Science Scholars Make a Clean Sweep

Honors students swept the College of Basic and Applied Sciences undergraduate category of the 16th annual Research and Creative Activity Exposition, taking home first, second, and third place. In addition, two other Honors students won awards for their research at the March 25 event.

Biochemistry major Emaa Elrayah, a previous winner of an Honors College Outstanding Student Award, took first place among undergraduate CBAS participants. She presented two posters, “Placental Metabolism of FDA-Approved Drugs Repurposed for Novel Tocolytic Use” and “Alternative Splicing of F36H2/CR2 Exon 12 in Response to Heat Stress in Nematodes.” Jennifer Herington and Rebecca Seipelt-Thiemann were her faculty mentors for the two projects, respectively.

Second place for the CBAS competition went to Biology student Madeline Aadnes, whose Scholars’ Day poster was titled “Undergraduate Students’ Climate Change Communication Experiences and Training.” Her faculty mentor was Elizabeth Barnes.

Third place for CBAS was awarded to Biology major Sarah Kerr, a researcher in Ryan Otter’s lab. Her presentation was titled “Diet Effects, Biomass, Egg Laying, and Stable Isotope Signatures in the Bioindicator Spider Tetragnathidae: Use of a Novel Laboratory Technique.”

Marketing major Jessikah Riley, under the direction of faculty mentor Rebekka King, presented the first-place poster for the College of Liberal Arts, “(dis)Connected: A Podcast Series on Society and Spirituality in the Modern World.”

Adam Dockery, a Psychology major, placed second for the College of Behavioral and Health Sciences with his poster “Exploring the Equivalency of a Standardized Reading Battery.” His faculty mentor was Emily Farris.

In total, the event that concluded Scholars Week 2022 included approximately 45 Honors student participants.