Contact: Madison Welzbacher
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State’s Graduate Student Association recently held its 21st Graduate Student Research Symposium, where 42 winners were announced.
Both master’s and doctoral students were given a platform to present their work from the fall and spring semesters to a team of MSU faculty members and researchers. Projects were divided across four categories—agriculture and life sciences; education, arts and sciences, and business; engineering; and forest resources and veterinary medicine. Winners also received monetary awards.
Winners include (by category):
POSTERS
AGRICULTURE AND LIFE SCIENCES DOCTORAL STUDENTS
FIRST—Timothy Sellers, an electrical and computer engineering doctoral student from Foxworth for “Crop Field Path Planning for Autonomous Tractor System with Obstacle Fusion.”
SECOND—Varsha Singh, a plant and soil sciences doctoral student from Starkville, for “Effect of Allelopathic Sweet Potato Varieties on Palmer Amaranth Growth: A Greenhouse Study.”
THIRD—Amandeep Kaur, a life sciences doctoral student from India, for “Proteomic Analysis of Chloroplast Proteins of Soybean Plants under Drought Stress with Silicon Application.”
AGRICULTURE AND LIFE SCIENCES MASTER’S STUDENTS
FIRST—Ranadheer Reddy Vennam, a plant and soil sciences master’s student from India, for “Quantifying the Soil Moisture Deficit Effects on Corn Physiology and Early Season Vigor.”
SECOND—Jacinda Leopard, a food science, nutrition and health promotion master’s student from Oxford, for “Assessing American Dairy Goat Farmer Food Safety Practices and Perceptions and the Evaluation of the Microbial Risks of Raw Goat Milk on Small Mississippi Farms.”
THIRD—Ramandeep Kumar Sharma, a plant and soil sciences master’s student from India, for “Impact of Nitrogen and Sulfur Application on Yield and Quality of Mississippi Corn.”
EDUCATION, ARTS AND SCIENCES, AND BUSINESS DOCTORAL STUDENTS
FIRST—Gabriela Sanchez Lecuona, a chemistry doctoral student from Starkville, for “Synthesis of Heterobimetallic Arene Ruthenium Complexes Incorporating Aromatic N-Heterocycles and a Group 13 Metal.”
SECOND—S. M. Asger Ali, an earth and atmospheric sciences doctoral student from Bangladesh, for “Spatial and Temporal Trends in Social Vulnerability and the COVID-19 Related Incidence and Mortality in Mississippi.”
THIRD—Tashina VanderWoude, an educational psychology doctoral student from Fort Worth, Texas, for “Decreasing Inappropriate Comments and Interruptions in an Adolescent with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder.”
EDUCATION, ARTS AND SCIENCES, AND BUSINESS MASTER’S STUDENTS
FIRST—Abby Miles, a biological sciences master’s student from McGehee, Arkansas, for “Characterization of the Rtg2p Complex in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.”
SECOND—Elise J. Adams, an applied anthropology master’s student from Des Plaines, Illinois, for “Causative Effects of Cranial Depression Fractures: A Case Study of Structural Violence within the Mississippi State Asylum.”
ENGINEERING DOCTORAL STUDENTS
FIRST—Tingjun Lei, an electrical and computer engineering doctoral student from China, for “Biologically inspired Autonomous Robot Navigation with Adaptive Speed Paradigm.”
SECOND—Chiranjibi Shah, an electrical and computer engineering doctoral student from Nepal, for “Enhanced TabNet: Attentive Interpretable Tabular Learning for Hyperspectral Image Classification.”
THIRD—Sanju Maharjan, an engineering doctoral student from Nepal, for “Modal Access Gap across Chicago.”
ENGINEERING MASTER’S STUDENTS
FIRST—Adam Parsons, a mechanical engineering master’s student from Hattiesburg, for “Design and Characterization of a Filter Media Test Stand for Nuclear Air Filtration.”
SECOND—Shawn Hatcher, a mechanical engineering master’s student from Olive Branch, for “Increasing Efficiencies and Durability in CSP Solar Absorber Tubes using CFD Simulations.”
FOREST RESOURCES AND VETERINARY MEDICINE DOCTORAL STUDENTS
FIRST—Edward Entsminger, a forest resources doctoral student from Starkville, for “North American Softwood Identification Using Machine-Learning.”
SECOND—Natasha Murphy, a forest resources doctoral student from Ireland, for “Home Ranging Behavior of a Piscivorous raptor in the Southeastern United States.”
THIRD—Rebecca Bracken, a forest resources doctoral student from Austin, Texas, for “Avian Diversity and the Conservation Value of a Private Working Forest.”
FOREST RESOURCES AND VETERINARY MEDICINE MASTER’S STUDENTS
FIRST—Riley Porter, a wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture master’s student from Bluffton, South Carolina, for “Nesting Ecology of Cavity-Nesting Waterfowl in Central-Interior Alaska.”
SECOND—Jonathan Smith, a wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture master’s student from Canton, for “Conducting Road Surveys to Detect Seasonal and Monthly Changes Across a Year in the Distribution and Abundance of Vultures, Red-tailed Hawks, American Kestrels, and Crows (Corvus sp.) within Mississippi.”
