undergraduate research paper awards

AP-LS Award for Best Undergraduate Paper

AP-LS Undergraduate Paper Award Committee

June 30, 2024

• Description
• Eligibility
• How to Apply
• Proposal Review Criteria

The AP-LS Award for Best Undergraduate Paper is awarded to an outstanding undergraduate research paper that is focused on the interdisciplinary study of psychology and law.

First ($500), second ($200) and third place ($150) winners are conferred annually, and winners will be be encouraged to submit their work as a poster presentation at the AP-LS Annual Conference (as first author).

To be eligible for an award the student must be the major contributor to a project on a topic relevant to psychology and law (i.e., the student had primary responsibility for initiating and conducting the project even though the project will usually be conducted under the supervision of a mentor).

Data collection should be complete.

Students may submit their work during their first post-undergraduate year as long as the work was conducted during their undergraduate career.

Submit Here

Submissions (APA-paper and letter of support) must be emailed to to the Chair of the Undergraduate Paper Award Committee at [email protected] as .doc or .docx (Microsoft Word) files. Deadline for receipt of all materials is June 30.

• One copy of the APA-style paper being submitted for consideration.
• The paper should be a maximum of 25 pages of text (12-point font, one-inch margins), including the abstract and tables/figures.
• The 25-page maximum does not include the title page and references.
• A letter of support from the student’s faculty mentor.
• Each applicant must have their mentor submit a letter of support to the chair that characterizes the nature and extent of the student’s contribution to the project.
• This letter should be a maximum of two pages of text (12-point font, one-inch margins).

Applications that do not meet these requirements for the paper and letters of support will be disqualified.

Proposals will be reviewed by members of the AP-LS Undergraduate Paper Award Committee based on independence, originality, contribution to field, soundness of design and analyses and quality of writing.

Past Recipients

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Award for Undergraduate Research

Undergraduates, now is your chance to turn your research project into a cash prize.

The University of Maryland Libraries, the Office for Undergraduate Research (OUR), and Maryland's College of Information are partnering to showcase and reward undergraduate research projects.

Up to four awards of $1,000 each will be awarded to undergraduates who impress us with their research. The awards, provided by the University of Maryland Libraries, aim to promote the value and use of library services and information resources. 

Essays and projects of winning students will be included in the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM) .

Submissions will be accepted beginning December 11, 2023.  The submission deadline has been extended and will now close at noon on March 29, 2024.

Apply here .

For questions and more information about the Library Award for Undergraduate Research, contact Patti Cosard, Indigenous Studies & Special Collections Librarian, at [email protected] .

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Award

As part of our ongoing commitment to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA), the University of Maryland Libraries seeks to recognize and empower students to explore diversity issues, educate themselves, and inspire others to advance social justice by embracing the IDEA values through research. 

The Libraries are committed to creating and maintaining diverse and inclusive learning and research environment that nurtures the growth and development of our students.

We encourage individual submissions of research papers related to diversity issues including but not limited to race/ethnicity, gender identity, religious heritage, socio-economic status, first-generation university students, veterans, disability/ableism, ageism, national origin/immigration status, indigenous heritage, sexual orientation, etc. One of these four awards will be awarded to the individual IDEA winner.

Criteria and Guidelines

To be eligible for the awards , individual applicants must:

• Be a currently enrolled University of Maryland College Park undergraduate at any class level, and in any discipline (e.g. agriculture, arts, humanities, information science, public policy, social sciences, sciences, etc.).
• Have completed their research paper/project for a credit course or under the direction of a professor or a librarian at the University of Maryland College Park.
• Agree to submit their research paper/project to the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM). Research papers are not eligible for consideration if they are pending review by the publisher, accepted for publication, or already published in print or digital form. 
• Have their research papers/projects and the essay written in English. For papers written in a foreign language, follow the guidelines in FAQ section, item #7.
• Agree to have the application used as data in a study on trends of undergraduate information seeking and use.

To be eligible for an IDEA Award for Undergraduate Research , as well as the criteria above, the research paper should focus on research that promotes our understanding of diversity issues including but not limited to race/ethnicity, gender identity, religious heritage, socio-economic status, first-generation university students, veterans, disability/ableism, ageism, national origin/immigration status, indigenous heritage, sexual orientation, etc.

Papers/projects will be judged based on the following criteria:  

• Sophistication, originality, or unusual depth or breadth in final research product.
• A bibliography or other appropriate listing of sources consulted.
• A reflective essay.

An essay consisting of 750-1,000 words is required that describes your experience in using the information resources and library services. Explain your research strategy and how you used and evaluated the resources found. The following questions should be addressed in your essay. If one or more of the questions are not applicable, please explain why.

• How did you begin your research? Explain how you came up with your research query/topic.
• How did you discover your sources? Which library or other information sources did you use? Explain particular techniques or strategies that you used while searching and discovering information.
• Did you seek assistance from a librarian, a professor, or someone else? If so, how this interaction impacted your research process? Was there anyone in particular who gave you the inspiration to turn your research in a different direction?
• How did you select and evaluate the sources you found? Explain which criteria you used for selecting sources.
• What did you learn during the research process that will help further your academic or professional career?

Finally, reflecting back on your research experience, what would you change?  How could the library be a better place for your research needs? Be creative and bold in your imagination!

Applications must include all of the following:

• Application form. Applications are collected through a form. To submit your application, you will need the following information in addition to general information about yourself and your submission: Summary of the paper/project. - Course number and course name for which the paper/project was completed. - Year and semester the paper/project course was completed. - Citation style used for references (e.g. MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). - Name of instructor or librarian supporting this application as well as their email, phone number, and the college/school and department to which they belong.
• Address the Review Committee
• Date the Letter
• Introduction: who the supporter is and how they know the applicant
• Description of applicant's library research strategy as known/observed by supporter
• Evaluation of the significance of research discussed in the applicant's paper
• Worthiness of the applicant's work for the award
• Reflective essay (750-1,000 words) describing applicant’s research strategies and use of library tools and information resources.
• Bibliography (please do not remove the references list from your original research paper/project)
• Written projects: The length of the paper may vary depending on the assignment.
• Digital projects: If web-based, include a URL of the digital project in your Application form (next to the Title of the research/project) along with the other application components. If the project is in a format that cannot be submitted electronically, such as an architectural model, CD or DVD, deliver it by the due date in person to Patti Cossard.

All necessary documents must be in .pdf format. Save your files using your last name and the name of the document:

• Lastname_Application.pdf
• Lastname_LetterOfSupport.pdf
• Lastname_Essay.pdf
• Lastname_ResearchPaper.pdf
• Lastname_Bibliography.pdf

You will receive a confirmation e-mail after you complete your application process. To be considered for the award, applications must be received by noon on March 15, 2024 . Late applications will not be considered.

Applications must be submitted online via this Application web site. Submissions may be accepted after the deadline. See the Application guidelines section of the left sidebar for more information.

If, due to format, your project cannot be submitted electronically, contact Patti Cossard,  [email protected] , to make alternate arrangements.

No, we are no longer accepting group projects.

No. Instead of submitting several research papers, choose the best one and describe your research experience in your essay. 

Yes. All submissions must include a properly formatted bibliography in a recognized style (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). A bibliography is mandatory regardless of whether or not your professor originally required it. Check out the UMD Libraries' Citation Tools  for help creating your bibliography.

Yes. Students can still apply for the library award. 

If the research paper is written in a foreign language, translate it in English and place the following note at the beginning of your document in italics:

This is a translated English version of the original paper written in [state the language here]. The original text in [foreign language] follows on p. [….] in this document. 

When you submit items, you agree to the DRUM license and grant the University of Maryland a non-exclusive right to retain, preserve, and provide access to your material. The term "non-exclusive" means that you retain all copyright to your work. You can still enter into agreements with other organizations (such as publishers) granting them rights to use your material.

If you have further questions, please email [email protected] .

The jury consists of three to four  subject librarians , a faculty member of the Libraries' IDEA committee, and a faculty member from the iSchool , College of Information Studies.

Not necessarily. The prize will only be given when the work submitted is of high enough quality to warrant it. We anticipate giving the prize every year, therefore, but do not guarantee it.

This prize is aimed at promoting the use of library research among undergraduates in order to prepare them for lifelong learning. The goal is to promote and reward research strategies at an earlier stage of learning than graduate level work.

Yes, examples of past award winning papers can be found in DRUM Collection: Library Award for Undergraduate Research .

The award may affect your financial aid. Please consult your financial aid advisor or the Office of Student Financial Aid .

Past Award Recipients

Emily Eason,  Senior student. Major: Government and Politics (Concentrating in International Relations)

Faculty Librarian: Jordan Sly, University Libraries, Teaching and Learning Services

Library Award Essay and Project

Research Paper:  Olde Towne, New Townspeople: An Anthropological Analysis of the LifeStages of 1.5 Generation Latino Immigrants in Gaithersburg, MD

Winner of the 2022 Library IDEA Award for Undergraduate Research

Linette Kingston,  Senior student. Major: Health and Science Analytics

Faculty professor: Dr. Andrea Lopez, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Anthropology

Research Paper:  Surveillance in the United States: From the War on Drugs to the War on Terrorism

Lauren Krauskopf,  Senior student. Major: History

Faculty professor: Dr. Katarina Keane, College of Arts and Humanities, History

Librarian: Judy Markowitz, University Libraries, Teaching and Learning Services

Research Paper:  Discomfort and Unpleasantness: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement at the Supreme Court

Karoline Trovato,  Senior student. Major: Psychology 

Faculty professor: Dr. Karen O'Brien, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Psychology

Research Paper:  Educate and Empower: An Online Intervention to Improve College Women’s Knowledge and Confidence When Communicating in a Romantic Relationship

Jesse Anderson , Junior student. Major: Information Science (Concentrating in Data Science)

Faculty Librarian: Rachel Gammons, University Libraries, Teaching and Learning Services

Research Paper: In Support of Abstinence-Plus Education: Evaluating the Shortcomings of Peer-to-Peer Education and Abstinence-Only Programs in the Context of Attitudes, Intentions, and Behaviors

Winner of the 2021 Library IDEA Award for Undergraduate Research

Boban Dedović , Senior student. Major: Psychology 

Faculty professor: Edward Bernat, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Psychology

Research Paper: ‘Minds’ in ‘Homer’: A quantitative psycholinguistic comparison of the Iliad and Odyssey

William Wong , Senior student. Major: English and History

Faculty professor: Linda Coleman, College of Arts and Humanities, English

Research Paper: Strength in Contradiction: The Radicalization of Incel Rhetoric

Boban Dedović , Senior student. Major: History

Faculty professor: Matthew J. Suriano, College of Arts and Humanities, Jewish Studies

Research Paper: "Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld": A Centennial Survey of Scholarship, Artifacts, and Translations  

Peter Roberts ,  Senior student. Major: History

Faculty professor: Lauren Michalak, College of Arts & Humanities, History Department

Librarian: Eric Lindquist

Research Paper: Religious and Ethnic Motivations for the Philhellenic Movement During the Greek Revolution

Cecilia Sun,  Junior student. Major: Communication

Faculty professor: Carly Woods, College of Arts & Humanities, Communication Department

Archivist: Lae'l Hughes-Watkins

Research Paper: On Rachel Carson's Continuing Legacy: How Students at the University of Maryland Aim to Commemorate Carson in 21st Century Environmental Activism

Meron Gebre-Egziabher,  Freshman student. Major: Undeclared

Faculty professor: Norrell Edwards, College of Arts & Humanities, English Department

Library Award Essay and Project

Research paper: Dismantling of the African American Nuclear Family

Samantha Martocci , Senior student. Major: Behavioral and Community Life

Faculty professor: Elizabeth Aparicio, School of Public Health, Department of Behavioral and Community Life

Librarian: Nedelina Tchangalova

Research paper: Examining the Relationship Between Pornography Consumption and Rape Myth Acceptance Among Undergraduate Students

David Rekhtman , Sophomore student. Major: Biochemistry; and Biology with a concentration in Neurobiology and Physiology

Faculty professor: Dr. James Hagberg, School of Public Health, Department of Kinesiology

Research paper: The Role of Adrenergic Intervention on Thoracic and Abdominal Perivascular Adipose Tissue Expansion in Rats with and without Heart Failure

Rachael Edmonston , Sophomore student. Major: History

Faculty professor: Roger Bailey, College of Arts & Humanities, Department of History

Librarians: Eric Lindquist and Cecelia Vetter

Library award essay and project

Research paper: Confederate Female Spies: Changing Northern Perceptions in Fiction and Nonfiction and it’s Affect on Popular Opinion of the Confederate Cause

Sarvar Oreizi-Esfahani , Senior student. Major: Psychology

Faculty professor: Tracy Tomlinson, College of Behavioral & Social Sciences, Department of Psychology

Research paper: The Relationship between Student Burnout and the development of Aggressive Tendencies

Elizabeth Patterson , Junior student. Major: English

Faculty professor: Jessica Enoch, College of Art & Humanities, Department of English

Librarians: Elizabeth Novara

Research paper: Finding Eliza Messenger

Michelle Glazer , Senior student. Major: History

Faculty professor: Marlene J. Mayo, College of Arts & Humanities, Department of History

Librarians: Eric Lindquist and Amy Wasserstrom

Noah Jarrah , Sophomore student. Major: Aerospace Engineering

Faculty professor: Andrew Becnel, A. James Clark School of Engineering, Department of Aerospace Engineering

Sarah Schurman , Junior student. Major: English

Faculty professor: Mark A. Forrester, College of Art & Humanities, Department of English

Sophie Dean , Junior student. Major: Public Health Science, English

Faculty professor: Devon Corcia Payne-Sturges, School of Public Health, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health

Librarian: Nedelina Tchangalova

Library award essay and project  

Michelle Sauer , Sophomore student. Major: English, Secondary Education

Faculty professor: Zita Nunes, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of English

Librarian: Patricia Herron

Kathleen Weng , Senior student. Major: English (Art History minor)

Faculty professor: Yui Suzuki, College of Art & Humanities, Department of Art History & Archaeology

Library liaison: Tim Hackman

Matthew Gabb , Junior student, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of Anthropology

Faculty professor: Sean Downey, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of Anthropology

Library liaison: Otis Chadley

Lenaya Stewart , Senior student, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of English

Faculty professor: Laura Rosenthal, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of English

Library liaison: Patricia Herron

Robert Tully , Senior student, College of Computer, Mathematical, & Natural Sciences, Department of Biology

Faculty professor: John Rosser Matthews III, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of English

Honorable Mention

Xiuyu Shen , Freshman student, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of English

Faculty professor: Ralph Bauer, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of English

Library liaison: Patricia Herron

Benjamin Kramer , Junior student, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of History

Faculty professor: Robyn Muncy, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of History

Library liaison: Lauren Brown

Aviva Pollack , Junior student, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of Art History and Archaeology

Faculty professor: Marjorie Venit, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of Art History and Archaeology

Library liaison: Sally Stokes

Jeffrey Rappaport , Senior student, Clark School of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering

Faculty professor: Silvia Muro, joint appointment with Clark School of Engineering and Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research

Library liaison: Robin Dasler

Molly Brune , Senior student, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of Government and Politics

Faculty professor: John McCauley, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of Government and Politics

Library liaison: Judy Markowitz

Samuel Sober , Senior Student, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of History

Faculty professor: Richard Bell, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of History

Library liaison: Eric Lindquist

Paul Tumulty , Senior student, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of Government and Politics

Faculty professor: Scott Kastner, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of Government and Politics

Jason Chun Yu Wong , Junior student, Environmental Science and Policy, Germanic Studies 

Faculty professor: Betsy Mendelsohn, A. James Clark School of Engineering/ Science, Technology & Society/ College Park Scholars

Kristen Tadrous , Senior Student, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of American Studies

Faculty professor: John Caughey, College of Arts and Humanities, Department of American Studies

Whitney Beck , Senior student, Environmental Science and Policy

Faculty professor: Joanna Goger, Environmental Science & Technology

Deborah Namugayi , Junior student, Agriculture and Resource Economics Dept.

Ho-Man Yeung , Senior student, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Dept.

