Thursday, August 2 marked the conclusion of a summer’s worth of research for students enrolled in the UK College of Engineering’s Research Experience for Undergraduates program in bioactive interfaces and devices. To concisely summarize their weeks of intense work, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, students designed research posters which were displayed in the Raymond Student Commons of the Ralph G. Anderson building. Judges and other interested guests engaged REU participants in discussions about their research, with the judges determining competition winners of various categories later in the program.
In the Poster Competition, David Spencer and Alexandra Tsoras tied for first place with Joshua Borrajo coming in second and Nkolika Egbukichi third. Additional awards handed out went to Lindsay Gray for Best Oral Presentation and Stella Shin for Best Blog Award.
Prior to the award announcements, Carey Smith, CEO of Lexington-based Big Ass Fans, gave the keynote address to those in attendance. The awards were presented by REU program directors Kimberly Ward Anderson and Zach Hilt.
UK’s REU program brings students from all over the country to work with expert faculty covering several different disciplines. This year’s participants were:
Naveed Bakh (Vanderbilt University), Joshua Borrajo (University of California – Berkeley), Benjamin Brummel (University of South Carolina), Stefani Cleaver (DePauw University), Nkolika Egbukichi (Portland State Univerisity), Kiva Forsmark (University of Minnesota – Twin Cities), Lindsay Gray, Sarah Negaard, David Spencer, Alexandra Tsoras (all from the University of Kentucky), Casey Kukielski (Clemson University), Thao Ngo (Arizona State University), Pablo Palomino (University of Florida), Harrison Sapper (Vassar College), and Stella Shin (University of Arizona).
Faculty advisors included chemical engineering professors Tom Dziubla, Kimberly Ward Anderson, Steve Rankin, Dibakar Bhattacharyya, Brad Berron, Zach Hilt and Barbara Knutson; materials engineering professors Bruce Hinds and Rich Eitel; biomedical engineering professors David Puleo and Hainsworth Shin, pharmaceutical sciences professors Brad Anderson, Younsoo Bae, and Heidi Mansour and mechanical engineering professor Christine Trinkle.