Students show off projects at Show Me Research Week
April 21, 2023
Clean water, healthcare and education are issues that affect everyone. This week, Mizzou Engineers demonstrated how engineering impacts all of these topics during their presentations at Show Me Research Week.
More than 55 engineering students displayed posters in Memorial Union, with researchers available to answer questions during every session. They conducted projects in the categories of engineering, behavioral and social sciences, physical and mathematical sciences, life sciences and the humanities, demonstrating the cross-campus collaboration opportunities available to Mizzou students.
Scroll to learn more about a few of the projects presented by our undergraduate students or click here to view a list of all research projects.
Kate Barnard is a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. Through her project, “Electrospun Polymer Membrane as an Efficient Microplastic Filter,” she created a membrane to filter microplastic contaminants out from water with a 99.1% efficiency rate. Her research mentor is Maryam Salehi, an assistant professor of civil engineering. Devin Hackman, Ty Kalscheur and Erika Zhou created a virtual reality (VR) scenario for nursing students to practice nursing skills in a virtual environment. Kalscheur is an information technology student, Hackman is a computer science major and Zhou is studying computer science with a minor in IT. They collaborated on the project with researchers from the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing, under the guidance of Associate Teaching Professor Fang Wang.Katrina Brathwaite’s research project, “Electrochemical Properties of Nanoscale Polyethylenedioxythiophene (pEDOT) Thin-Films Grown by Oxidative Molecular Deposition (oMLD),” explores whether there is a more efficent way to desalinate water. She earned a student poster award for the work earlier this spring. Brathwaite is a senior in chemical engineering and has been working on the project under the direction of Assistant Professor Matthias Young. Engineering sophomores Carlos Aleixo Domingues (industrial engineering) and Theo Johnson (computer engineering) worked with Tanner Smith, a journalism student, on their project,”Defying the trend: An analysis of minority portrayals in Latinx-focused news outlets.” The project aims to determine whether Latinx-focused news sources portray Latinx people in a way that confirms or disconfirms negative stereotypes.Chloe Groner, a junior in civil engineering, determining how many microplastics are in biosolid samples taken from a Columbia wastewater treatment facility. She is working on the project, “Quantification and Characterization of Microplastics in Biosolid Generated by a Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant,” under the mentorship of Maryam Salehi.John Winter is working with Associate Dean of Student Services and Academic Programs Roger Fales on his project, “Automation of Oxygen Saturation and Volumetric Flow Rate for Premature Babies.” Winter is a senior studying mechanical engineering. He and the team are collaborating with medical professionals to automate oxygen delivery to premature babies.Biomedical engineer Folaoluwashewa Shofu’s research, “The Use of Hyperpolarized Gas MRI for Detection of Respiratory Diseases: A Data Analysis Approach,” explores lung ventilation. She is working with researchers at NextGen Precision Health who collect MRI images, which Shofu segments using different data analytics tools, including the programming software R. Her faculty mentor is Robert Thomen, an assistant professor in the School of Medicine’s Radiology Department with a joint appointment in biological and biomedical engineering.Freshman biological engineering student Josh Donaldson joined a social science research group in a longitudinal study investigating children’s early mathematical understanding focusing on cardinality, the association of numbers with the quantities they represent. Other students on the project, “How do multisystemic factors influence children’s cardinality comprehension?” are studying health sciences, biological sciences, economics and political science.