Faculty professor: Ganesh Sriram, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Faculty mentor: Shilpa Nargund, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Library liaison: Nedelina Tchangalova

Gemstone Team: Genes to Fuels (14 students) 

Andrew Chang, Maria Chang, Chin-Hsiang Feng, Jasjeet Khural, Tana Luo, James McCarthy, Cory Mekelburg, Kelsey Nadig, Christine Perry, Sharad Thaper, Richard Urbanski, Pragun Vohra (representing the team), Christian Weber, and Justin Wong   

Faculty mentor: Jason Kahn, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Library liaisons: Bob Kackley and Jim Miller

Acknowledgments

This program was possible due to the generous support of the Dean of the UMD Libraries, Dr. Adriene Lim, and the collaborative efforts of faculty members from University of Maryland University Libraries, Office for Undergraduate Research (OUR), and iSchool (College of Information Studies) . 

The Library Award for Undergraduate Research was developed base on similar programs offered by academic institution libraries across the country: Ohio State University, Oregon State University, University of California - Berkeley, University of Alberta - Augustana, University of Georgia, University of Washington.

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ACM Student Research Competition

The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) offers a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research at well-known ACM sponsored and co-sponsored conferences before a panel of judges and attendees.

The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC)

The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) offers a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research before a panel of judges and attendees at well-known ACM-sponsored and co-sponsored conferences.

Recognizing the value of student participation at conferences, ACM started the program in 2003, but it is much more than just a travel funding program. The ACM SRC provides participants a chance to meet other students and to get direct feedback on their work from experts. This year's competitions took place at 21 participating ACM SIG conferences, sponsored by SIGACCESS, SIGAPP,  SIGARCH, SIGBED, SIGCHI, SIGCOMM, SIGCSE, SIGDA,SIGDOC, SIGGRAPH, SIGHPC, SIGMETRICS, SIGMICRO, SIGMOBILE, SIGOPS, SIGPLAN, SIGSOFT and SIGSPATIAL as well as TAPIA which included more than 323 student participants. The SRC program is administered by Nanette Hernandez of the ACM, Douglas Baldwin of SUNY Geneseo and Adrienne Decker of University at Buffalo.

[Learn More about SRC]

2024 ACM SRC Grand Finals Winners

The 2024 ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals winners are: 

GRADUATE CATEGORY

First Place-  Stefan Klessinger:  University of Passau

Second Place-  Zhewen Pan: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Third Place-  Chengjie Lu: Simula Research Laboratory

UNDERGRADUATE CATEGORY

First Place-  Jakub Bachurski: University of Cambridge

Second Place-  Amar Shah:  University of California, Berkeley

Third Place-  Rhett Olson:  University of Minnesota 

   The SRC Grand Finals are the culmination of a year-long competition that involved more than 323 computer science students presenting research projects at 21 major ACM conferences. 

Students can gain many tangible and intangible rewards from participating in one of ACM’s Student Research Competitions. The ACM Student Research Competition is an internationally recognized venue enabling undergraduate and graduate students to earn:

• Awards:  cash prizes, medals, and ACM student memberships
• Prestige:  Grand Finalists receive a monetary award and a Grand Finalist certificate that can be framed and displayed 
• Visibility:  opportunities to meet with researchers in their field of interest and make important connections
• Experience: opportunities to sharpen communication, visual, organizational, and presentation skills in preparation for the SRC experience

2024 SRC Winner, 1st Place, Graduate Category

Stefan Klessinger, University of Passau "Capturing Data-inherent Dependencies in JSON Schema Extraction" ( SIGMOD/PODS 2023 )

1 PROBLEM AND MOTIVATION JSON is a popular semi-structured data exchange format widely used across various technological domains. It describes data as keyvalue pairs, often referred to as properties. JSON is essential in web applications for data transmission and in document stores such as MongoDB or Couchbase. Even relational database management systems such as PostgreSQL and MySQL support JSON data types. A sample JSON instance from log data generated in the gameWorld of Warcraft [4] is shown in Fig. 1a. It describes two kinds of events, discriminated by the value of property type: depending on the value of type, either properties resourceChange and resourceChangeType or property overheal are present. Although JSON instances are selfdescribing, they may be accompanied by an explicitly declared schema, commonly encoded in the JSON Schema language. JSON Schema [1] allows to describe and constrain JSON data. It is the de-facto standard for schema description in JSON and adopted across many different use cases. Schemastore.org [2] lists over 800 curated and publicly available schemas, providing specifications ranging from configuration files, workflows, and pipelines, to components of content management systems, and video games. JSONSchema is supported by a wide range of tools and libraries in many different programming languages. It allows data analysts to define and enforce constraints on the data, which aids in identifying and correcting errors in JSON data sets. The conformity of a JSON instance to a JSON Schema can be analyzed with a wide range of validation tools. This improves the reliability and quality of data. Furthermore, the schema provides a documentation of the data structure to data consumers. [Read more]

2024 SRC Winner, 2nd Place, Graduate Category

Zhewen Pan, University of Wisconsin-Madison "The XOR Cache: A Catalyst for Compression" ( SIGMICRO 2023 )

Abstract—Modern computing systems allocate significant amounts of resources for caching, especially for the last level cache (LLC). We observe that there is untapped potential for compression by leveraging redundancy due to private caching and inclusion that are common in today’s systems. We introduce the XOR Cache to exploit this redundancy via XOR compression. Unlike conventional cache architectures, XOR Cache stores bitwise XOR values of line pairs, halving the number of stored lines via a form of inter-line compression. When combined with other compression schemes, XOR Cache can further boost intra-line compression ratios by XORing lines of similar value, reducing the entropy of the data prior to compression. Evaluation results show that the XOR Cache can save LLC area by 1.32× and power by 1.67× at a cost of 3.58% performance overhead compared to a 2× larger uncompressed cache. I. PROBLEM AND MOTIVATION Today’s computing systems dedicate tens to hundreds of megabytes of SRAM to caching, which contributes to a significant portion of die area, e.g, AMD’s Zen3’s 32 MB L3 cache occupies around 40% of die area [8]. Additionally, the power consumption of these systems also surges, further straining the overall energy efficiency. The demand for resources in thecache hierarchy will continue to increase due to the growthin dataset size and memory wall problem. However, large caches do not necessarily translate into better performance despite having more capacity; additionally, they come at the cost of high access latency, usually in tens of cycles. Given their resource-demanding nature, these factors combined maketraditional large caches inefficient for future systems.) [Read more]

2024 SRC Winner 3rd Place, Graduate Category

Chengjie Lu, Simula Research Laboratory "Test Scenario Generation for Autonomous Driving Systems with Reinforcement Learning" ( ICSE 2023 )

Abstract—We have seen rapid development of autonomous driving systems (ADSs) in recent years. These systems place high requirements on safety and reliability for their mass adoption, and ADS testing is one crucial approach to ensure their success.However, it is impossible to test all the scenarios due to theinherent complexity and uncertainty of ADSs and their driving tasks. Besides, the operating environment of ADSs is dynamic, continuously evolving, and full of uncertainties, which requires a testing approach adaptive to the environment. Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown great potential in various complex tasks requiring constant adaptation to dynamic environments. To this end, this paper presents RLTester, a novel ADS testing approach, that adopts reinforcement learning (RL) to learn critical environment configurations (i.e., test scenarios) of the operating environment of ADSs that could reveal their unsafe behaviors. To generate diverse and critical test scenarios, we defined 142 environment configuration actions and adopted the Time-To-Collision metric to construct the reward function. Our evaluation shows that RLTester discovered a total of 256 collisions, of which 192 are unique, and took an average of 11.59 seconds for each collision. Further, RLTester is effective in generating more diverse test scenarios compared to a stateof- the-art approach, DeepCollision. We also introduce an opensource driving scenario dataset, DeepScenario, which consists of over 30K driving scenarios. Index Terms —Autonomous Driving System Testing, Critical Scenario, Reinforcement Learning, Scenario Dataset [Read more]

2024 SRC Winner, 1st Place, Undergraduate Category

Jakub Bachurski, University of Cambridge "Embedding Pointful Array Programming in Python" ( POPL 2024 )

Abstract Multidimensional array operations are ubiquitous in machine learning. The dominant ecosystem in this field is centred around Python and NumPy, where programs are expressed with elaborate and error-prone calls in the point-free array programming model. Such code is difficult to statically analyse and maintain. Other array programming paradigms offer to solve these problems, in particular the pointful style of Dex. However, only limited approaches – based on Einstein summation – have been embedded in Python. We introduce Ein, a pointful array DSL embedded in Python. We also describe a novel connection between pointful and point-free array programming. Thanks to this connection, Ein generates performant, optimised and type-safe calls to NumPy. Ein reconciles the readability of comprehension-style definitions with the capabilities of existing array frameworks. [Read more]

2024 SRC Winner, 2nd Place, Undergraduate Category

Amar Shah, University of California, Berkeley "An Eager SMT Solver for Algebraic Data Type Queries" ( PLDI 2023 )

1 Introduction and Motivation Algebraic Data Types (ADTs) are a programming construct classically found in functional programming languages but are increasingly found in all kinds of modern languages. ADTs are a convenient generalization of structures like enumerated types, lists, and binary trees. A natural problem is the satisfiability of formulas over the theory ADT. This has applications in modelling languages [Milner 1978], proof assistants [Gonthier 2005] and program verification [Bjørner et al. 2013]. While the need to reason about ADTs have grown, the techniques to do so have not. Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) extends the Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) problem to include additional theories, in this case ADT. Most SMT solvers for ADT apply the same lazy approach that use a theory solver [Oppen 1980] in a loop with a SAT solver. We propose a fundamentally different approach: an eager solver for ADT satisfiability modulo theory (SMT) queries via a quantifier free reduction to Equality and Uninterpreted Functions (EUF) SMT queries. [Read more]

2024 SRC Winner, 3rd Place, Undergraduate Category

Rhett Olson, University of Minnesota "An Automatic Approach to Finding Geographic Name Changes on Historical Maps" ( SIGSPATIAL 2023 )

ABSTRACT Changes in place names offer insight into regions’ culture, politics, and geographical characteristics. This paper proposes an automatic approach to retrieve time-sequenced maps that show place name changes on many maps from across history. The proposed approach utilizes gazetteers (i.e., indexes for geographic names) to retrieve a place’s coordinates and name variants and searches for text labels from maps matching those coordinates and names. To search for multiple-word place names, the approach constructs minimum spanning trees from an edge cost function to link text labels into phrases. We present two experiments: one to evaluate the effectiveness of the minimum spanning tree approach at linking multiple word place names, and the other to evaluate the maps retrieved by the query approach. The resulting maps give rich visual insight into how place names change over time and could facilitate scholarly investigation of geographic name changes at a large scale. [Read more]

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Undergraduate Research Awards

UCSC recognizes excellence in undergraduate research through:

• Awards to Support Undergraduate Research (UR)
• Awards for Completed Scholarly Activities

Awards to Support UR

See the Funding section for each division's webpage.

Physical & Biological Sciences

• School of Engineering

Social Sciences

Selected ucsc awards for completed scholarly activities.

Please note that the following list is not inclusive.  Check with the department and division for a complete list.

Deans', Chancellor’s & Steck Undergraduate Awards

These awards recognize exceptional achievement in research projects or other creative activities. Winners are honored at an awards ceremony in June during the UCSC Annual Student Achievement Week. Applications are available starting in early Februrary from the DCA website here .

Dean's Award-  Fifty undergraduate students, ten from each of the five academic divisions, receive a Dean's Award (certificate and $100). Recipients are considered for the Chancellor's Award.

Chancellor's Award - The best three students from each of the divisions will also receive a Chancellor's Award (certificate and an additional $500). Recipients are considered for the Steck Award.

Steck Award - In recognition of the most outstanding completed senior thesis/research project, one undergraduate student will be selected as the recipient of the Steck Award. The student will receive $2,000 and a certificate. In addition, his or her senior thesis/research project will be bound and copies given to the student, the research supervisor, McHenry Library, and the Steck family, whose generous contributions have made this award possible.

Campus Application Deadline :   Early April Award Amounts :   $100 Dean’s, $500 Chancellor’s, $2,000 Steck Award  Application Form : Available Winter

Division & Department Awards

Please note that this is not a comprehensive listing of awards.  Check your department's and division's pages for more information.

Eduardo Carrillo Memorial Fund

The Eduardo Carrillo Memorial Scholarships are intended to support outstanding Art students with documented financial need with a maximum award of $1,000. The Eduardo Carrillo Scholarship supports students in painting, sculpture, or drawing areas and students are invited to apply during Winter quarter.

Grosvenor Cooper Memorial Scholarship

Established in 1992, this scholarship is a merit-based award (with financial need brought into secondary consideration) given to second and third year UCSC students who, in the spirit of Dr. Cooper, “demonstrate a joyful enthusiasm for music beyond academic pursuit.” The recipient does not need to be a declared music major, but must be currently enrolled in a music class.

Humanities  

Department of History Linda Peterson Awards

Each year, the History Department solicits nominations from its faculty for the best undergraduate papers written in a history course or as a history senior thesis. Specific awards may be conferred for work based on geographic distinctions (e.g., American, world, European or Asian history) Optional awards will also be awarded at the discretion of the Undergraduate Education Committee (UEC). A paper or thesis written in any quarter of the current academic year is eligible for nomination. Winners receive $100 in recognition of their achievement. The top three papers, irrespective of the departmental awards, will be forwarded to the Humanities Division for consideration in the Dean’s and Chancellor’s award competitions.

Literature- Best Undergraduate Essay

A prize of $250 will be awarded to the best essay written in conjunction with any Literature course. Submissions should be between 5-10 standard double-spaced pages in length, and may represent a revised version of work submitted for a course. Any currently enrolled Literature major, regardless of class standing, may submit one paper written in any language to be considered for this prize. Contact [email protected] for more information. 

Literature- Best Senior Essay/Thesis

A prize of $250 will be awarded to a graduating senior Literature major for the best essay that was prepared in conjunction with one of the Department's exit requirements: a Senior Seminar (Literature course 190x or LTCR 194) or a Senior Thesis. Submissions should be between 15-25 standard double-spaced pages in length. To be eligible for this prize, students must have graduated, or be on track to graduate, between fall quarter 2013 and summer 2014. Creative Writing students are eligible to submit material that takes the form of an essay (but not, for instance, poems or short stories). Nominations will come from faculty; students may not submit their own work for this prize. 

Jewish Studies Undergraduate Research Awards

To encourage and reward outstanding research and writing on Jewish themes by undergraduates at UCSC. Students should submit their papers to the Department of History via e-mail attachment ([email protected]). A letter of support from a faculty sponsor is recommended, but not required. Questions may be directed to Jewish Studies Academic Advising Coordinator.  

Sociology-The Sociology of Race, Class, and Gender Award

The Sociology of Race, Class, and Gender Senior Thesis Award was established in 2000 by Pamela Ann Roby, who is currently a UCSC Professor Emerita of Sociology.  To be eligible for this award, applicants must be UCSC undergraduate sociology majors who have written their senior thesis on race, class, and gender during the academic year.

Stephen M. Palais Memorial Undergraduate Research Award Created by the family in memory of former student, Stephen Palais, this award is administered by the MCD Biology and Mathematics Departments and recognizes meritorious undergraduate research.

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The Global Undergraduate Awards

The Global Undergraduate Awards is the world’s leading academic awards programme, open to all undergraduate students in almost every academic discipline and attracting submissions from hundreds of universities on every continent.

This is a unique opportunity to have your work recognised by an international panel of expert judges working in some of the world’s top academic institutions. We believe in rewarding students for passion and innovation early in their academic career, to encourage them to continue their work through postgraduate study or employment.

Submitting your entry is  quick, simple and free ! Through our fully anonymised online submission platform, UA has designed a fair and equal awards programme open to students regardless of background. Submit today for a chance to have your work recognised and awarded at an international level.

If you are planning to complete a four-year degree, you are eligible to submit in your third or fourth year of study. If you are planning to undertake a three-year degree, you are eligible to submit in your second or third year of study. Entries submitted must have been completed in partial fulfilment of an undergraduate degree, i.e. they must have been completed as undergraduate coursework with a portion of credits for the paper/project going toward an overall undergraduate degree.

Submission deadline: Friday, 27 May 2022

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Library Prize for Undergraduate Research

The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research recognizes and honors excellence in undergraduate research at UCLA.

More Information

About the library prize.

*The submission period for the 2023-2024 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research is now closed.

