GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

This gallery showcases graduate students who have exceled in research. Some of them are recipients of the 2022 Summer Research Scholarships, while others have been recognized for their research at the 3MT® Competition and the Capitol Graduate Research Summit. Please join us in celebrating the amazing research being conducted by these graduate students!
Jacob R. Immel | Department of Medicinal Chemistry | School of Pharmacy | "My research investigates the development of new methods for synthesizing peptide therapeutics with the goal of treating HIV and small cell lung cancer. In the future, I hope to lead a research group that develops novel therapeutics for the advancement of human health."
Ayotunde Paul Ikujuni | Department of Molecular Biosciences | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research focuses on characterizing the folding pathway of outer membrane component of antibiotic efflux pumps in order to discover a better approach to inhibit efflux pumps assembly and make resistant bacteria more susceptible to antibiotics."
Laura Podzikowski |Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research studies two different hypotheses for why more diverse plan communities promote increased plant community growth. My research aims to help us predict where and when maintaining plant diversity will have the greatest benefits in capturing carbon."
Sayuri Sammanani Niyangoda | Department of Chemistry | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research interests are in the development and application of bioanalytical techniques for studying biological functions of neurotransmitters. In particular, my research focuses on the detection of neurotransmitters inside and outside of the brain in response to electrical or optical stimulations with the aim of understanding their role in the cognitive and behavioral impairment that occur due to Alzheimer's"
Kalin Baca | Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering | School of Engineering | "My research is focused on the separation of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerant mixtures using ionic liquids. This research is part of Project EARTH (Environmentally Applied Research Toward Hydrofluorocarbons) that is focused on identifying sustainable processes for the selective separation of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerant mixtures."
Samantha Ghali | Child Language Program | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research focuses on bilingual families to determine how they help their children learn another language and the strategies they use at home to encourage their children to learn to read. The study’s results show that bilingual families use a variety of strategies to help their children learn languages and learn to read..."
Katie N. Adams | Department of Psychology | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research focuses on romantic relationships and the underlying motivations of attraction, sexual behaviors, and relationship pursuit and maintenance... My dissertation examines how the physical environment where relationships begin (e.g., flirting, pick-up attempts) impacts the long-term success of the relationship."
Timothy Cichanowicz | Department of Political Science | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research seeks to better understand why politicians may continue to bring attention to these sensitive situations and to what extent this attention shifts public opinion..."
Samuel Dermas Habtemariam | Department of Curriculum and Teaching | School of Education and Human Sciences | "Since 1974, over 3 million refugees have had an opportunity to resettle in the US. Some of these refugees attend colleges and universities in the US. My research focuses on Eritrean college students in the Midwest and seeks to answer questions like: How do Eritrean political refugee students negotiate and renegotiate their cultural identity in postsecondary institutions in the Midwest?"
Matt Erickson | Department of Sociology | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My current study focuses on changing predictors of transitions to marriage among unmarried cohabiting different-sex couples in the U.S. To what degree do the income and education of both partners in a couple predict whether that couple ultimately marries, and how did these predictors change between the 1990s and the 2010s?"
Sheyenne Fishero | Department of Linguistics | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My dissertation research examines the effectiveness of different vocal cues, like speaking rate and pitch, in separating the speaker's voice from other voices in the background or competing speech streams..."
Ross Gilmore | Department of Philosophy | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "I am interested in analyzing the Statesman and Philebus as twin projects, examining different practical problems from within a shared metaphysical and methodological framework. During my Summer Research Scholarship term, I examined how Plato's consideration of politics relates to his approach to his treatment of psychological and ethical issues."
Timmia Hearn DeRoy | Department of Theatre and Dance | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My dissertation research seeks to further develop methods that can be used by performance practitioners to tell stories in ways that are both trauma-informed and healing for affected populations: the audience, the ensemble, and the peoples whose realities are narrativized for consumption. "
John Paul Henry | Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research addresses knowledge gaps concerning how technology and visuality create space and transcend borders; the embodied and affective qualities created by authoritarian surveillance states, such as Cuba; and the geopolitical implications of sousveillance – or using technology to document those in power."
