2017 SURF award recipients announced

Sixteen students have been named recipients of the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship (OURS) Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) awards for 2017.

This year, a record number of students applied to the SURF program, which fosters a community of undergraduate research every summer at Radford University. SURF students work with faculty mentors to plan, develop and implement their original research in a variety of fields.

This year's recipients represent multiple disciplines, including the arts, science and speech/language pathology. They are expected to work an average of 20 hours a week for 10 weeks. In turn, they receive a $2,000 stipend to conduct a project that will contribute knowledge and understanding to their discipline.

For summer 2017, the SURF students, their faculty mentors and projects are:

• Justin Archer, under the mentorship of Jason Davis, will be testing the effect of Vespa Amino Acid Mixture, a compound derived from the Japanese giant hornet, on the mitochondria of genetically modified fruit flies.
• Alex Atwood, under the mentorship of Sara O’Brien and Chris Monceaux, will be developing a method for the detection and quantification of trenbolone, an endocrine disrupting chemical used in the beef industry.
• Morgan Bishop, under the mentorship of Laura Gruss, will be studying the correlation between foot structure, gender, type of sport and knee pain, while working with Radford University soccer and track and field athletes.
• James Board, under the mentorship of Caleb Adams, will be modeling Virginia’s Lone star tick as a disease vector for the spread of Rickettsia amblyommii and Ehrlichia chaffeensis.
• Lauren Boush, under the mentorship of J.P. Barfield, will be working with individuals with Cerebral Palsy to demonstrate how they can increase their level of physical activity to reduce both pain and the amount of “social activity limitation.”
• Kimber Cheek, under the mentorship of Donna Boyd, will be in Dundee, Scotland, identifying risk factors associated with non-accidental pediatric cranial trauma toward preventing mortality from such trauma.
• Adaisha Cole and Elizabeth Kunde, under the mentorship of Trish Winter, will evaluate the impact of interprofessional music therapy and speech/language pathology interventions on the development of skills in young children.
• Evan Cowling, under the mentorship of George Harakas, will be synthesizing novel xenophilic metal clusters
• Nicole Diambra, under the mentorship of Jason Davis and Danah Bella, will be examining Peruvian dance in an effort to gain insight into cultural preservation through dance, as well as the relationship between dance and tourism.
• Chelsey Dietzel, under the mentorship of Drew Dodson, is creating a freshwater stingray sculpture and documentary on the creation and selected fauna of the Amazon.
• Dhamindra Dulal, under the mentorship of by Sara O’Brien will be determining the effect on reproductive development in mosquitofish exposed to the endocrine disrupting chemical nonylphenol.
• Camille Hamway, under the mentorship of Dayna Hayes, will be investigating the stress effects of animal-researcher interactions toward designing better biological and psychological research models.
• Melissa Kesterson, under the mentorship of Justin Anderson, will be using chemically modified phenazines to inhibit the mosquito-borne La Crosse Virus.
• Matthew Koldewey, under the mentorship of David Sallee, will be determining the impact of training on a BMT Suspension system on cutting speed.
• Kristopher Moore, under the mentorship of Amy Balija, will be creating polymers from biorenewable materials that can remove pollutants from water.
• Conner Philson, under the mentorship of Jason Davis, will be deploying an automated feeding system to better understand the conditions that affect primate feeding behaviors in anthropogenically disturbed and undisturbed sites within the Amazon Rainforest.