The Library Prize recognizes and honors research excellence and includes cash prizes ranging from $400 to $700 across various project categories. Submissions are open to any undergraduate student or group who has completed a research paper or project — either for a course or independently — over the past 12 months. Winners will be acknowledged during an award ceremony as part of Undergraduate Research Week (opens in a new tab) .

If you are a current UCLA undergraduate student and can answer "yes" to the questions below, your paper or project may be just what the selection committee is looking for!

• Did you or your team use UCLA Library collections for a research paper or project you completed for a course in the last twelve months?
• Did your use of library collections and services help to increase the scope, depth and significance of what you learned?
• Did your research skills grow because of your use of library collections?
• Did your use of library collections inform and strengthen other types of research you performed?

Please see our application procedures page for more details about eligibility, requirements and selection criteria.

Prize Categories

The Library Prize consists of awards in five academic categories:

Library Prize for Undergraduate Research Application Procedures

See past winners, background about the prize.

The inspiration for the UCLA Library Prize for Undergraduate Research came from Ruth Simon, lover of books and libraries.

Simon earned her B.A. in English at UCLA and served as UCLA’s campus counsel for many years until her retirement in 2003. Her many memories of her college years include countless hours spent in the undergraduate library, studying for classes and exams or enjoying classic works of English literature.

Guided by her passion for reading and research and wishing to share her love of libraries, Simon established the Ruth Simon Library Prize for Undergraduate Research, the first endowment of its kind at UCLA, to inspire and reward UCLA undergraduates for outstanding library research now and for generations yet to come.

Further Questions?

Associated news.

Thirteen students are being recognized for incorporating Library resources into their scholarship and research in a variety of academic fields

Eleven students were recognized for incorporating Library resources into their scholarship and research in a variety of academic fields.

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Undergraduate Research: Awards, Events, and Resources

• Undergraduate Research Awards and Competitions
• College of Arts and Sciences (CAS)
• Kogod School of Business (KSB)
• Merit Awards (National and International)
• School of Communication (SOC)
• School of International Service (SIS)
• School of Public Affairs (SPA)
• Research Methodology: Videos
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Annual Competitions and Prizes

College of Arts and Sciences

Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference   Cash prizes are awarded for outstanding presentations.

Honors Capstone Research Awards A group of twenty students are selected from the various schools and departments to give a ten-minute oral presentations on the essence of their capstone work. Another twenty students are selected to present their capstone work during the poster presentation period.  A panel of judges selects the students who will receive an Honors Capstone Research Conference Award.

Kogod School of Business

Annual Kogod Case Competition The Competition is one of the premier annual events hosted by the Kogod School of Business. It is an excellent opportunity for students to sharpen their communication skills, presentation style, and problem-solving techniques. Students have the opportunity to network with over 60 business leaders who judge the competition. The event is open to all graduate and undergraduate students at AU and invited Kogod-partner schools. The events are juried.   

  Library

Vincenza and W. Donald Bowles Award The Vincenza and W. Donald Bowles Award to recognize students for conducting outstanding research or pursuing a course of study addressing productivity, income, or poverty in the United States through empirical, theoretical, or artistic efforts. The $750 award will be given annually in November, following evaluation by a committee comprised of teaching faculty and librarians from AU.

Research Award for Best College Writing Paper This award recognizes students for outstanding research and writing in a College Writing course. The $750 award will be given annually at the end of the spring semester following evaluation by a committee comprised of teaching faculty and library faculty from AU. Research Award for Best Undergraduate Paper This award recognizes students for outstanding research and writing in any AU course. The $750 award will be given annually at the end of the spring semester following evaluation by a committee comprised of teaching faculty and library faculty from AU.

School of Communication Visions 2014: Media That Matters The VISIONS festival attracts respected media industry professionals and students from all disciplines, culminates with The VISIONS Festival Award Ceremony. Outstanding undergraduate and outstanding graduate work is eligible for many awards.

School of International Service

SIS Undergraduate Research Symposium Outstanding papers, presentations, and posters are recognized at this student-organized symposium.  

School of Public Affairs

SPA Undergraduate Research Symposium This is an annual forum for undergraduate students to present their original scholarly and creative work before colleagues, friends, and faculty. Cash awards will be given for the best presentations, and top students will be recognized at the SPA Awards Ceremony .  Open to all students who have taken an SPA course.

Prize for Best Undergraduate Essay on Classical Liberalism The Political Theory Institute awards a prize of $500 at the annual SPA Awards Ceremony.  The contest is open to all AU undergraduates and is intended to foster critical reflection on the key authors, concepts, and arguments of classical liberalism, including but not limited to individual liberty, equality, democracy, constitutionalism, and commerce. As used here, classical liberalism denotes a topic, not an agenda, and the prize will be given to the most intelligent and well-argued essay on these topics regardless of philosophical or political perspective. Essays about the place of classical liberalism in the American political tradition are welcome.

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• URL: https://subjectguides.library.american.edu/AUUndergraduateResearch

Undergraduate Research Award

About the award, eligibility requirements, submission requirements, application evaluation criteria, submission deadlines, how to apply, frequently asked questions, past winners.

Each year, the Undergraduate Research Award honors an outstanding student researcher. Award winners receive $500, recognition at the Symposium of Student Scholars, and publication in the Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research (KJUR).

The KSU Libraries’ Undergraduate Research Award is bestowed upon a currently enrolled (or recently graduated) undergraduate student who has demonstrated effective research processes and successful use of library or Museums, Archives, and Rare Books (MARB) resources and services. This includes utilization of at least one of the following:

• Online chat reference
• In-person reference at one of our Help! Desk locations
• In-person or virtual research consultations
• Library databases
• Physical books and/or eBooks
• GIL Express to borrow materials from other University System of Georgia libraries
• Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
• Archives, Rare Books, and Special Collections

One winner receives a $500 prize, which is awarded by the Office of Undergraduate Research and disbursed through the Financial Aid department.

The winner is guaranteed publication in the KJUR upon completion of the revision process. All runner-up articles will also be reviewed and considered for publication in the KJUR .

The winner will receive their prize after they have revised and resubmitted their winning paper to the KJUR .

Applicants must be currently enrolled undergraduate students at KSU or recent graduates (within the last semester).

Applicants must allow the KJUR to publish and share their research article and library research project.

Applicants must submit both a research article and a project demonstrating their use of library resources.

For the research article , submit a current research paper you have recently written on any topic or subject and for any class. There are no minimum or maximum length requirements. Most submissions are 5-15 pages, double spaced.

For the library research project, select one of the following project options which highlights the library’s role in supporting the creation of your research article:

Option One: Application Essay

• Write an essay describing how library resources and/or services (see options in About the Award section ) were used in the writing of your research article.
• Refer to your research article within your application essay.
• Essays must range in length from 500-750 words.
• Word, RTF, or PDF formats are acceptable.

Option Two: Library Marketing Video

• Create a video that shows how library resources and/or services (see options in About the Award section ) can improve undergraduate research.
• Provide a one-page cover letter with a brief synopsis and either a link to your video or upload the video file.
• Refer to your research article within the application video.
• Videos should be between 30 seconds and 2 minutes.
• Videos can be formatted to your preference (all video file types are accepted).
• Contact Heather Hankins with any questions regarding video uploads.

The research article will be evaluated for clarity of writing, originality of ideas, use of library resources, and thoughtful analysis of the research topic.

The application essay or video will be evaluated for specific mention of library resources and services used, as well as the role of the library in your research process.

The submission portal is open now until December 6, 2024.

Finalists will be notified by January 15, 2025.

The deadline to complete your revisions is February 14, 2025.

• Click here to begin the submission process .
• Create an account with the system. You will be redirected to the upload page.
• Complete the Article Submission Agreement, fill in the required information fields, and include metadata for your research article (i.e. title, abstract, keywords, etc.).
• Upload your research article.
• At the bottom of the upload form, attach your library research project as a supplemental file.
• Submit your completed application.

The manager of the Undergraduate Research Award will contact you if there are any issues with your submission.

Q: Who will judge the applications?

A: Applications will be evaluated by a panel of KSU librarians.

Q: I recently graduated, but I conducted research and wrote a paper during my undergraduate education which I’d like to submit for publication. Am I eligible to apply for this award?

A: Yes, but only if you have graduated within the last semester.

Q: Can I submit more than one application per year?

A: No, you may only submit one award application per year. However, you may submit multiple articles to the KJUR separately from this award.

Q: Will the award money impact my financial aid?

A: Please contact the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid with questions regarding any impact monetary awards might have on your specific financial aid situation.

Q: What is the Digital Commons@Kennesaw State University?

A: DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University is a digital repository of the intellectual and creative output of the university community at KSU. This includes theses and dissertations, student work, faculty publications and books, journals, conference proceedings, and more.

2023/2024 - Anna Poole (winner), Honor, Violence, and Recovery: The Stripping of Female Agency During the Partition of India

2023/2024 - Andrew Bramlett (runner-up), Thomas R. Marshall: Progressive Era Politics, a Presidential Hoax, and the 1920 Election

2023/2024 - Ingrid Baker (runner-up), The Introduction and Spread of Kudzu in Georgia

2022/2023 - Kaitlin Jean Kojali (winner), "The Survival of Manuscripts: Resistance, Adoption, and Adaptation to Gutenberg’s Printing Press in Early Modern Europe"

2022/2023 - Anna K. Poole (runner-up), "Reckoning Roanoke: A Historiographical Examination of the Lost Colony"

2021 - Lauren Campbell, "She Could Not Overcome It: How Race, Gender, and Jim Crow Shaped One of Georgia’s Gravest Miscarriages of Justice" (Unpublished)

2020 - Cadi Martin, "Exploring Cedar Songmaker's Native Identity in Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God " (Unpublished)

2018 - Sagi Shaier, "A Mathematical Model for the Effect of Domestic Animals on Human African Trypanosomiasis (Sleeping Sickness)"

2017 - Kylah Pollard and Sarai Bauguess, "Prevalence and Incidence of Health Risk Factors Among Adolescent Girls"

2016 - Angelica E. Perez, "Silhouettes of a Silent Female's Authority: A Psychoanalytic and Feminist Perspective on the Art of Kara Walker"

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Office of Undergraduate Education

Undergraduate Research Scholar Awards

About the program.

The Undergraduate Research Scholar Awards are a one-time, competitive award made by the Office of Undergraduate Education, designed to reward the contributions and facilitate the professional development of undergraduate researchers at UT Dallas.

Students selected to receive an Undergraduate Research Scholar Award receive $500, awarded upon participation in the Undergraduate Research Scholar Award poster competition held in mid-April. Faculty research sponsors supporting participant projects receive $300 (for supplies, project travel, poster printing, etc.). Students whose research, posters and presentations are deemed to be exceptional will move on to the poster finals competition, held one week later. Judges from the external research community will appraise the top presentations; the top three winners will receive additional award money.

Eligibility

In order for a submission to receive consideration for an Undergraduate Research Scholar Award, the student must meet certain eligibility requirements. Student applicants must be:

• Currently-enrolled, degree-seeking UT Dallas undergraduate researchers
• Enrolled in a UT Dallas undergraduate program through the spring semester
• Contributing to an existing research project, under the supervision of a faculty principal investigator OR acting as an independent principal investigator under the guidance of a faculty research mentor
• Able to create a research poster encapsulating the project and present results at the virtual Undergraduate Research Scholar Awards poster contest event in mid-April. Semifinalists selected during the poster contest must present their posters and results to corporate judges and compete for cash prizes at the Undergraduate Research Scholar Awards poster finals event, held in late-April.

How To Apply

Applications for the 2025 Undergraduate Research Scholar Awards will open September 2024.

Application FAQs

There are no restrictions on the nature of the research – it can be in any field. However, the research must be on a serious, credible topic of inquiry, and there must be a faculty supervisor (principal investigator or research mentor) for the project.

The purpose of URSA is to fund ongoing research projects, so no already-completed projects will be funded.

You should focus on the goals of your research and how you plan to achieve those goals. If your research is part of a larger project, you need to make it clear what your piece of that project is.

You can attach a .pdf with your project description. Type “Please see the attached” in the text box and attach your application.

The Office of Undergraduate Education will notify applicants of their status by mid-January.

At the poster contest in April, faculty judges evaluate the effectiveness of the poster in presenting the research as well as the overall quality of the research conducted. At the poster finals a week later, corporate judges from area companies evaluate the posters along similar lines, with an added emphasis on applicability.

Program Timeline

• November 13, 2023 – Deadline to submit URSA proposal at 11:59 p.m.
• Mid-January 2024 – Applicants informed of final selections
• March 8, 2024 – How to Design a Research Poster workshop event
• April 16, 2024 – URSA Semifinals (2-5pm/VCB Atrium)
• April 19, 2024 – URSA Finals (9:30am-1:00pm/FO 2nd Floor Atrium)

Program Contact

Hillary Campbell Director FO 2.710C 972-883-4515 [email protected]

Andrew Bell Assistant Director  FO 2.704E 972-883-4583 [email protected]

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Looking for a book, article, database or something else for your research.

The 2023-2024 University Libraries Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research submission period is now open.

Submissions are due by 11:59 p.m., April 28, 2024.

We look forward to receiving your projects!

The University Libraries are pleased to invite applications for the Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. This award recognizes undergraduate students who have demonstrated excellence and innovation as part of an original course-related research project that utilizes library resources.

All currently enrolled undergraduate students are eligible for the award. One award of $500 will be given for an individual research project completed at the freshman or sophomore level and one award of $500 will be given for an individual research project completed at the junior or senior level. One award of $1000 will be given to a group research project completed at any undergraduate level. Awardees will also receive a certificate suitable for framing.

The submitted research project must:

• Be a research project completed by an individual student or group of students for an undergraduate course (including lab-based work and independent study) at the University at Albany within the previous calendar year. This can include traditional research papers or more creative text-based, visual, or mixed media works so long as the project is in a format that can be submitted for review.
• Represent the original work of the project author(s)
• Any use of generative AI tools needs to be noted (and appropriately cited) in the project and statement
• Utilize the libraries’ electronic or physical collections or other intellectual resources
• Show evidence of creative and critical thinking related to the research process
• Demonstrate, via the reflective essay, an understanding of information literacy concepts related to finding, evaluating, and using information appropriate to the context of the research activity; this is intended to be a personal narrative and, as such, it can be improved but not written by generative AI tools
• Include complete and suitable attribution of the sources used, such as a bibliography
• Be supported by a faculty sponsor who is familiar with the project and can speak knowledgeably about the work submitted
• Only complete submission packets will be considered

Ready to submit your research project?

Undergraduate research award faqs.

Questions about the award and the application process can be directed to [email protected]

Research Paper Awards

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Library Research Awards 2024

Did you know that your research project could be worth $750?

American University’s Library seeks to promote and honor student research papers that reflect the best of the best among the thousands of papers submitted each year. Winners will be selected by teaching and library faculty and honored during a ceremony in April. Applications for the 2024 research awards are due on April 1st 2024.

All award winners, along with their friends and family, will be invited to join American University faculty and administrators on Bender Library’s 3rd floor to present their research and receive their awards at the ceremony. Food and drinks will be provided. The event will be hybrid to accommodate friends and family outside of the DMV. Award winners will be contacted about the ceremony after the winners have been determined.

Applications for the 2024 awards are now closed, but we will soon open up applications for 2025 awards. Please email [email protected] with any questions or comments.

Submit your Application or Faculty Recommendation Letter

Awards Categories

W. donald bowles award.

Endowed by Professor Emeritus Bowles, papers submitted for this award should reflect his interest in wealth inequality, poverty, and other topics related to the consequences of economic disparities. Students may have explored these topics within a course in any subject area.

Eligibility: current undergraduate or graduate students

Award amounts*

• 1st Place Graduate $750
• 1st Place Undergraduate $750

*Funds may be taxable and may impact financial aid.

Best Writing Studies Paper Award

Given that all undergraduate students participate in the Writing Studies program during their first year at American University, this award seeks to highlight the best papers that blend the writing and research skills learned through the WRT 100, 101, and 106 courses.

Eligibility: papers submitted during a 2023 or 2024 Writing Studies course

• 1st Place $750
• 2nd Place $500
• 3rd Place $250

Best Undergraduate Paper Award

Interesting research and high-quality writing are found across disciplines at American University. All undergraduate students are invited to submit their best research paper, from any class, on any subject, to be considered for this award.

