Eleven Old à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã University students were recently awarded Graduate Summer Research Awards from the Graduate School and the Office of Research. The program, in its third year, awarded $3,000 to each recipient to finance their summer projects. Students will provide reports of their work to the Graduate School after the award period.

To be eligible, students had to be enrolled in a graduate degree or graduate certificate program and be in good standing. They had to propose work to occupy 20 hours per week over a minimum of six uninterrupted weeks in the summer, during which time they were not being funded by the University to do other tasks, such as an assistantship. Funding decisions were based on merit.

Thirty-one applications met research continuity guidelines. The 11 recipients, project titles and faculty mentors are:

Eleni Adam
Computer science
"Enabling cancer mechanism discovery through parallel computational subtelomere assembly"
Advisors: Desh Ranjan and Harold Riethman

Amanda Firoved
Rehabilitation sciences
"Gait discrepancies across the healthy adult lifespan with and without the use of walking aids"
Advisor: Daniel Russell

Heather Hamilton
Rehabilitation sciences
"Running behavior and stress urinary incontinence in female runners"
Advisor: Mira Mariano

Rachel McCullough
English
"The PECAR dictionary"
Advisor: Bridget Anderson

Timothy Norton
MFA
"Other wonders in our world: Expanding the base of the theory of fiction"
Advisor: John McManus

Ryan Phillips
Sociology and criminal justice
"The ideology of the carceral state: Examining carceral realism through film"
Advisor: Ruth Triplett

Jessica Prebor
Rehabilitation sciences
"The effect of age on motor performance"
Advisor: Steven Morrison

Julia Rodil
Psychology
"The cost of racism: Examining the experiences of the majority"
Advisor: Alan Meca

Mohammad Stanikzai
Civil and environmental engineering
"Optimal seismic response control of buildings using the combined base-isolation and tuned mass damper system"
Advisor: Yunbyeong Chae

Hannah Twiddy
Human movement sciences
"Perspectives of health aging among older adults from Costa Rica and United States"
Advisors: Leryn Reynolds and Thomas Socha

Hamed Yousefi
Finance
"Asset linkage in exchange-traded funds (ETFs): A flow-based approach"
Advisor: Mohammad Najand

Judges for the competition were: Bryan Porter, panel chair, associate dean and professor, Graduate School; Karen Eck, panel co-chair, assistant vice president for research, Office of Research; Orlando Ayala, associate professor, engineering technology; Elko Klijn, assistant professor, management; Anne Michalek, assistant professor, communication disorders and special education; Delores Phillips, associate professor, English; Charles Sukenik, professor, physics; and Mariana Szklo-Coxe, associate professor, community and environmental health.