Access Symposium 2019-2020

Welcome Guests

PLease scroll down to see projects

Thank you for joining us! ACCESS, established 1991, is a first-year experience that culminates in a semester of research. Each spring semester, ACCESS students work directly with faculty and graduate students to contribute to an existing research project or develop their own. This is just the beginning as over 75% of our students will continue to engage in research throughout their undergraduate education. ACCESS scholars frequently publish before graduating and numerous alumni have been recognized for their contributions to research, byway of scholarships, including the prestigious Churchill and Goldwater awards, as well as other distinctions.

The 2019 - 2020 cohort is ready for the next challenge, having been primed for research, academic success, and as new peer mentors who will pay it forward in the years to come as generations of ACCESS students have done before them.

This year students were asked to quickly pivot and adapt to presenting online. We are so proud of the grit and determination demonstrated by the 2019 - 2020 students.

Congratulations ACCESS 2019 - 2020!

-Tanya Vickers, ACCESS Director (Email: Tanya.Vickers@utah.edu)

-Sam Shaw, ACCESS Program Manager (Email: shaw@science.utah.edu)

PROJECT INTRODUCTIONS

Use links to learn more, comment, and Ask Questions

Project Title: Device Optimization & Characterization of Thin-Film Based OLEDs for Use in Electrically Detected Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Research Advisor: Christoph Boehme, Physics & Astronomy, College of Science

Introduction: We used organic thin-film layer based bipolar charge carrier injection devices, which are structurally very similar to organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), in order to study spin-dependent electronic charge carrier transitions in organic semiconductors. Ultimately, this will allow for the study of spin dependent processes of charge-carriers in OLED devices.

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Emma Kerr

Project Title: Building a Lens in the Body with Thermally-Crosslinked Biopolymers

Research Advisor: Cynthia Furse, Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction: Novel thermosensitive biopolymers are a fairly new discovery with countless applications in the medical field, but in order for them to function properly chemical crosslinking must be triggered inside the body. A coaxial antenna acting as a focused heating element is a good choice for this application. In this research project, we seek to design, build, and test a coaxial heating probe.

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Brissa Jackson

Project Title: Tagging Lysosomal Proteins to Understand Synaptic Degradation

Research Advisor: Erik Jorgensen, Biology, College of Science

Introduction: In neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, synapses stop functioning and standard pathways for degradation of aggregated proteins also stop working. Utilizing crosses and CRISPR gene editing, we created new worm strains of the nematode C. elegans with fluorescent proteins marking lysosomes and also synapses, providing us with a view of synaptic degradation pathways occurring in a neuron. A better understanding of how the lysosome and its related organelles interact with damaged synapses will allow for the advancement of new therapies to combat these diseases.

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Shaistah Din

Project Title: Classifying Artistic Style in Paintings Using Neural Networks

Research Advisor: Braxton Osting, Mathematics, College of Science

Introduction: Museums around the world are digitizing their artwork and the art needs to be cataloged. The goal of this project is to use neural networks to classify the artistic style in paintings (e.g. Impressionism, Baroque, Romanticism). A neural network is a large class of parameterized compositional functions, which can be used for machine learning tasks such as classification, object detection, regression, and much more.

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Gracie Siu

Project Title: Water Sorption Properties of Salt Occluded Zeolite-4A

Research Advisor: Michael Simpson, Materials Science & Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction: Electrorefining is an essential step in electrochemical processing of spent nuclear fuel. An electrolyte, consisting primarily of eutectic LiCl-KCl molten salt, facilitates the transfer of ions from anode to cathode, but over time becomes progressively concentrated with fission products. The salts absorb water very readily, which forms very corrosive water solutions. These salts are unsuitable for disposal without some level of treatment.

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Allison Harward

Project Title: The Relationship Between Knee Torque and Muscle Contraction for Powered Prostheses

Research Advisor: Tommaso Lenzi, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction: Lower limb powered prostheses aim to support amputee mobility by attempting to match physiological movements of an intact limb. The biomechanics analysis of non-amputee individuals provides a necessary reference to optimize the assistance provided by the powered prosthesis.

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Kai Pruyn

Project Title: Effects of Elevated CO2 on Plant Tissue Growth

Research Advisor: William Anderegg, Biology, College of Science

Introduction: An experiment was conducted on Canary Island Pine (CP) and Loblolly Pine (LP) plants to determine whether trees change the allocation of their different tissues under elevated CO2 concentrations. This experiment will provide new information that will help us predict the forest’s reactions to the changing CO2 concentration on the planet.

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Clista Galecki

Project Title: Anatomical Variations Amongst the Drosophila Phylogeny

Research Advisor: Sophie Caron, Biology, College of Science

Introduction: The genus Drosophila contains thousands of different species over a vast geographical distribution and with drastically varying ecology. By studying several of these species, we aim to uncover how neural circuitry and structures adapt over an evolutionary time frame. One way to evaluate these adaptations is by comparing the size of specific brain structures. We can then compare these structures to each species' ecology and track changes throughout the Drosophila phylogeny, providing insight towards the mechanisms of neurological adaptations.