Eligibility: current undergraduate students

Evaluation Criteria

• Resource Usage:  Substantial use of library resources and collections in any format, including but not limited to printed resources, databases, primary resources, and materials in all media.
• Original Thought:  Ability to locate, select, evaluate, and synthesize library resources and to use them in the creation of a project that shows originality and/or has the potential to lead to original research in the future.
• Learning:  Evidence of significant personal learning through the research process.
• Research Habits:  Development of a habit of research and inquiry that shows the likelihood of persisting in the future.
• Quality:  Mastery of content appropriate to class level, clear writing, and an overall high quality of presentation.
• W. Donald Bowles Award:  Undergraduate level papers demonstrate thoughtful approaches to the identification, description, and discussion of wealth inequality, poverty, and/or other topics related to the consequences of economic disparities, in addition to above criteria. Graduate-level papers demonstrate deep, original thought and research into wealth inequality, poverty, and/or other topics related to the consequences of economic disparities, in addition to above criteria.
• Rubric: This document is the rubric that will be used to evaluate applications.

Application Process

All applications for the 2024 award cycle are due by April 1, 2024.

Papers written by individual students from Spring 2023 – Spring 2024 are accepted for consideration. Students are able to submit up to one paper for each competition category. Only one award will be granted per individual no matter the number of categories entered.

Submissions are required to meet the following requirements:

All documents must be submitted as Microsoft Word or PDF files. Submissions are only accepted from individuals with individual work - no group work will be evaluated. Papers from study abroad courses taken for AU credit and supported by the faculty member who taught the course are eligible.

To apply, students must submit the following by April 1 using the submission form :

• Completed application with title of paper, title of course, semester the course was taken, name of professor, and email of professor. Upon submission, the professor will be notified of your submission.
• How did you determine your topic?
• What was your library research process?
• What role did library research play throughout the research process?
• How did you build or evaluate your list of sources?
• Did you consult with a librarian or use a library subject guide and how did they influence your process?
• Which databases did you employ, and how they did help you in your library research process?
• Did you include books, journal articles, and/or other types of sources, and why?
• Did you use materials from other libraries and why?
• Did library instruction on how to find, evaluate, and use resources inform your library research process, and if so, how?
• A bibliography or other listing of sources consulted, if not already included in the paper.

Projects that are in formats other than papers are eligible if a significant research component is present.  For information about other project formats, please contact [email protected] .

Applicants must also solicit a letter of recommendation from the faculty member who taught the course for which the paper or project was prepared. Applicants must request the letter, and the professor must use the submission form to submit the letter. Applicants will be notified when letters of recommendation are submitted.

All winning research projects will be added to AU’s institutional repository. By submitting a project for review, applicants agree to having their project added to the institutional repository.

Applications must be accompanied by a letter of recommendation from the faculty member who taught the course for which the paper or project was prepared. Faculty must submit the letter through the submission form as a Word document or PDF, as well as the applicant’s name, email address, and semester the student was enrolled in the course. The applicant will be notified when the letter of recommendation is submitted.

Faculty will receive notification when an applicant submits an application listing them as the faculty member.

Evaluation Committees

The following faculty members will be evaluating applications based on the criteria and rubric. The library wishes to thank all of the reviewers for their service!

W. Donald Bowles Award Committee Members

• Katie Hut, University Library (chair)
• Olivia Ivey, University Library
• Tom Husted, CAS Economics (former colleague of W. Donald Bowles and family friend)
• Stacey Snelling, CAS Health Studies

Best Writing Studies Paper Award Committee Members

• Clarissa Ihssen, University Library (chair)
• Alayne Mundt, University Library
• Kelly Joyner, Writing Studies
• Kate Wilson, Writing Studies

Best Undergraduate Paper Award Committee Members

• Melissa Becher, University Library (chair)
• Vicky Marchand, University Library
• Cindy Bair van Dam, Writing Studies
• Michael Clayton, Kogod Marketing

2024 Award Winners

Best bowles undergraduate research award.

Isabella Long

Decreasing Healthcare Disparities Among Undocumented Populations through Medicaid Expansion

Professor Celeste Davis

Best Writing Studies Research Award

1st Place: Bill-Luis Perez

The Fragmented World of the Owl Species: Case Study on the Northern Spotted Owl and the Barred Owl Removal Experiment

Professor Kate Wilson

2nd Place: Lila Barron

Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough: A Comprehensive Guide to Reducing Gun Violence in Michigan

Professor Angela Geosits

3rd Place: Eleanor Ragle

Partisan Power: The System Behind The Polarization Of Congress

Best Undergraduate Research Award

1st Place: Chaitanya Venkateswaran

Moderates, Radicals and the Making of Indian Anti-Colonial Narratives in post-World War 1 United States

Professor Sarah Cleeland Knight

2nd Place: Katherine Greenstein

Intersecting Histories: A Critical Discourse Analysis of AP US History Textbook Coverage of the Black Panther Party and Disability Rights Movement

Professor Timothy Titus

3rd Place: Madyson Brown

The Instagram AI Algorithm as a Pathway to Radicalization

Professor Brian Hughes

Listen to the students present their research at the 2024 library research awards ceremony:

2023 Award Winners

Undergraduate winner.

Tyler Godding

TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] Spending on Basic Assistance and State Poverty Rates

Professor Kimberley Cowell-Meyers

Graduate Winner

Signaling Women's Entry into Male-Dominated Occupations: Evidence from the Gender Desegregation of the U.S. Army

Professor Mary Hansen

1st Place: Yvette Nau

A Systematic Reset: How TikTok is Changing the Path to Musical Fame

Professor Jeremy S. Wade

2nd Place: Natan Kimelman-Block

Chanting for Change: The Musical Origins of Revolutionary Change During the Arab Spring

Professor Glenn Moomau

3rd Place: Calista Schloessmann

No-Knock Warrants as Death Warrants: Threatening Constituent Lives

Professor Tod E. Jones

1st Place: Robby Jones

Conditioned Taste Avoidance and Conditioned Place Preference Induced by the Third Generation Synthetic Cathinone Eutylone in Female Sprague-Dawley Rats

Professor Anthony Riley

2nd Place: David Brostoff

Politics Among Realists: Morgenthau, Kissinger, and the Problem of Vietnam

Professor Gregory Aftandilian

3rd Place: Molly Loprete

Mixed Method Research Design: The Human Cost of Democratic Backsliding Using the Integration of Qualitative and Quantitative Data

Professor Horace Bartilow

Watch presentations from the 2023 award winners here:

2021 Award Winners

• Rachel Boose, 2021 Writing Studies Award for “Looking to Civil Rights to Save the Planet.”
• Niamh Burns: 2021 Library Undergraduate Research Award for “Astrophysical Contributions to the Great Filter: A Shakespearian Tragedy.”
• Jonah Kaufman-Cohen: 2021 Library Undergraduate Research Award for, “They want not only to hand over the bricks but also to lay them in place themselves: Expectations and Experience of Women in the Labor Zionist Movement.”
• Owen McCoy: 2021 Library Undergraduate Research Award for “The Impact of Government Type on Global Digital Activism Targets: A Comparison of Digital Activism in Authoritarian and Democratic Regimes.”

Faculty sponsors, Professors Kate Haulman, CAS - History, William T. Parsons, CAS - Physics, Kimberly Cowell-Myers, SPA and Kate Wilson, CAS - Literature.

Categories of Recognition

The Global Undergraduate Awards currently recognises entrants on three levels:

• Highly Commended Entrant
• Regional Winner
• Global Winner

All submissions are marked anonymously, with judges assessing the work for its originality, focus and rigorousness. You can learn more about the UA Judging Process here .

Highly Commended Entrants

Entrants whose paper or project ranked in the top 10% of submissions in their category, are shortlisted as Highly Commended Entrants. Highly Commended Entrants are recognised with:

• A Certificate of Recognition
• Publication of their submission(s) on The Undergraduate Library
• Access to the UA Alumni Network
• Opportunity to attend the UA Global Summit

Regional Winners

The highest performing Highly Commended Entrant in each Region is named a Regional Winner of their category. In 2016, The Undergraduate Awards programme was split into seven regions: Africa & the Middle East; Asia; Europe; Island of Ireland; Latin America; Oceania; and USA & Canada. Between 2012-2015, UA also awarded Programme Winners. Programme Winners were the entrants with the highest performing submission from the Island of Ireland. UA no longer awards Programme Winners under the UA Regions system. Regional Winners are recognised with:

• Publication of their submission on The Undergraduate Library

Global Winners

Entrants whose submission is selected as the best in their category are named Global Winners. Before 2016, Global Winners were called Overall Winners. Global Winners are recognised with:

• A Gold Medal and a Certificate of Recognition
• Publication of their winning submission on The Undergraduate Library
• A free ticket to the UA Global Summit.
• Fully funded travel to attend the UA Global Summit

Undergraduate Research Award (URA) Undergraduate Research Awards (URA) are granted to promote undergraduate research in a scientific laboratory setting.

Fall '24 URA Submission Form

Applications can be submitted and accepted anytime during the semester..

Students must have approval from their faculty advisor before applying.

• Complete a one-page proposal and a one-page mentoring plan.
• Register for a chemistry research course
• Complete the URA Submission Form and proposal upload for Fall 2024
• If applying mid-semester, email the URA administrator [email protected] to inform them of your submission

New URA Proposal/Mentoring Template

Mentoring Plan Example

Renewal URAs-You must renew your URA EVERY semester by the application deadline!

• Complete the URA Submission Form and proposal upload for Winter 2024
• Complete the experiential learning survey from [email protected]. You will not be able to continue as a URA if you do not complete the survey.

Submissions will be opened prior to Fall, Winter and Spring semesters.

Renewal URA Proposal/Mentoring Template

Concurrent Enrollment in a chemistry class is required during Fall and Winter Semesters. (This requirement is waived during SP/SU semesters).

*Full semester sections are even numbers, second block only sections are odd numbers

• CHEM 297R is intended for students who are new to a research lab. This course is .5 credit hours and graded on a pass/fail basis.
• CHEM 497R  is for students continuing work in a research lab. This course is 1 credit hour and graded on a pass/fail basis.
• CHEM 498R  is a research capstone course that requires an extensive research paper. This course is a variable credit course with a letter grade.

Contact Information

URA Administrator,  Alison Anderson

Phone (801) 422-2792

Email [email protected]

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry C100 BNSN Brigham Young University Provo, Utah 84602 801-422-3667

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Undergraduate research and distinguished scholarships menu, undergraduate research and distinguished scholarships, urds homepage.

Undergraduate Research and Distinguished Scholarships (URDS) is comprised of nine allied offices, focused on excellence in academics and research among University of Oregon undergraduate students.

NEW: Browse the 2024 Undergraduate Research Symposium Program !

Center for Undergraduate Research & Engagement

CURE serves as a campus hub for undergraduate students to pursue advanced learning opportunities in research, scholarly engagement, and creative pursuits. ​​ Learn about research funding awards .

A six-month, cohort-based program focused on bringing into effect equitable post-graduation outcomes for underserved students at UO, centering on BIPOC, first generation, and low-income students.

McNair Scholars Program

The program is designed to prepare undergraduate students for doctoral studies through involvement in research and other scholarly activities. Students must be US citizens or permanent residents who are also either first-generation college students who are low-income AND/OR students from groups historically underrepresented in US higher education. Apply to the McNair Scholars Program .​​​​​​

Office of Distinguished Scholarships

Work with the Office of Distinguished Scholarships to explore and apply to competitive national and international awards that fit students’ academic interests and goals. Explore distinguished scholarships .

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Participation in the Undergraduate Research Symposium empowers undergraduate students to share their ideas, discoveries, and creative work with the campus and the local community.  See the Symposium Presentation Awards .

Phi Beta Kappa

This is the oldest and most prestigious honorary society in the nation. Selection for the Alpha of Oregon Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa is not automatic, but students do not have to apply or be nominated for consideration.

Impact Fund

Through our impact fund, we support foundational and often transformational opportunities for undergraduate students of all backgrounds to pursue research and distinguished scholarships and to enrich their academic experiences at UO.

Support Student Success

Distinguished Scholars Alumni Awardee

Leveling the playing field Jeff Julum, BA ’86 (Russian) and Rhodes Scholar, uses his passion and experience to help the next generation of distinguished scholars succeed at the UO.

See the full story

Student & Faculty Award Recipients

Every year, several students receive awards for their outstanding work and faculty members are recognized for their support of undergraduate research.

See past award winners

About the Council

The Council for Undergraduate Research and Distinguished Scholarships functions as an advisory board for the allied offices of the Center for Undergraduate Research and Engagement (CURE), Office of Distinguished Scholarships (ODS), Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, and Undergraduate Research Symposium. Read the council charge .  

See the council members

Brookens Library Undergraduate Research Award: Details

• Previous Award Winners

Deadlines and important dates:

Deadlines and Important Dates

• Intent to Apply  due  April 19, 2024 (deadline extended!)
• All application materials due by 11:59 pm on April 26, 2024.
• The winners will be announced on May 10, 2024.

Application Materials Checklist

• A completed application form.
• A short abstract introducing the research question being explored by the submission. Include a discussion of hypotheses, methodology and/or results when appropriate.
• A final version of the research paper, project or poster presentation.
• A bibliography or other appropriate list of sources consulted/works cited.
• An email sent to [email protected] from the UIS faculty member who taught the course or administered the research project for which the paper/project/poster was originally submitted. The email just needs to be a simple statement confirming that that project was overseen or assigned by the faculty member.  

Award Contact Information

Undergraduate research, scholarly and creative activities are foundational components of a complete liberal arts education. With this in mind, Brookens Library and the Friends of Brookens Library are pleased to announce the ninth annual Undergraduate Library Research Award. 

This award was created to recognize and reward UIS undergraduate students whose academic work incorporates the use of Brookens Library’s collections and services and demonstrates exceptional information literacy skills. In addition to recognition at UIS, the award includes a monetary prize generously sponsored by the Friends of Brookens Library: 

• $500  for first place
• $400 for second place
• $300  for third place
• $2 00  for fourth place
• $100 for fifth place.

Important Information

How to apply.

Application for the Brookens Library Undergraduate Research Award is a Two-step Process:

Step 1)  Fill out the online application form

Step 2)  One of the Brookens Librarians will contact you to arrange for you to electronically submit your materials using Box.com.  Respectfully, we request that you do not send in your project materials until instructed to do so.

Eligibility

The Brookens Library Undergraduate Research Award is open to undergraduate students enrolled at University of Illinois Springfield in any academic level for the current academic year.  

• All disciplines are eligible.
• The paper, project or poster must be tied to a specific UIS course or other appropriate undergraduate research projects.
• Submissions must be from the current or previous academic year.
• Individual or team submissions are allowed (in the event a team submission wins the award, the prize will be split among the team members).
• The paper, project or poster must be completed by the application deadline.
• All submissions must contain an element of library research that demonstrates the use of primary and/or secondary sources. This could be a literature review, an annotated bibliography or other means of documentation appropriate to the project submitted.
• The submitted paper or project must have a reference list (works cited).
• All applicants must agree to give the library permission to upload winning papers/projects to the campus institutional repository ( IDEALS ).
• Previous Brookens Library Undergraduate Research Award winners are allowed to submit another entry, but may not submit work that has already been awarded.

Evaluation Criteria

A committee comprised of librarians and UIS faculty members from different disciplines will judge all submissions using the following criteria:

• Demonstrated ability to select, evaluate, and synthesize appropriate library resources and successfully use them in the creation of a research project or paper.
• Evidence of significant scholastic and/or personal learning and the development of a steady research pattern or habits that can be utilized in future academic endeavors.
• Ability to describe and analyze the applicant’s research strategies, techniques, and learning process.
• Originality/uniqueness of the project/topic, mastery of content (appropriate to class level), clear writing, and overall quality of the project.

The scoring rubric that will be used for judging can be found here:  

• Undergraduate Research Award Rubric

2024 Winners

2024 1st Place Winners: Alayanna Alderman 

Six Children's Books by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel

2024 2nd Place Winner: Molly Harms

Social Movements and LGBTQ+ Rights: How Illinois Became a Leader in Queer Policy

2024 3rd Place Winner: Rith Scott 

Queer Representation in Literature: A Cycle of Digestible Queerness & Violence

2024 4th Place Winner: Elizabeth (Liz) M. Uhl

Why People Confess to Crimes They Did Not Commit

2024 5th Place Winner: Kyla Leones

Intergenerational Trauma and Coping Among Southeast Asian Americans

• Next: Previous Award Winners >>
• Last Updated: May 15, 2024 3:16 PM
• URL: https://libguides.uis.edu/researchaward

Undergraduate Library Research Award: Home

The undergraduate library research award (ulra), about the award.

