7th Annual Broward Student Research Symposium
FAU Broward students Saheed Oluwasina Oseni, Sanjoy Barman, Vannia Arana and Caitlyn Montero emerged as winners in the Seventh Annual Broward Student Research Symposium held Friday, March 17, 2017 at the FAU Davie campus. The annual student research symposium provides researchers in the categories of doctoral, masters and undergraduate to present their projects and the selection of the best in its class by a panel of judges comprised of faculty. Twenty students, guided by their faculty advisors, participated this year.
Today’s Seventh Annual Broward Student Research Symposium was another display of the outstanding work our FAU faculty are doing with mentoring students. The quality of projects and the diversity of student presenters reflects upon the rich experiences available to our FAU students., said Dr. Donald Torok, Associate Dean, College of Education, Broward Campuses, who also served as the emcee and host of the event. “Thank you to all the volunteers who helped to make this event a great success. Supporting events like this helps to nourish the young minds of tomorrow’s leaders.”
In the doctoral category, Saheed Oluwasina Oseni, a doctoral student in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Biological Sciences won for his project: Dual Inhibition of Energy Metabolism in Prostate Cancer Stem Cells Prevents Prostate Microtumor Recurrence in Vitro. His faculty mentor is Dr. James Kumi-Diaka.
"Despite the advances that have been made in prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment, one area that has received less attention so far is how to prevent the recurrence of the disease after a period of remission in survivors. My research is focused on bridging this gap by developing techniques that can be used to target and eliminate the root cause of prostate cancer recurrence, a small population of prostate tumor stem cells that are known to be resistant to most currently available conventional therapies and are often left untouched.” said Oseni. "One of the treatment techniques that I am exploring and/or exploiting is the selective targeting of energy metabolism in these prostate tumor-associated stem cells. So far, my preliminary studies have shown promising results and I am in the process of developing an in vitro 3D microtumor model to better understand how I can efficiently translate my findings into clinical use. I am hopeful that my research will give hope to prostate cancer survivors and make sure that their cancer does not come back."
In the master’s category, Sanjoy Barman, a graduate student in the Department of Ocean & Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science, won for his project: Resistivity, Sorptivity and Porosity of Concretes Containing Supplementary Cementitious Materials. His faculty mentor is Dr. Francisco Presuel-Moreno.
"Supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), are beneficial in concrete mixtures, blended with portland cement (binary or ternary mixes), provides a durability improved when exposed in harsh marine environments. The purpose of this research consists of testing concrete specimens with a range of different mix designs,” said Barman. “First, to evaluate rate of water absorption due to capillary suction, referred to as sorptivity. Second, to evaluate the surface resistivity. Third, to compare the total porosity of specimens with different mixes. And fourth, to obtain the correlations between resistivity and sorptivity. My plans for future research include expanding on the topic of Rapid Migration Test on concrete mixes relevant to Florida Department of Transportation. Personally, I would like to broaden my education at FAU with a PhD degree focusing on seawater modeling of corrosion process and durability of concrete structures, under the mentorship of Dr. Francisco Presuel-Moreno."
In the undergraduate category, Caitlyn Montero and Vannia Arana, undergraduate students in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Sciences, Department of Psychology, won for their project: The Influence of Language Profociency on the Appraisal of Valence of Verbal Content in Spanish-English Bilinguals. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Monica Rosselli.
The next step in our research will be to analyze the emotionality of Spanish-English bilinguals in a more objective way using electroencephalography and event related potentials,” said Montero. “It will be interesting to look at the signals in the brain to see if we can find any discrepancies.
FAU Broward Associate Provost Anthony Abbate praised all of the participants and said: “The measures that advance FAU as a major public research university are demonstrated once again by the high quality doctoral, graduate and undergraduate research projects that were presented today.”
For more information about the event, visit the Sun Sentinel article about the event.
Note: Event Program (pdf file).