Students present research at 18th annual Undergraduate Research Conference

Faith Swanson, this year’s Scott Emerson Health Innovation Award winner, poses for a photo in front of her research poster at the 18th annual Undergraduate Research Conference.

“Stress co-regulation is the mechanism that occurs between romantic partners,” Swanson said. “When they experience a stressful event together, their nervous systems and physiological responses will synchronize, resulting in a decrease in stress. This mechanism has previously presupposed that physical proximity is required for this to take place.

“This is important because as we see the world becoming more globalized and technology rapidly advancing, we’re seeing more people engaging in long distance relationships. There really hasn’t been any work so far as to whether this co-regulatory mechanism can occur in these emerging virtual environments. In this study, we examined whether stress co-regulation can occur with a virtual simulation of proximity or VR technologies.”

The annual award given to one URC participant recognizes undergraduate research with a potential to improve human health and heath care. The $2,000 award is presented in collaboration with the Undergraduate Research Conference and the Translational Health Research Center.

The following student research projects won general category poster presentation awards:

• 1st Place: Hannah Castro, Tyler Atkinson, and Kylie Hedge, Efforts for Change: Learning Assistants’ Perceptions of Supports and Barriers to Instructional Change, Advisors, Alice Olmstead, Ph.D., and Eleanor Close, Ph.D., Department of Physics
• 2nd Place: Abdullah Ibn Kamal and Michala Gradner, Comparative Analysis of Speaker Diarization Techniques using Different Clustering Methods on CNN-Based Speaker Segmentation for Enhanced Precision and Recognition, Advisor, Ivan Ojeda-Ruiz, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics
• 3rd Place: Faith Swanson and Taylor Himes, Stress Co-Regulation Among Romantically Involved Couples in Virtual Reality, Advisors, Rhonda Balzarini, Ph.D., and Chris Agnew, Department of Psychology
• Honorable Mention: Kayla Jones, The Advertising Evolution of Beyoncé’s Albums, Advisor, Nico Schüler, Ph.D., School of Music
• Honorable Mention: Trinity Taylor, The Sarah Baartman Effect: The Black Body Under the Westernized Gaze, Advisor, Casey D. Nichols, Ph.D., Department of History
• Honorable Mention: Carol-Ann Veretto, Texasdeutsch, Advisor, Valentina Glajar, Ph.D., Department of World Languages and Literatures

All research posters and presenters’ names are posted online.

The Undergraduate Research Conference is sponsored by Honors College, the IDEA Center, the Office of Research and Special Projects, and the Common Experience.