Established in 1997 by the Hofstra University Library faculty, the Undergraduate Library Research Award (ULRA) recognizes excellence in academic research by a graduating senior. 

Three awards of $500 each will be given for academic papers demonstrating exemplary research authored by seniors scheduled to graduate in December or May of the current academic year.  An award will be given for an outstanding paper in each of the three academic disciplines: Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences.  Past winners have come from the departments of Fine Arts, History, Music, Political Science, Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, Global Studies & Geography, and Psychology.

In addition to the $500 prize, winning papers are published on the ULRA website during the academic year following the granting of the award, and winning authors are featured in Hofstra Horizons for Undergraduate Research magazine.

All papers must be nominated by the faculty member for whom the paper was written.  Papers with multiple authors and papers written in foreign languages are welcomed.  Papers are read carefully by a faculty selection committee. Submissions that demonstrate exceptional academic research practices and the extraordinary selection and use of research resources are rewarded.

Please read all guidelines carefully.  Things to note:

• Faculty must submit a Turnitin.com originality report for each paper submitted at the time the online submission is made .
• Faculty may sponsor more than one submission.
• Students may submit more than one paper, but only one paper per course, per discipline, and only one award to a student.
• Students may submit papers authored solely as well as co-authored papers, but the papers must be from different courses.
• Multiple authors need to submit individual submission forms, but only one copy of a co-authored paper need be submitted.
• Foreign language papers must be accompanied by a 1,000-word English language summary.

Please see the guidelines for complete instructions.

The deadline information will be updated in January 2025.

Submission Guidelines for Students and Faculty

Student Submission Form (Must be printed out, signed, and given to sponsoring faculty.)

Faculty Submission Form (Requires logging into the my.hofstra.edu portal.)

2023 Winner: Humanities:  Isabella Colombo.  ""Nothing Is More Useful for Mortals than the Skepticism of a Sound Mind": Euripides' Helen as a Response to the Disaster in Sicily" for Prof. Steven Daniel Smith, CLL 197,  Departmental Honors Candidacy: Essay, Department of Comparative Language, Literatures, and Linguistics

2023 Winner: Social Sciences:  Sinjita Bhattacharya. ""At the End of the Day, It's Going to be on Me": Ableism, Stigma, and the Social Role of South Asian American Siblings to Disabled People" for Prof. Johanna Shih, SOC 100, Departmental Honors Candidacy: Department of Sociology

Faculty Turnitin Instructions

2022 Winner: Humanities: Jessica Hansen. “Existentialism in Literature: Why Existentialist and Absurdist Themes are Best Portrayed Through Works of Fiction” for Prof. Bartholomew Joseph Slaninka, PHL 193, Departmental Honors Candidacy: Essay, Department of Philosophy

2022 Winner: Sciences: Sam Gong. “Elemental Profiling of Gunshot Residue using X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy” for Prof. Ling Huang, FOR 100, Departmental Honors Candidacy: Research, Department of Chemistry

2022 Winner: Social Sciences: Caitlin O'Brien. “Votes for Service? The Limits of Military and Foreign Policy Credentials in Post-9/11 United States Presidential Elections” for Prof. Meena Bose, PSC 100, Departmental Honors Candidacy: Essay, Department of Political Science

2022 Honorable Mention: Sciences: Ciara Negron. “Tree Inequality in the Town of Hempstead: A Study of Environmental Justice” for Prof. Jase E. Bernhardt, SBLY 110, Department of Geology, Environment and Sustainability

2021 Winner: Humanities: Katherine Dickenson.  “How Dialect Functions As True Language in the Austrian Turn-Of-The-Century Sprachkrise and Its Result” for Prof. Neil H. Donahue, GERM 100, Senior Honors Thesis, Department of Comparative Literature, Languages, & Linguistics

2021 Winner: Social Sciences: Alixandra Wilens.  “The Contested Origins of Altruism:  Child Reciprocity and Parent Engagement in Relation to Altruistic Prosocial Behavior in Preschoolers” for Prof. Brian D. Cox, PSY 100, Senior Honors Thesis, Department of Psychology

2021 Winner: Social Sciences: Dejan Perich Soto.  “By the Nation, For the Nation: Government Support for Film in Peruvian Legislation during the Authoritarian Regimes of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975) and Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000)” for Prof. Carolyn M. Dudek, PSC 100, Senior Honors Thesis, Department of Political Science

2020 Winner: Humanities: Samuel Falotico.  “Sentence Structure and the Jazz Canon” for Prof. Philip S. Stoecker, Music 100, Senior Honors Thesis, Department. of Music

2020 Winner: Sciences: Brandon Crofts.  “Counting  Solutions  of  a 2  +  pbc  = 0 in a Cube” for Prof. Eric Rowland, Mathematics 190, Senior Honors Thesis, Department of Mathematics

2020 Winner: Social Sciences: Michael Callahan.  “American Extended Deterrence and Allied Nuclear Non-Proliferation” for Prof. Paul Fritz, Political Science 100, Senior Honors Thesis, Department of Political Science

2019 Winner: Isaac Hoffman.  “The Power of the Childbearer in Aeschylus' Agamemnon” for Prof. Steven Daniel Smith, CLL197: Departmental Honors Candidacy: Essay, Comparative Literature, Languages, and Linguistics

2019 Winner: Nicole Homburger.  “Rapid NMR Spectroscopic Identification of Opioids” for Prof. Ling Huang, FOR199: Departmental Honors Candidacy: Research, Forensic Science Program/Chemistry

2019 Winner: Thomas McGlone.  “Equality and Necessity: An Examination of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Egalitarian Philosophy” for Prof. Ira Jay Singer, PHI193: Department Honors Candidacy: Essay, Philosophy

2018 Winner: Hirra Arain. “Astrocytes Exposed to Chronic High Glucose Promotes Neuronal Synaptic Loss Through Impaired Nutrient Support: Implications for Alzheimer’s Disease Progression” for Prof. Jason D. Williams, BIO90A: Intro to Lab Research, Biology

2018 Winner: Jason Belanger. "Plunking Notes" or Teaching Music? A Thesis on Interactions between Actors and Music Directors in the Rehearsal Room” for Prof. Jennifer Lee Hart, Drama100: Honors Thesis, Drama 100

2018 Winner: Alexander Hayes. “Far Right Politics and the Shaping of Migration Policy Austria and Germany’s Divergence” for Prof. Carolyn Marie Dudek, PSC100: Senior Honors Thesis, Political Science

2017 Winner: Sarah Gerwens.  “Anglicisms - Nein Danke?  Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of the Occurrence and Usage of English Loanwords in Contemporary German” for Prof. Zilkia Janer, GS100: Global Studies.

2017 Winner: Richard Myers.  “On the Dressing of String Solutions” for Prof. Benjamin Burrington, PHYS100: Physics and Astronomy.

2017 Winner: Carmen Pestano.  “Cayuco and Euro Crises: Changing EU Governance of Migration Policy?” for Prof. Carolyn Dudek, PSC100: Political Science.

2016 Winner: Maryum Alam. "When Does Counterinsurgency Work? An Analysis of Counterinsurgency Campaigns After 1945" for Prof. Paul Brian Fritz, PSC100: Political Science. 2016 Winner: Angelika Rafalowsky. "Structural Determinants of Cephamycinase Activity in FOX-4 Cephamycinase" for Prof. Scott Travis Lefurgy, BCHM183: Biochemical Research.

2016 Winner: Nicole Speth. "Female Homoeroticism in the Roman Empire: How Many Licks Does it Take to Get to the Disruption of a Phallocentric Model of Sexuality?" for Prof. Daniel Smith, CLL197: Humanities.

2015 Winner: Irina R. Fanarraga. "Mental Health Courts: An Effective Criminal Diversion Alternative," for Dr, Robin A Flaton, PSY100: Psychology.

2015 Winner Victoria G. Neely. "Presidential Personality: Cases in Foreign Policymaking," for Dr. Meenekshi Bose, PSC100: Political Science.

2015 Honorable Mention: Humanities: Anna Pendleton. "Comparing Patterns of lexical Accommodation in New York City Spanish," for Prof. Vicente Lledó-Guillem, SPAN 197, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

2014 Winner: Katherine Pachnos. "G'day, Gothic!: The British Gothic, Cloudstreet , and Contemporary Australian Consciousness," for Dr. Scott B. Harshbarger, Honors Essay, ENGL199: English.

2014 Winner: Patrick Tierney.  "Practical Skepticism, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love to Doubt," for Dr. Mark V. McEvoy, Honors Thesis, PHL193: Philosophy.

2013 Winner: Ashley Rothbart. "A Figure Study: Depictions of King David in Renaissance and Baroque Art," for Dr. Claire K. Lindgren, Honors Essay, AH100: Art History.

2013 Winner: Jesse Crosson. " The 'Art of the Possible': No Child Left Behind, the Affordable Care Act, and Bipartisanship in the Twenty-First Century," for Dr. Meenekshi Bose, Honors Essay, PSC100: Political Science. 

2012 Winner: William Barna, II. “ U.S. Military Intervention for Humanitarian Purposes: Exception to Policy or an Emerging Norm? ,” for Dr. Paul Brian Fritz, Honors Thesis, PSC100: Political Science.

2012 Winner: Etana Jacobi. “ iGlobalization: Kodak, Apple, and the Evolution of U.S. Employment from 1960 to 2012, ” for Dr. Grant R. Saff, Honors Thesis, GS100: Global Studies.

2011 Winner: Alex Moore, "Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Creation of American Dance, 1619-1950.” for Prof. Dyane Harvey-Salaam, Honors Thesis, Global Studies 180

2011 Winner: Brendan Barnes, "Enter Pirates:  The Role of Piracy in Late Elizabethan Drama.” for Prof. Vimala C. Pasupathi, Honors Essay, English 199

2010 Winner: Jason Curreri, "The Question of Assimilation Defined from Cherokee and Euro-American Perspectives,” for Prof. Karyn Valerius, Honors Essay, ENG199

2009 Winner: Amanda Braverman, "Personality Aspects and Blame Style of Singers with Performance Anxiety,” for Prof. Michael J. Barnes, PSY100

2008 Winner: Jessica Knobler, "Photography, Politics, and the Holocaust 1920-1950," for Prof. Sally Charnow, HIS100

2003 Winner: Lisa B. Ross, "The Role of Word Class in the Attrition of School Learned French: are Nouns or Verbs More Likely to be Lost?," for Prof. Evelyn Altenberg, SPCH100

2002 Winner: Laura Vosswinkel, "Government Response to the Pullman Strike," for Prof. Susan Yohn, HIS185

2001 Winner: Janine Vannata, "Jasper Johns' Paintings and the Habit of Perception," Prof. Laurie Fendrich, UHP020

2000 Winner: Christopher Doherty, "Johannes Brahms and Idiomatic Writing for the Horn," Prof. Howard Cinnamon, MUS100

1999 Winner: David Creed, "Fooled by 'A Dream': The Strategic Defense Initiative's Role in Ending the Cold War," for Prof. Meena Bose, PSC134

1998 Winner: Donnalynn Gazza, "The Chemical Weapons Convention: An International Paradigm of Cooperation," for Prof. Meena Bose, PSC134

