WSU Summer Undergraduate Research Featured at Virtual Symposia

July 27, 2021

Pullman, Wash.—Washington State University will feature the mentored research of nearly 60 undergraduates from 36 universities at three virtual symposia on Friday, July 30, Aug. 3, and Aug. 6. Each event runs from 10:30 a.m.-noon each day. The public is invited to the no-cost presentations.

“The Office of Undergraduate Research has had the opportunity to assist research programs from a number of STEM disciplines this summer as they hosted students on campus and virtually for around 10 weeks,” said Colin Mannex, associate director.

“The students may come from institutions across the nation plus WSU, but they shared a common experience by working with WSU’s outstanding faculty researchers and their teams on a variety of important projects.

“We look forward to hearing individual students explain the work they did and the results they found during their time at WSU.”

Supported by grants from organizations such as the National Science Foundation as well as professors’ grants, the research projects and their principal investigators this year are:

“Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Training in Wearable Computing,” led by Hassan Ghasemzadeh
“Stakeholder Informed Modeling of Innovations in the FEW,” led by Julie Padowski
“Research Experiences for Undergraduates on HPC and Deep Learning,” led by Dingwen Tao
“Research in Interdisciplinary STEM Education (RISE),” led by Erika Offerdahl
“Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Change: Measurements and Modeling in the Pacific Northwest,” led by Shelley Pressley
“Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA),” led by Shelley Pressley
“Plant Cell Biology and Biochemistry,” led by Andrei Smertenko
“Phenomics Big Data Management,” led by Sindhuja Sankaran
“Waves in the Universe and Technology,” led by Brian Collins
“Transcriptional Regulators of Plant Cell Wall Biosynthesis,” led by Laura Bartley
“Nuclear, Optical, Magnetic, and Electronic (NOME) Materials Laboratory,” led by John McCloy

Undergraduate researchers working in the laboratories of Brian Collins, Shelley Pressley, Sindhuja Sankaran, and Andrei Smertenko pose together for a group photo taken at an orientation event on June 7.

Student projects this Friday will be from the Sankaran, Padowski, and Offerdahl labs. On Aug. 3, they will be from the Collins, Tao, Ghasemzadeh, and Bartley labs. On Aug. 6, presenters will be from the Pressley, McCloy, and Smertenko labs. A schedule posted on the summer undergraduate research website details the names of student researchers and their presentation times.

The Office of Undergraduate Research is part of the Division of Academic Engagement and Student Achievement in the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President.

Media contact: Colin Mannex, Associate Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research, colin.mannex@wsu.edu