URECA Faculty Mentors
According to the Council on Undergraduate Research (https://www.cur.org/), one of the key characteristics of excellence in undergraduate research is faculty commitment. The success of the Undergraduate Research Experience and Creative Activity (URECA) grant program is dependent upon our faculty mentors who are highly committed to providing students with a hands-on research experience that includes instruction, guidance and direct modeling. They support student learning in a manner that allows students to develop greater responsibility for his or her own work, develop and demonstrate valuable teamwork skills, and gain experience in critical inquiry.
Below are some of our featured faculty mentors who continuously engage in mentored research through the URECA program.
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Mark Abolins, Ph.D.
Geology URECA Projects: Relationship between sinkhole flooding and geology in Grassy Cove, TN (Summer 2023); Snail Shell Cave Preserve, central Tennessee (Spring 2022), Structural controls on cave passage orientation (Spring 2022), Assessment of the Relation between Hydrology and the Appearance of Bons near Tuiliere, Switzerland (Spring 2022), Assessment of the relationship between hydrologic conditions and the appearance of springs on satellite images of Biere, Switzerland (Fall 2021), Accuracy Assessment of Digital Geologic Maps of Part of the Nashville Dome, Central Tennessee (Fall 2020), Research Interests: Caves, Karst, Remote Sensing, Spatial Analysis, Structural Geology and Tectonics
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Erin Anfinson
Art and Design URECA Projects: A Creative Exploration of the History of Women's Anger (Spring 2020)
Research Interests: Encaustic painting, drawing, animation, environmentally sustainable art practices.
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M. Elizabeth Barnes, Ph. D.
Biology URECA Projects: A Comparison of Religious Cultural Competence in Evolution Education (ReCCEE) Online versus In-Person and its Effects on Student Outcomes , A Literature Review on Students’ Attitudes and Science Communication about Climate Change, Exploring Undergraduate Biology Students’ Attitudes and Science Communication about COVID19 and COVID19 Vaccines Research Interests: Biology education research, science communication research, history and philosophy
of science, evolution education, vaccine education, climate change education, inclusive
teaching.
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Claudia Barnett
English URECA Projects: Spring Festival of New Plays (Spring 2023)
Research Interests: Modern and contemporary drama and playwriting.
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Kevin Bicker, Ph.D. |
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Kathryn Blankenship, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Health and Human Performance URECA Projects: The Comparison of Two Different World-Learning Strategies in Undergraduate University Students (Spring 2023); Word Learning in Undergraduate Students (Summer 2022); Vocabulary Learning in College Undergraduate Students (Summer/Fall 2022).The Effects of a Pandemic on Speech Therapy for Children (Fall 2021);The Effect of Language Sample Length as a Function of Varying Age Groups (Summer/Fall 2019-Spring 2020) Research Interests: Understanding the factors that contribute to college students' vocabulary abilities
and enhacing understanding of the strategies that work best for college students to
learn and retain new vocabulary, which will provide information to assist faculty
in developing specific activities for vocabulary learning and retention within their
courses.
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Jessica Gentry Carter, Ph.D. |
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Emily Farris, Ph.D. |
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Jessica Gaby
Mathmatical Science URECA Projects: Influence of Diet on Body Odor and Social Judgements (Spring 2023); Can priming information
about body odor affect perceptions of competence in a virtual interview? (Fall 2021)
Research Interests: My work is broadly based on the perception of smell and taste, with a specific focus
on how human body odor impacts our social interactions. Current projects in the lab
focus on the impact of diet on body odor, how perfumes impact perceptions of competence,
and the impact of gender affirming hormone therapy on social odor perception. I am
also interested in how individual differences impact sensory perception in the chemical
senses, particularly in food, beverages, and fragrances.
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Katie Goodwin
Theatre URECA Projects: Play Space: A New Play Development Initiative (Summer 2021) Research Interests: Theatre Education, Stage and Production Management in the Performing Arts, New Play
Development, Theatre as a documenting and processing the human experience, and Script
Analysis
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Scott Handy, Ph.D. |
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Samuel Haruna, Ph.D. |
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Alisa Hass, Ph.D.
Geosciences URECA Projects: Don't Sweat It: An Exploration of Effective Heat Risk Communication to Today's Youth
(Fall 2022)
Research Interests: Hazard climatology, Applied climatology, Hazard communication, Adaptation, mitigation, perceptions of, and interactions with meteorologic hazards, Extreme heat, Severe weather, Urban heat islands, Heat exposure. |
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James Houston
Psychology URECA Projects: Implicit Leadership Theory- Reaction Time Experiments (Fall 2022)
Research Interests: Neurocognitive Aging, Chiari Malformation Syndrome, Neural Electrophysiology, creativity,
Quantitative Analysis Methods.
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Ryan Seth Jones, Ph.D. |
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Rebekka King, Ph.D. |
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David E. Nelson, Ph.D. |
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Timothy N. Odegard, Ph.D.
Psychology URECA Projects: Visual-Spatial Processing Differences Among Those with Dyslexia and Those Without Dyslexia (Summer 2023); Child-level reading variables and gist-based memory: An interactive model (Fall 2021), A Systematic Review of the Comorbidity of ADHD and Dyslexia (Fall 2020), An EEG Investigation of Cognitive Resilience Factors in College Students (Fall 2019), Examining the Automaticity of Vowel Letter Speech-Sound Integration Using Mismatch Negativity (Fall 2019), The Examination of Neural Connectivity with Resting-State EEG (Summer 2019), Using ERP to Explore The Relationship Between Letter-Speech Sound Associations and Reading Ability (Summer 2019) Research Interests: Risk and resilience factors that predict and impact outcomes for students in literacy.
