MSU recognized 41 postgraduate research symposium winners

Contact: Carl Smith

STARKVILLE, Miss. The Mississippi State Graduate Student Association honors 41 winners of the University’s 22nd Graduate Student Symposium.

More than 100 students recently presented oral and poster presentations to a panel of MSU faculty and researchers during a symposium. About 45 faculty judges and 20 graduate student volunteers helped run the event. The projects were divided into four categories — education, art and science, and business; forest resources and veterinary medicine; agriculture and life sciences; and mechanical engineering. The winners received cash prizes — first place — $150; second place, $75; and third place $50.

Among the winners (by category):

POSTERS

AGRICULTURE AND BIO SCIENCES DOCTORAL STUDENTS

FIRST — Ramandeep Kumar Sharma, Ph.D., Plant and Soil Science/Agronomy, India, for “Crop Crop-Climate Linkage in the Southeastern United States: A Case Study of Oats and Sorghum.”

SECOND — Li-Dang Chen, Ph.D., Life Sciences/Animal Physiology, Omaha, Nebraska, for “A Frog’s a Frog—Or Isn’t It? Shedding light on the biochemical differences of three anurans using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)’.

THIRD—Varsha Singh, Ph.D., Plant and Soil/Weed Science, India, for “Weed Suppression Potential of Sweet Potato Cultivars in the Field.”

AGRICULTURE AND BIO SCIENCES MASTER’S DEGREE

FIRST—Ranadir Reddy Venam, MSc student in Plant and Soil Science/Agronomy from India, for “Effects of Post-Sericulture Water Deficit Stress on Maize Physiology and Yield.”

SECOND—Sadikshya Pudel, MSc student in Plant and Soil Science/Agronomy from Nepal, for “Phenotyping Soybean Cultivars for Interactive Drought and Heat Stress Tolerance.”

THIRD — Courtney Winn, a graduate student in agricultural biological sciences/biochemistry from Hull, Alabama, for “‘Sweet’ Silk Glands: A Glucose-Conjugating Enzyme Highly Expressed in Moth Silk Glands.”

EDUCATION, ARTS AND SCIENCES AND BUSINESS DOCTORAL STUDENTS

FIRST — Bipin Lamichan, a PhD student in physics from Nepal, for “Oxidation resistance of an atomically planar Cu (111) surface: a first-principles investigation.”

SECOND — Hashani P. Abeysinghe, a Ph.D. student in chemistry from Sri Lanka, for “Sorption of aqueous arsenic (V) by a composite adsorbent of iron oxide and rice husk.”

THIRD—Brantley C. Ballenge, doctoral student in kinesiology/physical education, Hoover, Alabama, for “Moderation and Body Composition Mediation of the Association between Physical Activity and Arterial Health.”

EDUCATION, ARTS AND SCIENCES AND BUSINESS MASTERS

FIRST – Jennifer Ani, Educational/School Psychology Specialist and Educational Psychology/Psychometrics Master’s student from Pleasant Grove, Alabama, for “Effects of Self-Control on Early Numeracy Performance.”

SECOND — Moshood Fagbalad, M.Sc., Biological Sciences, Nigeria, for “Investigating the targeting of occidiofungin to fungal actin orthologs using a S. cerevisiae shuffling strategy.”

ENGINEERING DOCTORAL STUDENTS

FIRST — Sabyasachi Biswas, a PhD student in electrical and computer engineering from Bangladesh, for “Multi-Target Activity Classification Using MIMO Radar.”

SECOND — Mahathir Mohammad Beppi, Ph.D., Industrial and Systems Engineering, Bangladesh, for “Morphological Dynamics-Based Anomaly Detection for Layer-by-layer In-Situ Certification for Directed Energy Deposition Processes.”

THIRD — Madhubashini Lakdusinghe, Ph.D., Engineering/Chemical Engineering, Sri Lanka, for “Nanoscale Self-Assembly of Poly(3-Hexylthiophene) Using a Low Molecular Weight Gelator for Large-Scale Fabrication of Conductive Networks.”

MASTERS OF ENGINEERING

FIRST – Lorena Chavarro-Shaw, a master’s student in civil engineering from Columbia, for “Effectiveness of Best Practices for Stream Water Quality Management in Livestock Areas.”

SECOND — Subodh Poudel, Master of Civil Engineering student from Nepal, for “Application of the HEC-HMS Model to Runoff Simulation of the Catalpa Creek Watershed, Mississippi: Calibration, Validation, and Model Performance Evaluation.”

THIRD—Reese Dunn, an accelerated master’s degree in mechanical engineering student from Starkville, for “Development and Implementation of a Magnesium-Based Finite Element Degradation Model for Hydroxyapatite-Coated Orthopedic Implants.”

FOREST RESOURCES AND VETERINARY MEDICINE DOCTORS

FIRST — Oluwabori Adekanye, Ph.D., Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences/Veterinary Medical Research, Nigeria, for “Carboxylesterase 1 Modifies the Proinflammatory Phenotype of Human THP-1 Macrophages.”

MASTER’S STUDENTS OF FOREST RESOURCES AND VETERINARY

FIRST — Kyle Doose, a master’s student in forestry from Kettering, Ohio, for “A Machine Learning Approach to Stand Dynamics in a Threatened Forest Ecosystem.”

