The fall welcomed more than 500 guests and featured 212 undergraduate presenters in a variety of disciplines. The Nov. 9 event boasted the largest number of student presenters in the fall program鈥檚 history.
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs C. Cybele Raver gave the keynote address, highlighting Vanderbilt鈥檚 commitment to discovery and the essential role of undergraduate students in the development of knowledge. She underscored how the event 鈥渆pitomizes our commitment to fostering a culture of discovery, where students are equipped with the skills needed to address the world’s most pressing problems through groundbreaking research.鈥�
Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Fairs, put on in the fall and spring by the Office of Experiential Learning and Immersion Vanderbilt in the Office of the Provost, give undergraduates a place to present the original research that they conducted in collaboration with, or under the mentorship of, Vanderbilt faculty.
The diversity of topics reflects the breadth of research conducted by Vanderbilt鈥檚 undergraduate students, as well as their faculty mentors, and illustrates the ingenuity, scholarship and innovation that go on within and beyond campus.
鈥淥ne of my favorite parts about research fair is the opportunity to learn about projects from various disciplines and engaging in conversation with students of different academic backgrounds,鈥� said Nikita Rohila, a junior majoring in psychology and medicine, health and society. 鈥淒uring my poster session, I was able to connect with students, faculty and guest visitors by not only sharing the work I had been conducting over the past few months, but also by learning how the research connected with their daily lives.鈥�
For the first time, the Office of Experiential Learning and Immersion Vanderbilt partnered with Vanderbilt Printing Services to pay for the printing of more than 100 professional-grade posters for student presenters. Associate Provost of Undergraduate Research Kathy Friedman led a panel of faculty and staff reviewers to evaluate the students鈥� posters. Eleven students were recognized with awards in four categories.
Fall 2023 Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Fair awardees:
Basic and Natural Sciences
Awardee: Jakub Kubina, 鈥淣ovel LRH-1 Endogenous Ligand Discovery Protocol鈥�
Runner Up: Sara Hanna, 鈥淚solation and Characterization of a New Set of Mutations in Core Spindle Pole Body Protein Ppc89 Leads to Mitotic Defects鈥�
Runner Up: Sydney Hawkins, 鈥淢C3R Neurons Integrate Energy and Reproduction During Development鈥�
Runner Up: Frank Zhou, 鈥淚mproved Glucose Tolerance in Mice With a Pancreatic 尾-cell Knock-out of Ascl1鈥�
Clinical and Translational Research
Co-awardee: Laura Wan, 鈥淯nderstanding M4 mAChR Regulation of Sleep-Wake Architecture in Young Mice鈥�
Co-awardee: Emily Qian, 鈥淐haracterization of immune cell populations and kinase activation in cell-free hemoglobin exposed lungs鈥�
Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics Including Data Science
Awardee: Abi Kothapalli, 鈥淟earning-Based Heuristic for Combinatorial Optimization of the Minimum Dominating Set Problem鈥�
Runner Up: Gabriella Glomp, 鈥淪mart Blood Pump for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO)鈥�
Social Sciences, Humanities and Public Health
Awardee: Sunny Gorrepati, 鈥淟anguage exposure in infancy and toddler expressive and receptive vocabulary鈥�
Runner Up: Nikita Rohila, 鈥淎 Linguistic Analysis of Psychosocial Factors in Sexual and Gender Minority Youth鈥檚 Positive and Negative Daily Experiences: A Daily Diary Study鈥�
Runner Up: Yichi Zhang, 鈥淓xtra-Axial Cerebrospinal Fluid Volume in Infancy and School-Age ADHD Symptomatology鈥