Category: Undergraduate Entries 2025
U1 – Sex Differences in Morphine Withdrawal-Induced Anxiety: The Role of Estradiol and NMDA Receptors
April 10, 2025Korey Crawford / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Linda Perrotti Sex differences and estradiol’s role in opioid withdrawal-induced anxiety remain understudied. We hypothesize that morphine withdrawal increases…
U2 – Investigating the mechanisms of emerging and legacy contaminants bioconcentration in fish tissues using machine learning models
April 10, 2025Shashwat Dhayade / Earth & Environmental Sciences/ Faculty Mentor: Yike Shen Bioconcentration of contaminants in aquatic organisms poses environmental and public health risks as toxins accumulate…
U3 – The Anti-nociceptive Effects of Binaural Beats on Formalin-induced Inflammatory Pain
April 10, 2025Troy Broome / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Yuan B. Peng Binaural beats is an auditory phenomenon that occurs when two slightly different frequencies are presented to…
Phat Dinh / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Kevin Schug Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) encapsulate therapeutic nucleotides to protect their labile structure and facilitate cellular uptake….
Samone Eddington / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Tracy Greer Body-focused repetitive behaviors and disorders (BFRB/Ds) are self-destructive grooming actions characterized by skin-picking, hair-pulling, and more. BFRB/Ds…
U6 – Chemical Desymmetrization of Trehalose
April 10, 2025Ashton Drake / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Joseph Buonomo Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of the transmissible disease tuberculosis. The complex structure of…
Jenny Nguyen / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: He Dong Peptides are adaptable structures that can be used to create a variety of nanostructures, which…
U8 – Measuring the effects, or lack thereof, of toxins from two different plant families on the Spotted Bird Grasshopper
April 10, 2025Jaden Rankin / Biology / Faculty Mentor: Alison Ravenscraft Insects are vital members of our ecosystems and are an important part of many food chains. They…
Hala Muhiar / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Kevin Schug Municipal solid waste handling operations (WHOs) emit trace gases consisting of volatile organic compounds, including…
U10 – Proteomic analysis of Macrophage cells exposed to perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS)
April 10, 2025Shawn King / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Saiful Chowdhury Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) persist in the environment and pose significant health risks. Previous…
U11 – Determining Degradation of Phenethyl Isothiocyanate Across Different Insect Species
April 10, 2025Aidan Skinner / Biology / Faculty Mentor: Alison Ravenscraft Microbes associated with insects have been known to assist in vital processes in their hosts. When the…
U12 – Simultaneous separations of lipid nanoparticle components using nearly monodisperse, mixed-mode stationary phases
April 10, 2025Rebecca Taylor / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Kevin Schug Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) enable drug delivery for mRNA therapeutics, as demonstrated by the FDA-approved COVID-19…
U13 – Functional Brain Differences in Epilepsy and Psychogenic Non-epileptic Seizure Disorders using Magnetoencephalography
April 7, 2025Mustafa Al-Azawe, Florencio Gobellan, Kathryn King, Christos Papadelis / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Crystal Cooper Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by abnormal brain activity causing…
U14 – From Human to Machine Coding: Evaluating ChatGPT 4o’s Ability to Match Human Expertise in Qualitative Analysis
April 7, 2025Genevieve Martinez, Matthew Frangul, Chose Tran / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Logan Watts This study examines whether artificial intelligence (AI) can code qualitative responses as effectively…
U15 – Analysis of Total PFAS Concentration in Solution
April 7, 2025Gabriel Garnett / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: C. Phillip Shelor Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are chemicals we encounter daily in items like non-stick…
U16 – Ensuring Precision Measurements of Neutrino Properties in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment
April 7, 2025Samriddha Chakraborty / Physics / Faculty Mentor: Jaehoon Yu Neutrinos are fundamental particles that may hold the key to understanding the evolution of the universe. The…
Katherine Atkins / Earth & Environmental Sciences / Faculty Mentor: Yike Shen As general climate trends predict warmer weather, it is important to improve agricultural management…
U18 – The Logic of Psychiatry
April 7, 2025Nathan Cabero, Koshish Shrestha / Mathematics / Faculty Mentor: Ogan Gurel Psychiatric diagnosis is largely based on symptom assessment, for which a primary resource has been…
Ethan Nguyen / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Joseph Buonomo Cellulose modified with PEtN is an integral component of E. coli biofilms, as bacteria adhere…
U20 – Grain Size Analysis of Oligocene Loess Deposits
April 7, 2025Brenna Curtis / Earth & Environmental Sciences / Faculty Mentor: Majie Fan The analysis of loess deposits is critical in the reconstruction of paleoclimate as the…
U21 – The Impact of SepIVA depletion on MurG localization during cell division in Mycobacterium smegmatis.
