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Research Highlights: Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

More than 200 students from each of UNO's six colleges had the opportunity last week to showcase their hard work at the 2019 Student Research and Creative Activity Fair. A number of IS&T students took home awards from the fair. Meet Deepika, a current graduate student earning her degree in Management Information Systems, and Elizabeth, a current Bioinformatics undergraduate student, and their research.

  • published: 2019/03/14
  • contact: Charley Steed - University Communication
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IS&T Winners

The fair, organized by UNO's Office of Research and Creative Activity and held at the Criss Library on UNO's Dodge Campus, featured poster and oral presentations from students at the undergraduate, master's and doctoral levels.

Explore Some of This Year's Presentations

Each year, volunteer judges featuring faculty, staff, alumni and community members, identify the top presentations at each level. This year's winners from IS&T were:

Undergraduate Oral Presentations

OUTSTANDING

Donovan Orn, Computer Science; Advisor: Hesham Ali, Department of Computer Science
"A Comparative Study for Feature Selection Algorithms to Analyze Gait Patterns for Health Purposes"

Undergraduate Poster Presentations

BEST

Katherine Sindelar, Bioinformatics; Advisor: Dhundy Bastola, School of Interdisciplinary Informatics
"Life in the Phyllobiome: Functional Adaptations in Novosphingobium sp. ‘Leaf2’, a Leaf-Borne Alphaproteobacteria"

Graduate Poster Presentations

HONORABLE MENTION

Kelley Jensen, Management Information Systems; Advisor: Sachin Pawaskar, Information Systems & Quantitative Analysis
"Utilizing Technology to Empower Girls"

With more than 200 students participating in the 2019 Student Research and Creative Activity Fair the range of topics covered were was extensive and varied.

See the full article and the rest of the winners/highlights here.

Included below are just a few of the IS&T presentations from this year's fair and thoughts from the students involved.

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Deepika Jantz

Major: Management Information Systems
Year: Master's
Title: "Cloud Control and Monitoring: Personal Food Computer Version 2.0"

Master's student Deepika Jantz developed a project with the goal of addressing two pressing issues in Nebraska: how to grow produce during times of extreme weather and how to get young students interested in STEM education. Her solution was to use open source software that remotely monitors and care for plants grown using food computers to more easily convey STEM concepts to young students in the state.

"The inspiration here is that Nebraska is a state prone to weather changes where you have to depend on the outside to get plants, to get food. The concept is already available from OpenAg, they have already built it, so I wanted to implement this and help educate the students in Nebraska - that way they will have more knowledge and play around with the technology because the more people you educate the more the technology can grow."


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Elizabeth Russman

Major: Bioinformatics and Spanish
Year: Freshman
Involvement: Sigma Kappa; University Honor’s Program; Bioinformatics Club
Title: "Precision Medicine: Bioinformatics Assists in Finding Accurate Treatment for HER2 Positive Breast Cancer in Humans"

The research of Elizabeth Russman, freshman bioinformatics and Spanish major, was inspired by a deeply personal event in her life. She is studying the subtypes of HER2 positive breast cancer, which helps personalize treatment options. This is a far cry from just two decades ago when little hope existed regarding life after diagnosis.

“So back in 2015 My mom was actually diagnosed with HER2 positive breast cancer and it's a difficult cancer to treat. Fifteen years ago, if you were diagnosed with this, it was an automatic death sentence basically. My mom met someone who actually had this cancer and then her cancer came back, and when you think about it you say, “Oh, same cancer same treatment plan.” You think that they would be cured the same way. So I was just really curious about that and decided to delve deeper. I chose to study precision medicine, specifically HER2 positive breast cancer, and I discovered that there were four different subtypes that all respond to treatment differently. My research was just a call to do precision medicine and figure out which four of those subtypes that you have because it totally affects the treatment.”