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Tayla Chiang

Project Title: Correlation Between Air Quality and Health of the Spanish Speaking Communities in Salt Lake Valley and Disparities in Access to Health Information about COVID-19

Research Advisor: Robert C. Welsh, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine

Introduction: Air pollution is a problem for minority communities of the Salt Lake Valley, Utah (SLV). This project was initiated to determine the correlation between air quality and health of minority communities in SLV by deploying sensors to track air quality in and around the homes of participants and recording the health parameters of participants. The recent COVID-19 pandemic led to initiating a secondary study.

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Jessica Padron-Loredo

Project Title: Chemical Looping Combustion of Biomass for Energy Production and Atmospheric CO2 Reduction

Research Advisor: Kevin Whitty, Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction: Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a promising technology for generating energy while capturing CO2. The conventional focus of CLC is to make energy production from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas) carbon-neutral. It is possible to do better and make the process CO2 negative by using biomass (agricultural, forest, municipal waste). Our research focuses on how biomass functions in a CLC system. To study that, we are rebuilding a small reactor (the QFB, quartz fluidized bed) to allow fuel particles to be introduced and also to be fed (and fluidized) with steam.

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Natalie Fink

Project Title: Modeling the Effects of Algal Polymeric Substances on Fluid Flow in Sea Ice

Research Advisor: Kenneth Golden, Mathematics, College of Science

Introduction: While many factors contribute to the trend of melting polar sea ice, the role of algal communities hosted by sea ice cannot be ignored. Here we propose to model sea ice permeability in the presence of algae, and in particular explore the effect of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), secreted by these organisms, in “clogging” pores in ice.

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Anna Hyde

Project Title: A Test Apparatus to Evaluate the Effect of Impact Angle on Skull Fracture Patterns

Research Advisor: Brittany Coats, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction: According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, approximately 35 out of every 100,000 infants will experience abusive head trauma (AHT) within their first year of life, and up to 35% will be fatal (Joyce 2019). Distinguishing between accidental and inflicted trauma is challenging as infants are unable to describe the events surrounding their injuries.

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Megan Sterrett

Project Title: Effects of Drag on Ammonite Shells in Water

Research Advisor: Kathleen Ritterbush, Geology & Geophysics, College of Mines & Earth Sciences

Introduction: Long ago, ancient shelled cephalopods called Ammonites dominated Earth’s oceans. One way we can try to interpret life mode is by assessing how their fossil morphology, their shells, may have impacted their ability to swim. In this research we achieve this by examining drag, which is the force resisting the shell being pushed through the water.

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Brittney Hoskins

Project Title: Neurological Exploration of Color Changes in Bluehead Wrasses During Courtship

Research Advisor: Gary Rose, Biology, College of Science

Introduction: Bluehead wrasses, a coral ray-finned fish found in the Caribbean Sea, undergo elaborate color changes during courtship. To understand the neurological basis of these color changes, regions of the wrasse brain were stimulated using glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter. We successfully stimulated courtship-like responses in the telencephalon and diencephalon, such as darkening pectoral fin tips, darkening body, lightening body, and the head becomes dark blue.

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Alex Strich

Project Title: The Long and Short of the Matter: Distinguishing Between Columnar and Granular Sea Ice Using Remote Sensing

Research Advisor: Kenneth Golden, Mathematics, College of Science

Introduction: The conditions under which sea ice forms determine its polycrystalline structure. In particular, columnar and granular ice have very different fluid flow properties. Here we will develop electromagnetic methods that will distinguish between the two ice types.

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Kitsel Lusted

Project Title: Big Data, Big Consequences

Research Advisor: Suresh Venkatasubramanian, School of Computing, College of Engineering

Introduction: The American justice system holds almost 2.3 million people between state prisons, federal prisons, correctional facilities and local jails. As this number increases, prisoner rights are often overlooked, this includes holding individuals in county jail without a conviction. The Habeas Project (ACLU of Utah) hopes to reform this, and other injustices, by using publicly available data. My work involved using a web scraper to collect relevant information from Utah sites. By running this analysis daily, we can track how long inmates are held, and in conjunction with the ACLU, work to ensure prisoners receive representation.

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Sahana Kargi

Project Title: Finding Tangent Lines

Research Advisor: Sean Howe, Mathematics, College of Science

Introduction: If an ant sits at a point on a cubic surface, floating above the ground, then looks out at the shadow, the outline will be a quartic curve, and the lines on the surface will match up with the bitangents of the curve. Multiple pieces of code in both python and sage were created to address smaller related problems.

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Lela Feaster

Project Title: The Biomechanics of Fatigue in a Relevé

Research Advisor: Andrew Merryweather, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction: Ankle sprains are one of the most common injuries amongst athletes and these injuries never heal 100%. This study aims to analyze the biomechanical effects of fatigue in the ankle during a relevé, a ballet movement that places dancers on the tips of their toes.

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Callie Eppich

Project Title: The Effect of Calcium on MutY

Research Advisor: Martin Horvath, Biology, College of Science

Introduction: MutY is a protein that prevents DNA mutations through a process called base excision repair. Some cancer patients have been found to have “altered” MutY, yielding a substitution of the amino acid asparagine for a serine. Altered MutY interacts with calcium, which is poorly understood. It is hypothesized that calcium inhibits MutY activity, increasing DNA mutation rate.