THIRD—Maxwell Schrimpf, a forestry master’s student from Beavercreek, Ohio, for “Investigating Effects of Self-Thinning Properties on Specific Gravity in Wood Formation of Loblolly Pine.”
ORAL PRESENTATIONS
AGRICULTURE AND LIFE SCIENCES DOCTORAL STUDENTS
FIRST—Angelica Abdallah-Ruiz, a food science, nutrition and health promotion doctoral student from Starkville, for “Behavior of Listeria monocytogenes upon Exposure to Muscadine Extract and Chlorine dioxide in Vitro and on Blueberries.”
SECOND—Ira Parsons, a forest resources doctoral student from Leavenworth, Kansas, for “Aiming for the Optimum: Examining Complex Relationships between Sampling Regime, Sampling Density and Landscape Complexity to Accurately Model Resource Availability.”
THIRD—Josiane Argenta, a plant and soil sciences doctoral student from Brazil, for “Protective Effect of Melatonin Against 2,4-D Injury in Cotton.”
AGRICULTURE AND LIFE SCIENCES MASTER’S STUDENTS
FIRST—Afsoon Sabet, an agricultural life sciences master’s student from Summit Point, West Virginia, for “The Role of Cimex lectularius (Hemiptera:Cimicidae) in Bartonella henselae Transmission.”
SECOND—Mckenzie Carvalho, an agriculture/ag economics master’s student from Maxwell, California, for “Determinants of Financial Literacy: Does Urban-Rural Residency Matter?”
THIRD—Erin Saylor, an agricultural life sciences master’s student from Pensacola, Florida, for “Comparison of Exogenous Hormone Treatments in a Model Species for Amphibian Captive Breeding.”
EDUCATION, ARTS AND SCIENCES, AND BUSINESS DOCTORAL STUDENTS
FIRST—Ernesto Isaac Borrego, a chemistry doctoral student of Starkville, for “A Single-Step Fabrication of Dense Carbon-Carbon Composites from Ortho-Diynylarene (ODA) Resins.”
SECOND—Dineo Tshosa, a kinesiology doctoral student from Botswana, for “Axiology of Research on Physical Activity Programs for Adults with Down Syndrome.”
THIRD—Ryan Reynolds, a history doctoral student from Columbus, for “American Author, American Rebel: James Baldwin and the Political Power of Literature.”
EDUCATION, ARTS AND SCIENCES, AND BUSINESS MASTER’S STUDENTS
FIRST—Jacob Hockensmith, a biological sciences master’s student from Poland, Ohio, “Evaluating the Response of Invasive Flowering Rush (Butomus umbellatus) Cytotypes to Chemical Control Measures.”
SECOND—Jordan Wesley, a history master’s student from Hattiesburg, for “Chi Omega at Mississippi Southern College: How to Establish a Chapter in Cold War Containment Culture.”
ENGINEERING DOCTORAL STUDENTS
FIRST—Abdur Rahman, an industrial and systems engineering doctoral student from Bangladesh, for “Activation Function Optimization Scheme for Image Classification.”
SECOND—Genwei Chen, a chemical engineering doctoral student from China, for “Zinc Promoted Ultra Low-Loading Pt/HZSM-5 Catalysts for Ethane Dehydroaromatization.”
THIRD—Akansha Jain, an electrical and computer engineering doctoral student from India, for “Reducing the Impact of Plug-in Electric Vehicles on Distribution Transformers.”
FOREST RESOURCES AND VETERINARY MEDICINE DOCTORAL STUDENTS
FIRST—Casey Iwamoto, a forestry doctoral student from Seattle, Washington, for “Potential Benefits of Organic and Microbial Soil Amendments on Shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) Restoration.”
SECOND—Vandana Dharan, a wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture doctoral student from Leland, for “Comparative Pathogenicity of Two Viruses in Catfish Culture.”
THIRD—Seto Ogunleye, a veterinary and biomedical sciences doctoral student from Nigeria, for “1031, a LysR-Type Transcriptional Regulator, is Involved in Virulence and Adaptation of Listeria monocytogenes Virulence.”
FOREST RESOURCES AND VETERINARY MEDICINE MASTER’S STUDENTS
FIRST—Elizabeth Baach, a forestry master’s student from Carmel, Indiana, for “Using Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Data to Explore the Relationship Between Biodiversity and Productivity in Forests of the Southeastern United States.”
SECOND—Brandon Gerhart, a wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture master’s student from Plano, Texas, for “Effects of Temperature on Metabolism, Swimming Performance, and Blood-oxygen Affinity Ictalurus spp.”
THIRD—Abby Vaughn, a wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture master’s student from Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, for “The Effects of Low Temperatures on Growth and Metabolic Processes of Juvenile Channel Ictalurus punctatus, Blue I. furcatus, and Hybrid Catfish I. furcatus x I. punctatus.”
Learn about MSU’s Graduate School at www.grad.msstate.edu.
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