April 7, 2025Arinze Awagu / Biology / Faculty Mentor: Cara Boutte Cell division in bacteria requires that cell wall enzymes and regulators are recruited to the midcell division…
U22 – Natural Product Extracts as Photosensitizers for the Photodynamic Inactivation of Bacteria
April 7, 2025Debby Sunday / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Sherri McFarland Antibiotic resistance is a growing global crisis, making once-easily treated infections harder to fight and…
Shriya Gurjar/ Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Purnendu Dasgupta Pure water is a poor conductor of electricity; however, dissolved ions present in water have the…
Seth Vallee, Delaney Chiarelli, Mikayla Luskey, Ava Rico / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Logan Watts Artificial Intelligence (AI) software is becoming widely used across various career…
Florencio Gobellan Rodriguez / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Crystal Cooper Epilepsy is a noncommunicable disease of the brain that causes seizures. Most pediatric cases of epilepsy…
Kitana Lepardo / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: (N/A) Sickle cell anemia is a rare blood disorder that is generally passed down from genetics. Sickle…
Matthew Nguyen / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Tracy Greer Researchers in linguistics, neuroscience, and psychology have long debated the effects of multilingualism on cognition. While some…
Darsh Gandhi / Mathematics / Faculty Mentor: Christopher Kribs Oropouche virus (OROV) is a vector-borne arbovirus that has caused more than 500,000 infections in South America,…
Alain Areeba Siddiqui / Data Science / Faculty Mentor: Masoud Rostami Diabetes is a global health concern, affecting over 38.4 million people in the United States…
U30 – Mitigation of Electrical Cross-Talk in Silicon Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) Arrays Using Binary Classification
April 7, 2025Nafisa Nawrin Labonno / Physics / Faculty Mentor: Seunghyun Lee Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) play a critical role in applications such as LiDAR, quantum cryptography, and…
U31 – Quantification of polymerization and backbone disruption in polydiacetylene-bases spray-on sensors
April 7, 2025Austin Carlson / Mathematics / Faculty Mentor: Hristo Kojouharov Polydiacetylene (PDA)-based spray-on sensors undergo distinct color transitions in response to ultraviolet (UV) exposure, which induces polymerization,…
Mariam Zenhom / Earth & Environmental Sciences / Faculty Mentor: Nathan Brown The Yellowstone National Park presents hydrothermal activity producing immensely hazardous hydrothermal explosions. Shallow reservoirs…
U33 – Assessment of waterborne chemical exposure risks in different communities and population groups in North Texas
April 7, 2025Isabella Rios, Jenny Ngyuen, Maryam Ghalamkari / Earth & Environmental Sciences / Faculty Mentor: Un-Jung Kim Community- or population-specific exposure to water quality issues is a…
U34 – Impact of Dynamical Tides on the Light Curve of the Hot White Dwarf Binary System KOI-964
April 7, 2025Cayden Peters / Physics / Faculty Mentor: Nevin Weinberg The Kepler binary system KOI-964 consists of a hot white dwarf and an A-type star in an…
U35 – Correlates of Antimicrobial Resistance in Soil Bacteria: Insights from Healthcare Settings Across Different Communities
April 7, 2025Nina Parvari / Biology / Faculty Mentor: Whitney Tholen Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a problem presenting serious challenges to human health such as uncontrolled infectious states….