• Last Updated: Jul 12, 2024 1:35 PM
• URL: https://libguides.hofstra.edu/ulra

This site is compliant with the W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY Hempstead, NY 11549-1000 (516) 463-6600 © 2000-2009 Hofstra University Skip to main content Skip to "About this site" Departments Language selection Search and menus Undergraduate Student Research Awards The Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) program supports more than 3,000 students annually and is administered jointly by Canada’s three granting agencies: the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Applications for the USRA program must be completed and submitted  to the Canadian institution where you wish to hold the award  through NSERC’s online system. Selected applications are submitted to NSERC by institutions. No USRA applications may be submitted directly to the agencies. Presently, CIHR and SSHRC USRAs are exclusively for Black student researchers. Institutions are assigned a specific allocation for these awards, as outlined in the  Undergraduate Student Research Awards allocations  web page. Overview Value $6,000 plus host institution contribution Application deadline How to apply Application forms To create or access an application, log in to the  . Read the   before completing and submitting your application. For more information Refer to the . On this page Important information, description, eligibility, value and duration of awards, location of tenure, supervision of the student at the institution, subject matter eligibility, san francisco declaration on research assessment, equity, diversity and inclusion, allocations, black student researchers, indigenous student researchers (for nserc only), application procedure, selection process, notification of results, payment of awards, travel allowances, use and disclosure of information. Undergraduate Student Research Awards allocations Frequently asked questions about USRAs Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRAs) are meant to nurture your interest and fully develop your potential for a research career in health, natural sciences and engineering, or social sciences and humanities. These awards are also meant to encourage you to undertake graduate studies by providing research work experience that complements your studies in an academic setting. You are permitted to hold a USRA during a co-op placement. Your institution’s co-op office or USRA liaison officer (LO) may be able to assist you in finding a placement. LOs are institution administrators and usually work in your institution’s scholarship office. To be eligible to  apply  for an award you must be a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident of Canada or a Protected Person under subsection 95(2) of the  Immigration and Refugee Protection Act  (Canada), as of the deadline date for applications at the institution you must be registered, as of the deadline date for applications at the institution, in a bachelor’s degree program at an eligible institution you must have obtained, over the previous years of study, a satisfactory cumulative average (normally at least B-; check with your institution) you cannot be currently enrolled in an undergraduate professional degree program in the health sciences (e.g., MD, DDS, BScN)  (does not apply for CIHR USRAs) you cannot be currently registered or have been previously registered, at any time, in a graduate program in the same field of study you cannot have completed all your degree requirements CIHR and SSHRC USRAs are, at the present time, exclusively for Black student researchers. To be considered, you must self-identify as Black (see the Black student researchers section for more details). In addition if you already hold a bachelor’s degree and are studying toward a second bachelor’s degree, you may still apply for this award you may hold only  one  USRA per fiscal year (April 1 to March 31) you may hold a maximum of  three USRAs  throughout your undergraduate career (regardless of the granting agency) To  hold  an award you must have completed all course requirements for at least the first year of study (or two academic terms) of your bachelor’s degree you must have been registered in a bachelor’s degree program at the time of application and in at least one of the two terms immediately before holding the award you must be working full time in eligible research and development activities in your proposed field of research during tenure of the award you cannot be registered in a graduate program You may hold an award at any time during the year as permitted by your academic program. Tenure may start on a date acceptable to both you and your host institution. USRAs have a value of $6,000, and the host institution is required to supplement the award. The duration of the award is 14 to 16 weeks on a full-time basis. The activities conducted during the tenure of the USRA are governed by the agreements, including employment agreements (if applicable), you have with the host institution and the relevant terms and conditions of awards. The agency’s contribution is  paid directly to the host institution  and is included in the funds that you receive. The USRA program makes no provision for sick leave or vacation, or for other types of interruptions. Should a USRA be interrupted or terminated early for any reason, the agencies must be informed immediately. Without exception, USRAs are tenable only at eligible Canadian institutions with an assigned allocation. Awards must be held at the institution where the offer of award originates. An eligible supervisor is a person authorized by the institution to independently supervise students. Your institution will decide if your proposed supervisor is eligible. You must work under the supervision of a person who has been approved by the institution. NSERC, CIHR and SSHRC support and promote high-quality research in a wide variety of disciplines and areas, which are divided into broad fields of research (health, natural sciences and engineering, and social sciences and humanities). This includes research that bridges two or more disciplines or that requires the skills of several disciplines. You must ensure that you are submitting your application to an institution that has an allocation for your selected agency (refer to the  Undergraduate Student Research Awards allocations  web page for a list of allocations by institution and by agency). If the granting agency determines your application was submitted to the wrong agency based on the subject matter, it will be transferred accordingly (refer to Selecting the appropriate federal granting agency web page for more information). It is not necessary for your proposed supervisor’s research program to be exclusively within your selected agency’s field of study (health, natural sciences and engineering, or social sciences and humanities). NSERC is a signatory to the  San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) . To promote NSERC’s support of research excellence in Canada and incorporate the principles of DORA, NSERC has developed  Guidelines on the assessment of contributions to research, training and mentoring . The guidelines highlight NSERC’s commitment to excellence in research funding and aim to ensure that a wide range of research results and outcomes are considered and valued as part of the assessment process.  The three agencies are acting on the evidence that achieving a more equitable, diverse and inclusive Canadian research enterprise is essential to creating the excellent, innovative and impactful research necessary to advance knowledge and understanding, and to respond to local, national and global challenges. This principle informs the commitments described in the  Tri-agency statement on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and is aligned with the objectives of the Tri-agency EDI Action Plan . When preparing the research proposal, supervisors are encouraged to consult the  NSERC guide on integrating equity, diversity and inclusion considerations in research web page. Eligible Canadian institutions are assigned a separate allocation of awards to offer from each agency. Institutions must respect the agency-specific allocation of awards. Refer to the  Undergraduate Student Research Awards allocations  web page for a list of allocations by institution and by agency. For NSERC:  Institutions may recommend applications from self-identified Black student researchers for USRAs beyond their allocation of awards. For CIHR and SSHRC:  At the present time, CIHR and SSHRC USRAs are exclusively for Black student researchers. Institutions are assigned an allocation of awards, as outlined in the  Undergraduate Student Research Awards allocations  web page. To be eligible to apply for these awards, you must self-identify as Black by checking the relevant box within the application form. Note that this self-identification information will be shared with the institution to which you are applying and, if awarded, publicly. Refer to the  Instructions for completing an Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) application – form 202  web page for more information. Institutions may recommend applications from self-identified Indigenous student researchers for USRAs beyond their allocation of awards. To apply for these awards, you must complete and submit an application using NSERC’s online system. Refer to the  Instructions for completing an Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) application – form 202  web page for more information. You can apply to more than one institution. You must apply directly to the institution where you would like to hold the award. However, please note that it is the institution’s choice whether to accept candidates from other institutions. Eligible Canadian institutions are assigned an allocation of awards to offer each year. Refer to the  Undergraduate Student Research Awards allocations  web page for a list of allocations by institution and agency.  Note:  CIHR’s and SSHRC’s allocations are, at the present time, exclusively for Black student researchers. The selection process of USRA applications will be carried out by institutions with an allocation and will be based on the following three selection criteria: academic excellence research potential expected quality of the training and mentorship to be received All application and review processes are internal to the institution. It is the institution’s responsibility to establish its own selection criteria within the broad guidelines that the agencies provide. Institutions have the discretion to apply stricter selection criteria than those outlined above. When selecting students for awards, the institution will take into account the objectives of the USRA program. For details on the institution selection procedures, refer to the  Guidelines for Undergraduate Student Research Awards liaison officers or contact the USRA LO at the institution where you would like to hold the award. Each eligible institution sets its own internal deadline dates for receiving applications. For information about these dates, contact the USRA LO at the institution where you intend to apply for an award. Although awards may be held in the summer, fall or winter term, each institution will determine the number of selection processes it holds each year. Each institution will inform applicants of its award decisions after it has completed its selection process. To find out if your application was recommended to the agencies, contact the USRA LO at your institution. Recommended candidates approved by NSERC and SSHRC will receive an award letter on SharePoint midway through their award. Recommended candidates approved by CIHR will receive an award letter by email. Award letters should be read carefully and kept for future reference. Once the relevant agency has approved your USRA for tenure at one particular institution, you  may not  transfer it to another institution. You will receive your payment from the institution. The institution will issue payments to you for the total value of the award in accordance with its pay procedures. It will also issue a T4 or T4A slip (statement of income) to you at the end of the calendar year. NSERC, CIHR and SSHRC will pay their respective contributions directly to the institution. Travel allowances are not provided by the granting agencies. All personal information collected as part of this program is used by the agencies and by the relevant officials at the eligible research institutions to review applications and to administer and monitor awards. It may also be used to determine the most appropriate funding jurisdiction, or to monitor overlap in federal support. Details on the use and disclosure of this information by the agencies are described by CIHR on the Info source – Sources of federal government and employee information  web page, by NSERC on the  Use and disclosure of personal information provided to NSERC  web page, by SSHRC on the Collection, use and disclosure of personal information  web page and in the relevant program literature. Each agency may publish the names and other limited award information of award holders on their websites in accordance with the agencies’ policies on disclosure under the  Access to Information Act  and their  Privacy Act  policies and guidelines related to the collection, use, retention and disposal of personal information. For more information, consult the Access to Information Act  and the Privacy Act . For more details regarding CIHR’s use of personal information, refer to the Undergraduate Student Research Awards details on CIHR’s Funding Opportunity  web page. The first point of contact regarding the USRA program should be the USRA LO at the institution where you intend to apply for an award or where you are currently registered in an eligible program of study. For general information about the USRA program, policies and guidelines contact NSERC staff by email at  [email protected] . For post-awards inquiries to CIHR, contact [email protected] to SSHRC, contact [email protected] Tri-agency logos Contact Newsletter Get highlights of things happening at NSERC delivered to your email inbox. View all Newsletters TOP OF PAGE Modified: 2024-01-16 Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Fair Awards will be given to the top submissions from each category at the Undergraduate Research Fair: Basic and Natural Sciences Clinical and Translational Research Engineering Public Health, Epidemiology, and Health Sciences Social, Behavioral, Educational Sciences, and Humanities Computer Science, Data Science, and Mathematics To enter the competition, complete the following steps: Complete the Call for Proposals by October 24th, 2023 at 11:59pm CT. Submit your poster using InfoReady by October 29th, 2023 at 11:59pm CT.  The link to this form will be emailed to registrants after the week of September 25th. Upload a PDF of your presentation, ensuring that the image is not pixelated and the author contribution statement is included. Attend the Fall Undergraduate Research Fair. Awards will be presented at the end of Group B at 5:45pm. The rubric for judging can be found here. There is no in-person judging component to the scores.  See Preparing to Present for more information about how to design a poster. Florida State University FSU | Department of History Department of History Undergraduate research paper award. Congratulations to Benjamin Ream who won History's Undergraduate Research Paper Award and to Anne Tirrell who received an honorable mention. Benjamin wrote his essay for the Senior Seminar on Refugees Throughout History that he took with Dr. Max Scholz in fall 2022. Entitled Rewriting History: The Significance of Roman Origin Stories in the Augustan Age , the paper brings to light the reasons why certain Roman authors, primarily of the 1st century B.C.E., chose to include Roman origin stories in their writings. It focuses both on Rome’s attempts to move away from ancient stories that connected them to the Greeks, as well as on Augustan Age propaganda, especially why authors in the circle of the emperor Augustus were keen to write such stories. Anne wrote her essay for the History of Latin America, Mexico, and the Caribbean class that she took with Dr. Robinson Herrera in fall 2022. Her paper traces the history of hot cocoa's transnational development from a drink of Indigenous ritual to European confection through Historical Materialist analysis, focusing on the usage of labor and exploitation that continues through the modern day. Well done both of you! 401 Bellamy Building 113 Collegiate Loop Tallahassee, FL 32306-2200 (850) 644-5888 | Fax: (850) 644-6402 Faculty and Staff Resources Connect with the department. Announcing the NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards  Communications Chairs 2023 2023 Conference awards , neurips2023 By Amir Globerson, Kate Saenko, Moritz Hardt, Sergey Levine and Comms Chair, Sahra Ghalebikesabi  We are honored to announce the award-winning papers for NeurIPS 2023! This year’s prestigious awards consist of the Test of Time Award plus two Outstanding Paper Awards in each of these three categories:  Two Outstanding Main Track Papers  Two Outstanding Main Track Runner-Ups  Two Outstanding Datasets and Benchmark Track Papers   This year’s organizers received a record number of paper submissions. Of the 13,300 submitted papers that were reviewed by 968 Area Chairs, 98 senior area chairs, and 396 Ethics reviewers 3,540  were accepted after 502 papers were flagged for ethics reviews .  We thank the awards committee for the main track: Yoav Artzi, Chelsea Finn, Ludwig Schmidt, Ricardo Silva, Isabel Valera, and Mengdi Wang. For the Datasets and Benchmarks track, we thank Sergio Escalera, Isabelle Guyon, Neil Lawrence, Dina Machuve, Olga Russakovsky, Hugo Jair Escalante, Deepti Ghadiyaram, and Serena Yeung. Conflicts of interest were taken into account in the decision process. Congratulations to all the authors! See Posters Sessions Tue-Thur in Great Hall & B1-B2 (level 1). Outstanding Main Track Papers Privacy Auditing with One (1) Training Run Authors: Thomas Steinke · Milad Nasr · Matthew Jagielski Poster session 2: Tue 12 Dec 5:15 p.m. — 7:15 p.m. CST, #1523 Oral: Tue 12 Dec 3:40 p.m. — 4:40 p.m. CST, Room R06-R09 (level 2) Abstract: We propose a scheme for auditing differentially private machine learning systems with a single training run. This exploits the parallelism of being able to add or remove multiple training examples independently. We analyze this using the connection between differential privacy and statistical generalization, which avoids the cost of group privacy. Our auditing scheme requires minimal assumptions about the algorithm and can be applied in the black-box or white-box setting. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework by applying it to DP-SGD, where we can achieve meaningful empirical privacy lower bounds by training only one model. In contrast, standard methods would require training hundreds of models. Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage? Authors: Rylan Schaeffer · Brando Miranda · Sanmi Koyejo Poster session 6: Thu 14 Dec 5:00 p.m. — 7:00 p.m. CST, #1108 Oral: Thu 14 Dec 3:20 p.m. — 3:35 p.m. CST, Hall C2 (level 1)  Abstract: Recent work claims that large language models display emergent abilities, abilities not present in smaller-scale models that are present in larger-scale models. What makes emergent abilities intriguing is two-fold: their sharpness, transitioning seemingly instantaneously from not present to present, and their unpredictability , appearing at seemingly unforeseeable model scales. Here, we present an alternative explanation for emergent abilities: that for a particular task and model family, when analyzing fixed model outputs, emergent abilities appear due to the researcher’s choice of metric rather than due to fundamental changes in model behavior with scale. Specifically, nonlinear or discontinuous metrics produce apparent emergent abilities, whereas linear or continuous metrics produce smooth, continuous, predictable changes in model performance. We present our alternative explanation in a simple mathematical model, then test it in three complementary ways: we (1) make, test and confirm three predictions on the effect of metric choice using the InstructGPT/GPT-3 family on tasks with claimed emergent abilities, (2) make, test and confirm two predictions about metric choices in a meta-analysis of emergent abilities on BIG-Bench; and (3) show how to choose metrics to produce never-before-seen seemingly emergent abilities in multiple vision tasks across diverse deep networks. Via all three analyses, we provide evidence that alleged emergent abilities evaporate with different metrics or with better statistics, and may not be a fundamental property of scaling AI models. Outstanding Main Track Runner-Ups Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models Authors : Niklas Muennighoff · Alexander Rush · Boaz Barak · Teven Le Scao · Nouamane Tazi · Aleksandra Piktus · Sampo Pyysalo · Thomas Wolf · Colin Raffel Poster session 2: Tue 12 Dec 5:15 p.m. — 7:15 p.m. CST, #813 Oral: Tue 12 Dec 3:40 p.m. — 4:40 p.m. CST, Hall C2 (level 1)   Abstract : The current trend of scaling language models involves increasing both parameter count and training dataset size. Extrapolating this trend suggests that training dataset size may soon be limited by the amount of text data available on the internet. Motivated by this limit, we investigate scaling language models in data-constrained regimes. Specifically, we run a large set of experiments varying the extent of data repetition and compute budget, ranging up to 900 billion training tokens and 9 billion parameter models. We find that with constrained data for a fixed compute budget, training with up to 4 epochs of repeated data yields negligible changes to loss compared to having unique data. However, with more repetition, the value of adding compute eventually decays to zero. We propose and empirically validate a scaling law for compute optimality that accounts for the decreasing value of repeated tokens and excess parameters. Finally, we experiment with approaches mitigating data scarcity, including augmenting the training dataset with code data or removing commonly used filters. Models and datasets from our 400 training runs are freely available at https://github.com/huggingface/datablations . Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model Authors: Rafael Rafailov · Archit Sharma · Eric Mitchell · Christopher D Manning · Stefano Ermon · Chelsea Finn Poster session 6: Thu 14 Dec 5:00 p.m. — 7:00 p.m. CST, #625 Oral: Thu 14 Dec 3:50 p.m. — 4:05 p.m. CST, Ballroom A-C (level 2)   Abstract: While large-scale unsupervised language models (LMs) learn broad world knowledge and some reasoning skills, achieving precise control of their behavior is difficult due to the completely unsupervised nature of their training. Existing methods for gaining such steerability collect human labels of the relative quality of model generations and fine-tune the unsupervised LM to align with these preferences, often with reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). However, RLHF is a complex and often unstable procedure, first fitting a reward model that reflects the human preferences, and then fine-tuning the large unsupervised LM using reinforcement learning to maximize this estimated reward without drifting too far from the original model. In this paper, we leverage a mapping between reward functions and optimal policies to show that this constrained reward maximization problem can be optimized exactly with a single stage of policy training, essentially solving a classification problem on the human preference data. The resulting algorithm, which we call Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), is stable, performant, and computationally lightweight, eliminating the need for fitting a reward model, sampling from the LM during fine-tuning, or performing significant hyperparameter tuning. Our experiments show that DPO can fine-tune LMs to align with human preferences as well as or better than existing methods. Notably, fine-tuning with DPO exceeds RLHF’s ability to control sentiment of generations and improves response quality in summarization and single-turn dialogue while being substantially simpler to implement and train. Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Papers In the dataset category :  ClimSim: A large multi-scale dataset for hybrid physics-ML climate emulation Authors:  Sungduk Yu · Walter Hannah · Liran Peng · Jerry Lin · Mohamed Aziz Bhouri · Ritwik Gupta · Björn Lütjens · Justus C. Will · Gunnar Behrens · Julius Busecke · Nora Loose · Charles Stern · Tom Beucler · Bryce Harrop · Benjamin Hillman · Andrea Jenney · Savannah L. Ferretti · Nana Liu · Animashree Anandkumar · Noah Brenowitz · Veronika Eyring · Nicholas Geneva · Pierre Gentine · Stephan Mandt · Jaideep Pathak · Akshay Subramaniam · Carl Vondrick · Rose Yu · Laure Zanna · Tian Zheng · Ryan Abernathey · Fiaz Ahmed · David Bader · Pierre Baldi · Elizabeth Barnes · Christopher Bretherton · Peter Caldwell · Wayne Chuang · Yilun Han · YU HUANG · Fernando Iglesias-Suarez · Sanket Jantre · Karthik Kashinath · Marat Khairoutdinov · Thorsten Kurth · Nicholas Lutsko · Po-Lun Ma · Griffin Mooers · J. David Neelin · David Randall · Sara Shamekh · Mark Taylor · Nathan Urban · Janni Yuval · Guang Zhang · Mike Pritchard Poster session 4: Wed 13 Dec 5:00 p.m. — 7:00 p.m. CST, #105  Oral: Wed 13 Dec 3:45 p.m. — 4:00 p.m. CST, Ballroom A-C (level 2) Abstract: Modern climate projections lack adequate spatial and temporal resolution due to computational constraints. A consequence is inaccurate and imprecise predictions of critical processes such as storms. Hybrid methods that combine physics with machine learning (ML) have introduced a new generation of higher fidelity climate simulators that can sidestep Moore’s Law by outsourcing compute-hungry, short, high-resolution simulations to ML emulators. However, this hybrid ML-physics simulation approach requires domain-specific treatment and has been inaccessible to ML experts because of lack of training data and relevant, easy-to-use workflows. We present ClimSim, the largest-ever dataset designed for hybrid ML-physics research. It comprises multi-scale climate simulations, developed by a consortium of climate scientists and ML researchers. It consists of 5.7 billion pairs of multivariate input and output vectors that isolate the influence of locally-nested, high-resolution, high-fidelity physics on a host climate simulator’s macro-scale physical state. The dataset is global in coverage, spans multiple years at high sampling frequency, and is designed such that resulting emulators are compatible with downstream coupling into operational climate simulators. We implement a range of deterministic and stochastic regression baselines to highlight the ML challenges and their scoring. The data (https://huggingface.co/datasets/LEAP/ClimSim_high-res) and code (https://leap-stc.github.io/ClimSim) are released openly to support the development of hybrid ML-physics and high-fidelity climate simulations for the benefit of science and society.    In the benchmark category : DecodingTrust: A Comprehensive Assessment of Trustworthiness in GPT Models Authors: Boxin Wang · Weixin Chen · Hengzhi Pei · Chulin Xie · Mintong Kang · Chenhui Zhang · Chejian Xu · Zidi Xiong · Ritik Dutta · Rylan Schaeffer · Sang Truong · Simran Arora · Mantas Mazeika · Dan Hendrycks · Zinan Lin · Yu Cheng · Sanmi Koyejo · Dawn Song · Bo Li Poster session 1: Tue 12 Dec 10:45 a.m. — 12:45 p.m. CST, #1618   Oral: Tue 12 Dec 10:30 a.m. — 10:45 a.m. CST, Ballroom A-C (Level 2) Abstract: Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models have exhibited exciting progress in capabilities, capturing the interest of practitioners and the public alike. Yet, while the literature on the trustworthiness of GPT models remains limited, practitioners have proposed employing capable GPT models for sensitive applications to healthcare and finance – where mistakes can be costly. To this end, this work proposes a comprehensive trustworthiness evaluation for large language models with a focus on GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, considering diverse perspectives – including toxicity, stereotype bias, adversarial robustness, out-of-distribution robustness, robustness on adversarial demonstrations, privacy, machine ethics, and fairness. Based on our evaluations, we discover previously unpublished vulnerabilities to trustworthiness threats. For instance, we find that GPT models can be easily misled to generate toxic and biased outputs and leak private information in both training data and conversation history. We also find that although GPT-4 is usually more trustworthy than GPT-3.5 on standard benchmarks, GPT-4 is more vulnerable given jailbreaking system or user prompts, potentially due to the reason that GPT-4 follows the (misleading) instructions more precisely. Our work illustrates a comprehensive trustworthiness evaluation of GPT models and sheds light on the trustworthiness gaps. Our benchmark is publicly available at https://decodingtrust.github.io/. Test of Time This year, following the usual practice, we chose a NeurIPS paper from 10 years ago to receive the Test of Time Award, and “ Distributed Representations of Words and Phrases and their Compositionality ” by Tomas Mikolov, Ilya Sutskever, Kai Chen, Greg Corrado, and Jeffrey Dean, won.  Published at NeurIPS 2013 and cited over 40,000 times, the work introduced the seminal word embedding technique word2vec. Demonstrating the power of learning from large amounts of unstructured text, the work catalyzed progress that marked the beginning of a new era in natural language processing. Greg Corrado and Jeffrey Dean will be giving a talk about this work and related research on Tuesday, 12 Dec at 3:05 – 3:25 pm CST in Hall F.   Related Posts 2023 Conference Announcing NeurIPS 2023 Invited Talks Reflections on the neurips 2023 ethics review process, neurips newsletter – november 2023. Faculty and Staff News Media Resources Purdue News Weekly Research Excellence Purdue Computes Daniels School of Business Purdue University in Indianapolis The Persistent Pursuit Purdue News on Youtube Purdue in the News Purdue University Events A year of record-setting milestones across key indicators at Purdue University As the new academic year begins, Purdue University’s execution for excellence at scale in the areas of learning, research and engagement has led to new records in almost all dimensions during the fiscal year that ran from July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024. Financials and physical facilities Purdue’s trend of breaking key institutionwide records during fiscal year 2024 extended across the philanthropic sector. The university set records for new gift commitments and philanthropic cash in 2024. New gift commitments reached $632.3 million, which broke the record of $610.3 million set a year ago. The philanthropic cash total of $349.8 million broke the 2022 record of $245.3 million. These efforts were propelled by continued growth in the number of donors, which rose to 85,421, a record for total annual donors outside a major campaign. The university’s endowment climbed to $4.1 billion, reflecting an 11.6% return. And $1.5 billion worth of construction and major renovations on 28 campus projects were started, with an industry-high 87-88% of them on time and on budget. Research awards and national center wins Purdue’s sponsored program awards climbed to a record $757.5 million from $622.4 million the previous fiscal year. Research awards from external sources reached a record $647.7 million, up from $613.3 million a year ago, a figure considered a high benchmark for a university without a medical school. Purdue also signed nine new master research agreements with industry partners, including one as part of the landmark announcement by South Korea-based SK hynix to invest nearly $4 billion to build an advanced packaging fabrication and R&D facility for artificial intelligence semiconductor products in the Purdue Research Park. Additionally, Purdue was the only university in the U.S. as a leading university partner in winning all three national hub competitions last year — Heartland BioWorks, Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, and Silicon Crossroads Microelectronics Commons — focused on ensuring the U.S. remains globally competitive in key national security areas. Patents and startups A barometer of Purdue’s thriving entrepreneurship culture, intellectual property disclosures surged to a record 466 from 400 in fiscal 2023, the Office of Technology Commercialization reported. Additionally, 290 patents were issued, while the number of patent licenses skyrocketed to a record 224. This ecosystem helped establish 16 startup companies based on Purdue research. Faculty awards, citations and books The number of research publication citations by Purdue faculty rose nearly 13% to 435,087, while the number of books published by faculty jumped nearly 40% to 60. Meanwhile, 40 faculty members received prestigious awards, up 11% from the number recognized last year. Undergraduate applications and admissions Purdue welcomed its most selective class of undergraduate students for the 2024-25 academic year. This fall’s projected class of undergraduate Boilermakers starting in West Lafayette and the new urban campus Indianapolis was selected at a 49.8% admission rate from a record-setting pool of 78,522 applicants, with a post-summer-melt yield rate at a record 30%, significantly higher than all historical data. Their average SAT score was a record 1329, up 10 points from last year. Graduation rates and earnings-to-debt ratio The number of Boilermakers graduating in four years rose to 67%, the highest in recent record, and the six-year graduation rate remained at 84%, vs. 74% in 2008. Another positive pocketbook trend: The number of Boilermakers graduating without debt was up 3 percentage points to 64%, while the earnings-to-debt ratio increased further to 6.7. Graduate applications and admissions As goes the undergraduate student trend, so goes the demand for advanced degrees. Sparked by progress in achieving excellence at scale academically, graduate student applications reached another record level. PhD candidate applications hit 11,677, while master’s student applications climbed to 14,403, both new records in recent memory. Online enrollment Purdue’s ongoing commitment to growing its online offerings is drawing increased interest and activity. Enrollment in Purdue’s online master’s degree programs rose 23% to a record 5,245 students. The number of students taking online post-bachelor certificate classes surged 56% to 15,955. Total number of Purdue University’s online students exceeded 20,000 for the first time, in addition to almost 13,000 residential undergraduates taking at least one course online. Excitement at Purdue wasn’t confined to classrooms and research labs. Athletics had a banner year, as the men’s basketball team registered its winningest season in program history, with 34 victories. Led by the first ever two-time unanimous National Player of the Year Zach Edey, the Boilermakers appeared in their first national championship game since 1969 as March Madness captivated Boiler nation. At the same time, the six-year graduation rate for our student-athletes hit a record 90%, their average GPA was 3.2 and career placement was 100%. Reputation and visibility In both QS and Times Higher Ed worldwide rankings, Purdue is ranked among top 10 American public universities. Purdue has enjoyed six straight years as a top 10 Most Innovative university as designated by U.S. News & World Report, and 13 undergraduate programs were ranked in the top 10 in the nation in its 2024 survey. Overall, Purdue ranked No. 43 among 435 U.S. universities, up eight spots from 2023 and rising to the highest position in school history. Earned media placements jumped 34% to a record 119,345, while social media impressions skyrocketed to 160 million. Listeners to the “This Is Purdue” podcast reached 2.2 million, ranking tops in Apple podcasts’ education category. Visits to purdue.edu topped 15.8 million, up 9%. About Purdue University Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at  https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives . More Purdue News Purdue researchers receive additional $95K to develop arthritis treatments, drought-resistant soybeans August 20, 2024 Hoosier Sheep Symposium slated for Sept. 21 Today’s top 5 from Purdue University August 16, 2024 Purdue, Dell Technologies celebrate opening of Alienware Purdue Gaming Lounge Kansas State University Status of ITS resources K-State home » K-State News » Thirty-four students receive $1,000 research awards from K-State College of Arts and Sciences K-State News K-State Today Seek research magazine Graduation/honors lists K-State News Kansas State University 128 Dole Hall 1525 Mid-Campus Dr North Manhattan, KS 66506 785-532-2535 [email protected] Thirty-four students receive $1,000 research awards from College of Arts and Sciences Monday, Aug. 19, 2024 MANHATTAN — Thirty-four students in the College of Arts and Sciences at Kansas State University have received research awards from the college for summer and fall 2024. The awards aim to provide students with impactful, paid research experiences alongside faculty mentors. The $1,000 scholarships are offered in fall, spring and summer with deadlines of May 1, Nov. 1 and March 1, respectively. Undergraduate students enrolled full-time in any major in the college are eligible to apply. More information about the award program is on the college's student research and creative inquiry opportunities webpage. The college is committed to providing research or practical learning opportunities for all of its students. The following students received College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Awards for summer 2024: Darius Skillen, mathematics and Spanish, Cheney , mentored by Rebecca Bender, modern languages; Steven Walsh, history, Junction City , mentored by Mary Kohn, English; and Kutina Cabrera, psychology and French, Lenexa , mentored by Kathleen Antonioli, modern languages. Tabitha Ellwood, music and English literature, Little River , mentored by Slawomir Dobrzanski, music, theatre, and dance; Joseph Pondillo, political science and social transformation studies, Manhattan , mentored by Lisa Tatonetti, English; and August Barrett-Fox, history and political science, Newton , mentored by Eric Brandom, history. Jonathan Williams, anthropology, Ottawa , mentored by Benjamin McCloskey, modern languages and history; Ethan Chapman, political science and pre-law, Overland Park , mentored by Benjamin McCloskey, modern languages and history; and Taz Zeigler, microbiology, Salina , mentored by Vanessa Ante, biology. From out of country: Jiwoo Jung, fisheries, wildlife, conservation, and environmental biology, South Korea , mentored by Susan Brown, biology. The following students received College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Awards for fall 2024: Kenzie Liby, psychology, Berryton , mentored by Michael Young, psychological sciences; Gus Howard, fine arts, Breman , mentored by Shreepad Joglekar, art; and Clara Pitkin, social transformation studies and nursing, Fort Leavenworth , mentored by Valerie Padilla Carroll, social transformation studies. From Hays : Mark Rack, psychology and social work, mentored by Natalie Barlett, psychological sciences; and Jocelyn Rigler, biology, mentored by Mary Cain, psychological sciences. Hannah Trechter, psychological sciences, Junction City , mentored by Natalie Barlett, psychological sciences; and Alyssa Probst, medical biochemistry, Lawrence , mentored by Patrica Calvo, chemistry. From Manhattan : Camille Carrier, microbiology, mentored by Pankaj Baral, biology; Carson Cole, chemistry, mentored by Peter Sues, chemistry; Samuel Gido, mathematics and computer science, mentored by Natalia Rojkovskaia; and Veronica Knight, chemistry, mentored by Patrica Calvo, chemistry. Emily Cummings, molecular biology, Overland Park , mentored by Kathrin Schrick, biology; and Jillian Rockley, medical biochemistry and integrated health studies, Rose Hill , mentored by Kathrin Schrick, biology. From Salina : Maya Daily, chemical sciences, mentored by Patrica Calvo, chemistry; and Keat Robinson, biology, mentored by Katsura Asano, biology. From Wamego : Annika Wiebers, dance and the human experience and agricultural communications, mentored by Kate Digby, music, theatre, and dance. From Wichita : Adrienne Pamatmat, biology and pre-medicine, Vanessa Ante, biology; and Evan Gnagy, visual communication design, mentored by Valerie Padilla Carroll, social transformation studies. From out of state: Hera Hessenius, piano performance, Sahuarita, Arizona , mentored by Slawomir Dobrzanski, music, theatre, and dance; Riley Blitt, biological systems engineering and pre-medicine, Colorado Springs, Colorado , mentored by Patricia Calvo, chemistry; and Jonathan Ulmer, biochemistry and pre-pharmacy, Hampton, Virginia , mentored by Katsura Asano, biology. From out of country: Prabhleen Kaur, chemical sciences and biochemistry, India , mentored by Dan Higgins, chemistry; Moussa Gacko, biology, Senegal , mentored by Arjun Nepal, physics; and Zanri Pieterse, human health biology, South Africa , mentored by Ruth Welti, biology. Media contact Division of Communications and Marketing 785-532-2535 [email protected] College of Arts and Sciences student research & creative inquiry opportunities Berryton, Breman, Cheney, Fort Leavenworth, Hays, Junction City, Lawrence, Lenexa, Little River, Manhattan, Newton, Ottawa, Overland Park, Rose Hill, Salina, Wamego and Wichita, Kansas; Sahuarita, Arizona; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Hampton, Virginia. Statements and disclosures Accessibility Manhattan, KS 66506 785-532-6011 © Kansas State University Updated: 8/19/24 Departments and Programs Undergraduate Political Science Leadership in the Public Sector Add or Change A Major Scholarships Career Paths Internships and More Student Organizations Master of International Studies Master of Public Administration Ph.D. in Public Administration Nonprofit Management Certificate Nuclear Nonproliferation Science and Policy Certificate Policy Analysis Certificate Research and Engagement Public Safety Leadership Initiative Genetic Engineering and Society Center Political Science Majors Showcase Research at Summer Symposium Political science seniors—Ava Butler, Madeline Evans, and Connor Stitt —demonstrated their research prowess at the NC State Undergraduate Research & Creativity Symposium on July 26, 2024. This annual event, organized by the Office of Undergraduate Research, celebrates innovative undergraduate scholarship across diverse disciplines. Butler, Evans, and Stitt were funded through the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) grants from the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). Their success highlights SPIA and the Department of Political Science’ s ongoing commitment to fostering undergraduate research excellence. In recent years, the department has significantly expanded opportunities for students, including increased funding, enhanced faculty mentorship, research assistantships, support for symposium and conference presentations, and enrollment in the Political Science Honors Program. “Independent research is a demanding, time-consuming endeavor,” said Dr. Irwin Morris, SPIA’s Executive Director and the William T. Kretzer Distinguished Professor of Humanities. “SURE funding is one way SPIA has made it possible for dedicated students to execute mentored-research projects that can foster life-changing intellectual growth and professional development. My own academic career was profoundly shaped by a similar program during my college years.” Meet the 2024 SPIA SURE student researchers:  Ava Butler  Degree program: B.A. Political Science (public policy concentration) with minors in international studies and Japan studies. Research Title: The Tongue is Mightier Than the Sword: How Language and Rhetoric Impact Opinions on Black Lives Matter. What is your project about? I am studying the language and rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement, specifically the media framing of the movement and the language used in those cases as well. Using AI to perform large-scale textual analysis and literature reviews on the links to language and emotional response, I plan to develop a survey to test if language and framing really are key factors to BLM opposition. My summer presentation was a summary of my literature review and text analysis. I will continue this project through the 2024-25 school year as my political science honors program work.  