Muhammad Ittefaq | Department of Journalism | School of Journalism & Mass Communications | "I study how local health departments in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma used social media, particularly Facebook, to share important health information during Covid-19. My work seeks to help us understand how local health departments can effectively reach local populations during public health crisis situations and tailor health information on social media to meet the needs of their communities."
Jenny Mallik | Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "I am currently researching on COVID-19 in the slums of Kolkata, India. My research aims to determine the risk factors for contracting COVID-19 within the slums of Kolkata... The study also seeks to understand the treatment-seeking behavior of slum residents during the coronavirus pandemic."
Nhung Thi TUyet Nguyen | Department of Journalism | School of Journalism and Mass Communications | "My study explores the use of different strategies for environmental and social disclosure on Twitter pages of oil and gas companies in the world and the audience’s reactions regarding climate change..."
Uttiya Paul | Department of Economics | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "...My research goal is to generalize the theory of DMCS and develop numerical algorithms for computation purpose."
Aakanchcha Raj | School of Architecture and Design | My research focuses on two neighborhoods - Ivanhoe and Wendel Phillips in Kansas City, Missouri. My goal is to understand how residents with similar socio-economic conditions and racial demography identify their neighborhoods. Further, comparing results from both neighborhood findings, my research aims to understand the common difference in elements of identification and how both neighborhood boundaries differ from the proposed Census-defined block data.
Mindy Townsend | Department of Physics and Astronomy | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences| "I am studying a specific type of extremely massive galaxies called Luminous Red Galaxies to learn how much massive galaxies can grow from accretion, or mergers of smaller galaxies into a larger galaxy, alone. By studying tens of thousands of these galaxies, we can make statistically robust calculations of how much massive galaxies were expected to grow in the last 8 billion years from accretion of smaller galaxies"
Pavel Valencia Acuna |Department of Physics and Astronomy | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research examines ultrafast photocarrier dynamics in mixed-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures."
Jeongwon Yoon | Department of History of Art | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My dissertation research examines the Tokyo-based avant-garde art group Free Artists Association, which included abstract artists from both the Empire of Japan and Colonial Korea. I analyze the association's group activities, thereby presenting diverse ways in which artists promoted abstract art and challenged the political and cultural authorities of the colonial period..."
Jinjin Zhang | Department of Mathematics | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research focuses on applying the balancing domain decomposition by constraints (BDDC) methods to the large scale algebraic systems arising from the discretization of partial differential equations(PDEs). I am interested in extending the BDDC methods to the symmetric/non-symmetric positive definite systems from the HDG discretization and studying the convergence rate of the systems after the preconditioner being applied."
Haoran Ni | Department of History | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My current research focuses on the "glocalization" (localization & globalization) of Coca-Cola in the modern Chinese market to deepen our understanding of how American multinational companies like Coca-Cola expand their global influence and soft power."
Eiman Graiz | Department of Architecture | School of Architecture and Design | "My research focuses on the building envelope which can account for up to two-thirds of the total energy consumed by the building to maintain comfortable interior environments within climates that require seasonal heating and/or cooling..."
Damilola Adepeju-Fashina | Department of Sociology | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My work studies historical records and secondary literature to better understand the conditions and factors that promote and inhibit conflict. I argue that the particular ethnopolitical identities and the unequal economic development in northern Nigeria are better at explaining why this region experiences more conflict relative to the rest of the country..."
Christopher Barrett | Department of Anthropology | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research focuses on ancient genomics and how it can help answer anthropological and evolutionary questions. In collaboration with local communities, I work to reconstruct early Unangax (Aleut/Aleutian) life in the western Aleutian Islands of Alaska. My work is an amalgamation of molecular biology, stable isotopes studies, and computer science..."
Brianne Richson | Department of Psychology | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | "My research focuses on the assessment of eating disorders, particularly how the ways we measure eating disorders may differ across the diverse range of individuals who may present with eating disorders including adolescents, men, and individuals experiencing food insecurity. I also focus on the long-term dynamics between eating-disorder psychopathology and suicidality in veterans who have recently left military service..."
Annu Thomas | Department of Medicinal Chemistry School of Pharmacy | "I work on developing new chemical reactions. My particular area of research is on tethered alkene functionalization, where I try to make new Cabon-Nitrogen and Carbon-Oxygen bonds."