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Mary Fairbanks

Project Title: Determining the Effect of Oxygen Contamination in the Refinement of Actinide Metals

Research Advisor(s): Michael Simpson, Metallurgical Engineering, College of Mines & Earth Sciences

Introduction: For the refinement of nuclear materials, it has become increasingly important to have the ability to separate metal impurities from actinides. This separation enables recovery and recycling of valuable rare earth metals and actinides, as well as granting greater control over the radioactive half-life and volume of eventual high-level waste. A process has been proposed that uses steps of hydriding, chlorination, and volatilization to separate various impurities from the products.

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Claire Decker

Project Title: Adhering Equity, Sustainability, and Feminine Hygiene with Hot Melts

Research Advisor: Jeffrey Bates, Materials Science & Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction: SHERO’s mission is to eliminate barriers to menstrual hygiene by creating the world’s first completely biodegradable pad. One of the defining factors of a pad’s sustainability is its shelf life. This requires creating mini versions of the product that can then be used as models for evaluating environmental factors that may limit shelf life.

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Thandi Msiska

Project Title: An Introduction to Hyperbolic Geometry

Research Advisor: Srikanth Iyengar, Mathematics, College of Science

Introduction: Using Hyperbolic Geometry, you can find complex distances characterized by many twists and turns. I considered two of the models used in Hyperbolic Geometry: the Upper Half Plane and the Poincarè Disc, as well as methods of transferring from one model to the other. Hyperbolic Geometry is used in many real-world situations: mapping the human brain, mapping the internet, possibly mapping the universe (finite vs. infinite), and other similar situations.

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Lia Smith

Project Title: Developing Game Design Tools that Support How Designers Naturally Think

Research Advisor: Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera, School of Computing, College of Engineering

Introduction: We propose that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to create game development tools that better-handle the complex system of algorithms working together to create and manage a game’s virtual world. We expect this research to make game development easier for novice developers and accessible to audiences who see games as a means to create compelling interactive experiences writ large.

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Vanessa Cox

Project Title: Replicating Ancient Roman Concrete in the University of Utah Laboratories

Research Advisor: Marie Jackson, Geology & Geophysics, College of Mines & Earth Sciences

Introduction: Ancient Roman concrete has some interesting properties due to its composition of pozzolan and lime. When attempting to replicate the Ancient Roman formula using a different material, in this case basalt from the Red Dome Quarry, getting the size ratios correct is vital to understanding why our concrete acts differently from the Roman concrete.

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Isabelle Bowers

Project Title: Investigating Methylated DNA Binding by the N-terminal Zinc Finger Domain of ZBTB38

Research Advisor: Bethany A. Buck-Koehntop, Chemistry, College of Science

Introduction: In order to define cellular function, access to different genomic regions is regulated by the addition of reversible chemical modifications to the DNA or histone proteins, defined as epigenetic modifications. Completing the project will expand understanding for how zinc finger proteins, one type of transcription factor, recognize and bind methylated DNA sequences.

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Brekke Pattison

Project Title: Deploying Machine Learning Model for the Rapid Prediction of Heat Capacity

Research Advisor: Taylor Sparks, Materials Science & Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction: Up until recently, temperature-dependent heat capacity was largely being estimated through processes that require specialized equipment and laborious experimentation, which has resulted in an insufficient range of data. The goal of this research is to show how machine learning can be a tool in the prediction of material properties, such as the temperature-dependent heat capacities, in the development of new materials.

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Esther Hammon

Project Title: Role of Linguistic Features in Public Engagement with Politicians’ Tweets During the 2017 Hurricane Season

Research Advisor: Marina Kogan, School of Computing, College of Engineering

Introduction: This research focused on public engagement with tweets from these official sources: News media, meteorologists, local authorities, humanitarian organizations, and politicians. The aim was to determine why politicians’ tweets, when compared to those of the other authoritative sources, garnered so much more engagement from the public during the 2017 hurricane season, specifically with hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

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Cristina Novac

Project Title: A Shiny App to Increase the Accessibility & Quantity of Openly Shared Data

Research Advisor: Gabriel Bowen, Geology & Geophysics, College of Mines & Earth Sciences

Introduction: The Waterisotopes Database (wiDB) is composed of data sourced from around the world and is relevant to hydrology, climatology, ecology, and forensics. The challenge with adding these data to wiDB, however, is that the formatting of the metadata is arbitrary: there are no standards for terminology or what characters (commas, slashes, etc.) can be used. To streamline this process, an app is being developed using the Shiny R package.

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Cynthia Wang

Project Title: Identifying Salt Lake Valley Smoke Events and Source Fires

Research Advisor: Gannet Hallar, Atmospheric Sciences, College of Mines & Earth Sciences

Introduction: Smoke events contribute to fine particulate pollution in the atmosphere, especially during the summer months. Even short-term exposure to particulate pollution can impact our health. This research aims to identify smoke events from data collected at the Hawthorne Site in Salt Lake City.

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Desi Crane