ORAL STATEMENTS

AGRICULTURE AND BIO SCIENCES DOCTORAL STUDENTS

FIRST—Josiana Argento, Ph.D., Plant and Soil/Weed Science, Brazil, for “Effects of Melatonin on Cotton Sprayed with Sublethal Doses of 2, 4-D.”

SECOND—Tingjun Lei, PhD student in electrical and computer engineering from China, for “Effects of single-particle to Coulomb interactions in bubble cores.”

THIRD — Sena Isbili, Life Sciences/Entomology Ph.D. student from Turkey, for “Molecular cloning, mutation frequency analysis, and expression profiling of insect ryanodine receptors in the soybean looper, Chrysodeixis includens.”

AGRICULTURE AND BIO SCIENCES MASTER’S DEGREE

FIRST — Dylan Lesak, MSc student in Food Science, Nutrition and Health Promotion/Food Science and Technology, Batavia, IL, for “Buffered Dry Vinegar Reduces Bacterial Growth in Refrigerated Pork Breakfast Sausage.”

SECOND—Lovepreet Singh, MSc student in Plant and Soil Science/Agronomy, India, for “Genotyping by sequencing revealed extensive genomic diversity in Bermuda grass (Cynodon spp.).”

THIRD (None)—Alice Lea Miller, a graduate student in plant and soil science/weeds from Starkville, for “Ability of Different Cover Crop Systems to Suppress Problem Weed Species in Cotton.”

Third (None) – Sadikshya Poudel, MSc student in Plant and Soil Science/Agronomy from Nepal, for “Adverse effects of high daytime temperature on soybean physiology and yield.”

EDUCATION, ARTS AND SCIENCES AND BUSINESS DOCTORAL STUDENTS

FIRST – Sapan Luitel, a PhD student in physics from Nepal, for “Experimental setup of E17011 and performance comparison of simulated and experimental results.”

SECOND—Saja Titi, PhD student in physics, Saudi Arabia, for “Spinning Proton-Rich Nuclei: Birth of Proton-Linked Spin Bands, Giant High-Spin Proton Halos, and Spin-Induced Expansion of the Nuclear Landscape.”

THIRD — Hoang Pham, a PhD student in chemistry from Vietnam, for “Synthesis of the CCC-NHC pincer Re complex: an air-stable catalyst for the coupling of ketones with primary alcohols via hydrogen borrowing.”

ENGINEERING DOCTORAL STUDENTS

FIRST — Jing Yang, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering from China, for “Hybrid Routing Method in Wireless Energy Harvesting Sensor Networks.”

SECOND — Anh Vo, PhD student in biomedical engineering from Vietnam, for “Influence of Lipid Composition on Mechanooperation and Failure of Complex Bilayer Membranes.”

THIRD — Ayanta Senanayaka, a doctoral student in industrial and systems engineering from Sri Lanka, for “A Multi-Source Transfer Similarity Learning Approach for Time Series Classification.”

MASTERS OF ENGINEERING

FIRST – William Downs, an accelerated master’s degree student in mechanical engineering from Carrollton, for “Investigation of ULTEM 9085 by fused deposition modeling using thermomechanical finite element analysis.”

SECOND — Lichang Zhu, a master’s student from China, for “Two-Dimensional Flow Simulation in Porous Media Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method.”

THIRD — Javier F. Mendez Monroy, Master of Civil Engineering student from Columbia, for “Best Professional Judgment (BPJ) Evaluation of APEX Uncertainty Analysis (UA) in the Mississippi Delta Region.”

FOREST RESOURCES AND VETERINARY MEDICINE DOCTORS

FIRST — Ian Pereira Sartorio, Ph.D. in Forest Resources/Forestry from Brazil, for “Responsing to Hurricane Disturbances: Optimizing Forest Resources Using a Supply Chain Model.”

SECOND — Emma Schultz, a doctoral student in forest resources/wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture from Jackson, for “On the Move: How Animal and Small Unoccupied Aircraft (sUAS) Movements Affect Survey Errors.”

THIRD — Krista Rupert, Forest Resources/Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture doctoral student from Kingwood, Texas, for “Postbreeding Movement and Microhabitat Selection of Frog Frogs (Rana [Lithobates] capito) in the Conecu National Forest.”

MASTER’S STUDENTS OF FOREST RESOURCES AND VETERINARY

FIRST – Maxwell Schrimpf, Master of Science in Forestry, Beavercreek, Ohio, for “Using the power of computed tomography to determine changes in relative density of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda).”

SECOND (None) — Bradley Thornton, a wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture master’s student from Savannah, Missouri, for Modeling the distribution of bird species in an open pine forest in the southeastern United States.

SECOND (None) — Sakar Nepal, a Master of Forestry student from Nepal, for “Timber Tax in Mississippi and Its Contribution to the Economy.”

THIRD—James N. Helferich, a master’s student in wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture from Broadalbin, New York, for “Effects of Climate Change on Individual Growth Rate of the Endangered Viper.”

For more information about the MSU Graduate Student Association, visit www.grad.msstate.edu/students/graduate-student-development/graduate-student-association.

MSU is Mississippi’s flagship university, accessible online at www.msstate.edu.