How did you become interested in this topic? I have always been fascinated by how Black Lives Matter was such a contentious topic, especially after 2021. I was also thinking about how wording and phrasing can cause negative associations even if they’re not necessarily true/literal  like “communist China” and “defund the police”. I wanted to see if this was the phenomenon that made opposition to BLM so strong. Originally, I wanted to test this topic in our PS 371 research class, but the topic fell out of the bounds of that particular class. I had not taken a class with Dr. Steven Greene, but knew of his expertise in public opinion research so I asked him to be my faculty mentor and he agreed. He’s very approachable.  What are your plans after graduation? Through this summer experience, I have found a passion for research. I plan to work after graduation and am now strongly considering pursuing a Ph.D. in public policy. Your advice to other students considering research? Don’t be afraid to ask the faculty in the department that you don’t know. Look on the department website and see if their research interests align with your own. If they do, don’t be afraid to send them an email. Even if they can’t accommodate you, they’ll point you in the direction of another faculty member who can. Madeline Evans Degree program: B.A. Political Science (Law and Justice concentration) and B.A. Spanish Language and Literatures with minors in sociology, history, and international studies. Research Title: Women in the Courts: Female Justice Advocate Interactions in Supreme Court Oral Arguments I am studying the way that female actors within the Supreme Court interact with each other in relation to other actors in the Court. There is so much research on how male actors within the Supreme Court treat other individuals, but it is just as important to study how women are treating each other. Since there are now four female Supreme Court Justices, there is so much data to examine. That’s why now is the perfect time to start this project and examine the relationship between female oral advocates and female justices. How did you become interested in this topic?  I took PS 308 with Dr. Elizabeth Lane in which she assigned a podcast called More Perfect. The episode “Justice, Interrupted” examined interruption patterns by male justices and oral advocates that were directed toward female justices. I was fascinated by how much a pattern of interruptions could tell us about a justice’s thoughts and beliefs. During the entire episode, I kept waiting for them to explain what we could learn by female-to-female interactions. They never did, so I decided to find the answers to my questions through my own research project.  In addition to the class, I worked for Dr. Lane as her research assistant last year. Thankfully, she also agreed to be my faculty mentor for my research project which is part of the political science honors program. Working with her has been the highlight of my year! She has helped me learn so much about the law and my future career aspirations. What are your plans after graduation?  I plan on attending law school after graduation and plan to become an attorney and, eventually, a judge. This research experience has solidified that this plan is the right choice for me.  Be curious. If there is a question that you want to explore, do it! You are adding to an entire body of literature, and your contribution is going to be important. I thought I was the only one interested in my research topic, but at the summer symposium I met so many people who also cared about my topic and are looking forward to seeing my results.  Connor Stitt Degree program: B.S. Political Science with minors in mathematics and statistics. Research Title: Individual Determinants for the Excusal of Islamophobic Violence We hear a lot about political violence in the news. We also hear about increasing polarization, xenophobia, and so on. These are disturbing issues. I wanted to get a reading on these issues myself. My study therefore focuses on answering the question: “what character traits increase the likelihood that people will support violent events, such as bombings or shootings?”  I transferred to political science from industrial engineering. I was eager to put my math skills to use in political science. I already knew I was interested in autocratic regimes; I found their heterogeneity and striking contrast to democracy interesting. However, after talking to Dr. Zlatin Mitkov, it became clear that it’s hard to conduct experimental research on autocrats at the undergraduate level. That conversation turned me toward political psychology and authoritarianism, which is easier to collect data on, and quickly segwayed into political violence, a related area. I read several papers on political violence which made it clear that there could be improvements to the methodology.  My primary goal is to attend a master’s program to build a more well-rounded research portfolio on political violence and related subjects. This research project has increased my confidence in pursuing this goal. After graduate school, I hope to work as a political science analyst in Washington D.C..  If you want to pursue undergraduate research, I have three points of advice:  1. Topic: Start thinking about which areas of research interest you the most. Start looking into that area (Google Scholar, NCSU Library Databases) and learn the actual process of how people study that topic. For example, my research interested me both in its substantive content and its accessible methodology. Be on the lookout for “experiment” in the abstract or title.  2. Do your homework: After finding out the topic, spend some time beforehand studying by yourself and taking notes. This is not necessarily a requirement but it surely won’t hurt. I spent a couple of months before this project studying autocratic game theory before realizing it wasn’t worth it. Had I gone in with no practice, I may have gotten far into the project and felt lost.  3. Scope: You will not solve every issue in one paper. When I was constructing this project, I tried to include numerous other topics inside it. This will only dilute the results and is also unrealistic in the undergrad environment.  Students interested in doing their own research with a faculty mentor should talk with a political science professor about this course of study, enrollment in the research classes, and the Political Science Honors Program. Humanities and Social Sciences News School of Public and International Affairs SPIA Featured News SPIA Home Page undergraduate More From School of Public and International Affairs Political Science Alumni Support Summer Interns  Justin Thorpe Receives Erika Fairchild Outstanding Paper Award  Political Science Welcomes 19 New National Honor Society Members  Beware of fake email, SMS and WhatsApp messages: check before clicking. Read more College of Computing and Data Science How can we help you. Financial Matters Student Exchange Student Life Overseas exchanges Course finder Alumni events Alumni stories Professional development Alumni discounts Research Focus Research Hub Academic partners Research collaborations. Information for Suppliers Suppliers User Guide for Ariba Outstanding paper award at 10th international conference on connected smart cities 2024 (csc24). Team members : Dr Peter Edwards (inset top), Leow Guan Wei (inset bottom), Zheng Ping Heng, Dr Seanglidet Yean and Prof Lee Bu-Sung.  A/Prof Lee Bu Sung & Dr Yean Seanglidet (College of Computing and Data Science) working with final year project students, Heng Zheng Ping and Leow Guan Wei, and Dr Peter Edwards (Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research, New Zealand) have brought home the “Outstanding Paper Award” from the 10 th International Conference on Connected Smart Cities 2024. This year, the conference was held in Danubius Hotel Helia, Budapest, Hungary, from 13 to15 July 2024. Details about the award-winning paper is as following:  “Investigating the impact of trees as noise barrier on urban noise pollution through 3D scene modelling”. Seanglidet YEAN, Zheng Ping HENG, Guan Wei LEOW, Bu-Sung LEE, and Peter EDWARDS  The paper is supported by the “Bridging the Gap Between Remote Sensing and Tree Modelling with Data Science” project, which is funded by the Catalyst: Strategic Fund from Government Funding, administered by the Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment, New Zealand under contract C09X1923, as well as the National Research Foundation, Singapore under its Industry Alignment Fund – Pre-positioning (IAF-PP) Funding Initiative.  Demo video: SmartCities 2024 Related stories Distinguished Paper Award at CAV 2024 Asian Young Scientist Fellowship 2024 Newly Elevated IEEE Fellow for 2024 – Assoc Prof Luo Jun Three Innovative Application of AI Awards from AAAI 2024 SCSE Team wins Distinguished Paper Award at Artificial Intelligence System with Confidential Computing (AISCC 2024) National Research Foundation (NRF) Fellowship CEE Ph.D. Student Md Ashikuzzaman (Ashik) Wins Robert L. Snyder Student Award Ph.D. student Md Ashikuzzaman (familiarly known as Ashik) of the UMass Amherst Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department has received a Robert L. Snyder Student Award from the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD). As the ICDD summarized the purpose of its award, “In pursuing its dynamic commitment to the education of the scientific community, the ICDD is offering limited travel support to help students attend the 2024 Denver X-ray Conference.”  With the help of the award, Ashik was able to attend and present at the ICDD’s 73rd Annual Conference on Applications of X-ray Analysis, held from August 5th to 9th in Denver. To be eligible for the award, Ashik submitted an abstract and other supporting documents for evaluation, and after a critical review process he was selected as a recipient.  The award covered $1,000 in travel expenses and included a waiver of the conference registration fees. Ashik's poster, titled “Comprehensive Analysis of Glauconite Sand: DCB Treatment Effects on Mineral Composition,” was chosen for the XRD poster session, where he had the opportunity to present his research as part of the conference's technical program. Ashik’s abstract encapsulated his research to understand the behavior of glauconitic sand, which is essential for the successful development of offshore wind projects on the East Coast of the U.S., by studying the glauconite sand belt along the coast of New Jersey.  Ashik’s research supervisors are CEE Professor Guoping Zhang and CEE Associate Professor Zachary Westgate. The research at UMass Amherst, led by Westgate, is titled “Piling in Glauconitic Sand: PIGS JIP,” which is managed by the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute and sponsored by five offshore-wind developers. As Ashik explained his research, “The glauconite sand belt in New Jersey, spanning over 100 miles in length and 10 to 20 miles in width from Raritan Bay to the Delaware River, offers distinct geological and environmental challenges and opportunities for research.”  According to Ashik, “This study investigates the preparation and treatment of glauconite sand samples, particularly those sourced from the Hornerstown and Navesink formations at a test site in central New Jersey, focusing on drying, grinding, and sodium dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate (DCB) treatment processes.”  Ashik noted that the DCB treatment was necessary to remove iron oxides and hydroxides coatings that could interfere with the accuracy of subsequent analyses. Ashik explained that he conducted qualitative and quantitative 1-D X-ray diffraction analyses on natural and DCB-treated samples at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, therefore revealing significant mineralogical changes.  Technically, the DCB treatment effectively removed the iron-hydroxysulphate and hydrotalcite mineral groups as well as iron oxides, thus eliminating jarosite and reducing gypsum, goethite, and pyrite contents. As Ashik concluded, “These findings underscore the importance of thorough sample preparation and treatment in accurately characterizing the mineral composition of glauconite sands, [a process] which is essential for reliable site characterization and soil-structure-interaction analysis in offshore wind infrastructure development.” Before attending UMass Amherst, Ashik completed his M.S. Degree in Offshore Geotechnical Engineering at Zhejiang University in China and his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology in Bangladesh. (August 2024) Global footer ©2024 University of Massachusetts Amherst Site policies Non-discrimination notice Accessibility Terms of use 197 IMAGES Undergraduate Research Paper Award Excellent Paper Award-First Prize IceCube Research Garners Best Paper Award at IEEE Machine Learning Announcing 2021 IRIS NRC Undergraduate Paper Award Winners (PDF) **-Best Research Paper Award ** -Presented by Higher Education Students won the best undergraduate research paper award COMMENTS The Global Undergraduate Awards "The world's largest academic awards programme", The Global Undergraduate Awards brings together the world's top undergraduate students, leading academics, and industry leaders. AP-LS Award for Best Undergraduate Paper The AP-LS Award for Best Undergraduate Paper is awarded to an outstanding undergraduate research paper that is focused on the interdisciplinary study of psychology and law. First ($500), second ($200) and third place ($150) winners are conferred annually, and winners will be be encouraged to submit their work as a poster presentation at the AP ... Home The National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) is dedicated to promoting undergraduate research, scholarship and creative activity in all fields of study by sponsoring an annual conference for students. Check out the upcoming details as the event approaches, volunteer to review abstracts, and start prepping for another exciting year! Award for Undergraduate Research Undergraduates, now is your chance to turn your research project into a cash prize.The University of Maryland Libraries, the Office for Undergraduate Research (OUR), and Maryland's College of Information are partnering to showcase and reward undergraduate research projects. ACM Student Research Competition The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) offers a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research before a panel of judges and attendees at well-known ACM-sponsored and co-sponsored conferences. Undergraduate Research Awards Winners receive $100 in recognition of their achievement. The top three papers, irrespective of the departmental awards, will be forwarded to the Humanities Division for consideration in the Dean's and Chancellor's award competitions. Literature- Best Undergraduate Essay. A prize of $250 will be awarded to the best essay written in ... The Global Undergraduate Awards The Global Undergraduate Awards is the world's leading academic awards programme, open to all undergraduate students in almost every academic discipline and attracting submissions from hundreds of universities on every continent. This is a unique opportunity to have your work recognised by an international panel of expert judges working in ... Library Prize for Undergraduate Research The Library Prize recognizes and honors research excellence and includes cash prizes ranging from $400 to $700 across various project categories. Submissions are open to any undergraduate student or group who has completed a research paper or project — either for a course or independently — over the past 12 months. Winners will be acknowledged during an award ceremony as part of ... Undergraduate Research: Awards, Events, and Resources This guide provides information about AU support for undergraduate research, including events, competitions and prizes, and research methodologies. Undergraduate Research Award Each year, the Undergraduate Research Award honors an outstanding student researcher. Award winners receive $500, recognition at the Symposium of Student Scholars, and publication in the Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research (KJUR). Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award Recognizes undergraduate students in North American universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. Undergraduate Research Scholar Awards The Undergraduate Research Scholar Awards are a one-time, competitive award made by the Office of Undergraduate Education, designed to reward the contributions and facilitate the professional development of undergraduate researchers at UT Dallas. Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research The University Libraries are pleased to invite applications for the Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. This award recognizes undergraduate students who have demonstrated excellence and innovation as part of an original course-related research project that utilizes library resources. Research Paper Awards The University Library hosts an annual research paper award competition. Learn about how to apply and the evaluation criteria for the awards. Winners Entrants whose submission is selected as the best in their category are named Global Winners. Before 2016, Global Winners were called Overall Winners. Global Winners are recognised with: A Gold Medal and a Certificate of Recognition. Publication of their winning submission on The Undergraduate Library. A free ticket to the UA Global Summit. Undergraduate Research Awards Undergraduate Research Award (URA) Undergraduate Research Awards (URA) are granted to promote undergraduate research in a scientific laboratory setting. best-paper-award It is time to consider entering the 2023 UF Best Undergraduate Research Paper Contest. Submissions are due February 28th, the submission link will open February 1st. This contest is open to all UF Undergraduate Researchers. Undergraduate Research and Distinguished Scholarships Center for Undergraduate Research & Engagement CURE serves as a campus hub for undergraduate students to pursue advanced learning opportunities in research, scholarly engagement, and creative pursuits. Learn about research funding awards. Brookens Library Undergraduate Research Award: Details Purpose Undergraduate research, scholarly and creative activities are foundational components of a complete liberal arts education. With this in mind, Brookens Library and the Friends of Brookens Library are pleased to announce the ninth annual Undergraduate Library Research Award. Undergraduate Library Research Award: Home ABOUT THE AWARD. Established in 1997 by the Hofstra University Library faculty, the Undergraduate Library Research Award (ULRA) recognizes excellence in academic research by a graduating senior. Three awards of $500 each will be given for academic papers demonstrating exemplary research authored by seniors scheduled to graduate in December or ... NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRAs) are meant to nurture your interest and fully develop your potential for a research career in health, natural sciences and engineering, or social sciences and humanities. Awards Awards. Awards will be given to the top submissions from each category at the Undergraduate Research Fair: Basic and Natural Sciences Clinical and Translational Research Engineering Public Health, Epidemiology, and Health Sciences Social, Behavioral, Educational Sciences, and Humanities Computer Science, Data Science, and Mathematics To enter the competition, complete the following steps ... Undergraduate Research Paper Award Congratulations to Benjamin Ream, winner of FSU History's Undergraduate Research Paper Award, and Anne Tirrell who received an honorable mention. Announcing the NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards Announcing the NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards By Amir Globerson, Kate Saenko, Moritz Hardt, Sergey Levine and Comms Chair, Sahra Ghalebikesabi . We are honored to announce the award-winning papers for NeurIPS 2023! This year's prestigious awards consist of the Test of Time Award plus two Outstanding Paper Awards in each of these three categories: . Two Outstanding Main Track Papers Purdue research awards, philanthropic fundraising, undergrad and Research awards from external sources reached a record $647.7 million, up from $613.3 million a year ago, a figure considered a high benchmark for a university without a medical school. ... Undergraduate applications and admissions. Purdue welcomed its most selective class of undergraduate students for the 2024-25 academic year. This fall's ... Thirty-four students receive $1,000 research awards from K-State Thirty-four students receive $1,000 research awards from College of Arts and Sciences. Monday, Aug. 19, 2024 . MANHATTAN — Thirty-four students in the College of Arts and Sciences at Kansas State University have received research awards from the college for summer and fall 2024. The awards aim to provide students with impactful, paid research experiences alongside faculty mentors. 2023/2024 Stinski Undergraduate Research Fellowship awardee Congratulations to Olivia Fortman, the recipient of the Stinski Undergraduate Research Fellowship for the 2023/2024 academic year. Established in 2013 through funds from a successful patent awarded to Professor Mark F. Stinski, the fellowship supports undergraduates conducting microbiology research. Political Science Majors Showcase Research at Summer Symposium Political science seniors—Ava Butler, Madeline Evans, and Connor Stitt —demonstrated their research prowess at the NC State Undergraduate Research & Creativity Symposium on July 26, 2024. This annual event, organized by the Office of Undergraduate Research, celebrates innovative undergraduate scholarship across diverse disciplines. Outstanding Paper Award at 10th International Student Exchange. Student Life Show me more results. Published on 18 Aug 2024 Outstanding Paper Award at 10th International Conference on Connected Smart Cities 2024 (CSC24) ... Peter Edwards (Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research, New Zealand) have brought home the "Outstanding Paper Award" from the 10 th International Conference on Connected ... CEE Ph.D. Student Md Ashikuzzaman (Ashik) Wins Robert L. Snyder Student CEE Ph.D. Student Md Ashikuzzaman (Ashik) Wins Robert L. Snyder Student Award. August 19, 2024 Student Life. ... Effects on Mineral Composition," was chosen for the XRD poster session, where he had the opportunity to present his research as part of the conference's technical program. assignment essay homework phd report resume review speech thesis