/RURAL SOCIOLOGY. "Up before dawn: Agricultural wage workers' responses to work-family dilemmas. A case study of two asparagus producing towns in Ica - Peru"

Third Place

  • Jennifer Wertalik. The College of Education/SPECIAL EDUCATION. "Comparison of Two Instructional Methods to Increase Accuracy of Activities of Daily Living for Adolescents with Autism"
  • Jonathan Reader. The College of Health and Human Development/HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND FAMILY STUDIES. "Father-Figure Involvement Deferentially Predicts Adolescents' Risky Sexual Behavior Depending on Experience of Childhood Abuse"
  • Kaila Thorn. The College of Agricultural Sciences/AGRICULTURAL AND EXTENSION EDUCATION. "Gaining Farmer's Preceptions on the Impact of Climate Change"
  • Andrew Gladfelter. The College of the Liberal Arts/CRIMINAL JUSTICE. "Person-Place Mismatch and Its Implications for Victimization and Discrimination"

Video

The winning videos can be viewed on YouTube.

First Place

  • Amin Azizi. Intercollege Graduate Degree Programs/MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING. "Freestanding van der Waals Heterostructures: Controlling Materials at the Atomic Level"

Second Place

  • Wyatt Culler. The College of Engineering/MECHANICAL ENGINEERING. "Experimental Investigation of Flame Interaction"

Third Place

  • Krista Quesenberry. The College of the Liberal Arts/ENGLISH. "“Reading at the Intersection of Modernist, Feminist, and Lifewriting Studies”"

Visual Arts

First Place

  • Lindsey Landfried. The College of Arts and Architecture/ART. "Drawing Machines"

Second Place

  • Stephanie Seguin. The College of Arts and Architecture/ART. "Interconnections"

Third Place

  • Hani Kim. The College of Arts and Architecture/ART. "Epilogue"

The 2016 Gradaute Exhibition music and theater performance winners, with Carrie Greer (left), mezzo-soprano; Yin Yu, piano; and the Trio Con Brio comprised of Pai Liu, cello; Ronald Villabona Valbuena, violin; David Phillips, viola. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated March 28, 2016