Achievements
CAS Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Winners Announced 29th annual conference honors scholarly and creative works
This year’s Robyn Mathias Student Research Conference award winners have been announced. Now in its 29th year, the conference gives College of Arts and Sciences undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students an opportunity to present original scholarly and creative works in the form of paper and poster presentations.
The research conference is sponsored in part by a generous grant from the late AU trustee and alumna Robyn Rafferty Mathias as well as by the NASA District of Columbia Space Grant Consortium. It provides a forum for students to present their work before colleagues, faculty, and friends. College of Arts and Sciences students from all disciplines are encouraged to enter, and students in other schools may submit work that was completed in a CAS course.
The 2019 winners are as follows:
Social Sciences Poster Winner
Roger Ahlstrom
Senior, Economics
The "TOMS" Paradox: Why Consumers Fall for Good Intentioned Products, But Unproven Results
Public Health Poster Winner
Julia Harris
MA Candidate, Psychology
Minority Stress is Associated with a Stress-is-Debilitating Mindset
Neuroscience Poster Winners
Megan Mitchell
Junior, Neuroscience
An Open-Source Syringe Pump for Behavioral Neuroscience Research
Rachel Weger
Senior, Neuroscience
Outcomes of Early Cerebellar Injury in Preterm Infants
Kyra Swanson
PhD Candidate, Behavior, Cognition, and Neuroscience
Strategic Factors in the Two-Armed Bandit Task: Computational Model, Validation in Rodents, and Role of mPFC
Paper Presentation Winners, PQRS
Sarah Hoback
Sophomore, Physics and Mathematics
Atomic Simulations of Thin Films
Anthony Santana
Senior, Physics
Deep Reinforcement Learning for High Fidelity Qudit Gates
Paper Presentation Winner, Byways in the Brain
Laura BlevinsÌý(* received grand travel prize up to $1000)
PhD Candidate, Behavior, Cognition, and Neuroscience
The Cerebellum Modulates the Acquisition of Social Information in Autism
Paper Presentation Winners, Arts
Sergio Guerra Abril
Senior, Mathematics and Dance
"Transforming Spaces/Continuous Bodies:" Embodiment and Actualization of Topological Spaces Through Dance Choreography
Lauren Brown
Senior, Dance
The Confluence of Dance and Game-Play
Paper Presentation Winner, Womanhood Past and Present
Katherine Ruckle
MA Candidate, Art History
St. Wilgefortis: Considering Modern and Medieval Hirsute Audiences
Paper Presentation Winner, Living Just Enough for the City
Alaa Hammoudeh
Junior, Justice and Law
Gaps in the Achievement Map
Paper Presentation Winner, American as Apple Pie: Racism in the USA
William Helfrich
Senior, Economics and History
"Nonsense Mouthed by the Liberal Media:" the Boston Busing Crisis and Conservative Activism
Paper Presentation Winner, Black Lives in the DMV
Ebonica Sharp
PhD Candidate, Anthropology
It Was More than a Game: The Desegregation of Montgomery County Public Schools and the River Road Baseball Teams