Interventions for students with reading disabilities. Screening and identification
of students with reading disabilities.
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Kiel Ormerod
Biology URECA Projects: Exploring the Behavioral Impacts of Neuronal, Huningtin Aggregates on Adult Drosophila
Melanogaster (Summer 2023); The behavior of drosophila affected by Huntington's Disease
(Spring 2022)
Research Interests: The Ormerod lab seeks to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying
cellular communication. We aim to understand how neuromodulatory substances alter
cellular communication underlying the coordination and orchestration of physiological
and behavioral processes. We explore foundational principles including: i) how signaling
molecules like neuropeptides are encoded, sorted, trafficked, and undergo fusion at
synapses; ii) how modulatory substances impact the efficacy of neuronal synapses;
iii) excitation-contraction coupling mechanisms; iv) how changes in these processes
manifest as changes in animal physiology and behavior; v) and how diseases and disorders
impact physiology and behavior.
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Joshua Phillips, Ph.D. |
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Corey Reece
Media Arts URECA Projects: Half Dead Animal short film (Summer 2023)
Research Interests: Emerging animation & visual effects tools and techniques that cover character performance,
technical rigging, 3D modeling, game development, motion graphics, effect simulations,
and storytelling. (Summer 2023)
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Bill Robertson, Ph.D. Physics & Astronomy URECA Projects: Electrical ring resonator: Experiments and program development (Fall 2022); Electrical Analog of a Ring Resonator Structures and an Acoustic Demultiplexe (Fall 2021); Creating Acoustic Diode in Waveguides: Simulation and Experiment (Summer 2021); Acoustic Demultiplexing in Waveguide (Fall 2020); Constructing a novel experimental apparatus for use with acoustics research (Fall 2018); Modeling, Simulating, and Testing an Acoustic Lens (Summer 2018); Testing applications of the Photonic Crystal Based Biosensor (Fall 2017); Improvement of the Photonic Crystal Biosensor Design (Summer 2017) Research Interests: Optics, acoustics, terahertz spectroscopy, computational science, and signal processing |
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Tiffany Rogers, Ph.D. |
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Elizabeth A. Smith, Ph.D. Human Sciences URECA Projects: Factors Affecting Older Adults' Fruit and Vegetable Consumption (Spring 2020); Food Security, Coping and Support Strategies, and Diet Quality in College Students from a Moderate Sized University (Fall 2018); Mini Health and Nutrition Screen (Fall 2018) Research Interests: Changing nutrition related health behaviors such as increasing fruit and vegetable intake, food insecurity, and preventing chronic disease through nutrition related health and wellness |
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Ben Stickle, Ph.D. Criminal Justice Administration URECA Projects: Why They Died: An expanded analytical examination of details surrounding the 999 officer-involved shooting deaths in 2019 in the United States (Spring 2021); Why They Died: An expanded analytical examination of details surrounding officer-involved shooting deaths in the United States (Fall 2020); Pirates With No Sea: The Rising Rate of Porch Package Theft (Spring 2018); The True Costs of Private Security. (Fall 2017) Research Interests: Crime prevention, environmental criminology and metal theft, private security, police operations, administration and use of force |
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Hanna Terletska, Ph.D. |
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Jorge Vargas
Engineering Technology URECA Projects: Implementation of an ideal automotive engineer workstation (Spring 2023); Investigating
Parameter Estimation and tracking functions used in the Conformation of Autonomous
Vehicle Radar Detections (Fall 2022)
Research Interests: RF/Microwave Engineering, Microelectronics, Radar Sensors for Connected and Autonomous
Vehicles, Sensor Fusion, and Machine Learning. My industry background at IBM involves
product and process development of RF/Microwave devices.
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Donald Walker, Ph.D. Biology URECA Projects: Fungal-fungal interactions on the skin of reptiles (Summer 2023); Host skin chemistry
drives fungal-fungal interactions in a host-mycobiome-pathogen system (Summer 2022);
Mechanistic interactions between a host, microbiome, and fungal pathogen (Spring 2022);
The endosymbiotic bacterial community of the causative agent of White Nose Syndrome
(Pseudogymnoascus destructans) of bats (Summer 2021); The endosymbiotic community
of the causative agent of White Nose Syndrome (Pseudogymnoascus destructans) of bats
(Summer 2019); Endosymbiotic bacteria impact the function of an important wildlife
pathogen of bats (Summer 2019) |
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April Weissmiller, Ph.D.
Biology URECA Projects: Investigating a New Oncogenic Pathway in Rhabdoid Cancers (Spring 2023); Exposing New Oncogenic Pathways in Malignant Rhabdoid Tumor (Spring 2023); Investigating the Effect of Colchicine Inhibitors in Cancer (Spring 2023); Investigating the Significance of MYC in Small Cell Carcinoma of the Ovary Hypercalcemic Type (Fall 2022); Investigation of a two new protein targets in N-MYC amplified neuroblastoma (Fall 2022); Investigating the Significance of N-MYC-WDR5 Interaction in Neuroblastoma (Spring 2022), Probing the N-MYC-WDR5 interaction in neuroblastoma (Summer 2021), Investigating the Significance of SWI/SNF on MYC-dependent Transcription in Malignant Rhabdoid Tumor (Summer 2021), Investigating the Interaction of the Oncogene MYC with the pBAF Chromatin Remodeling Complex (Spring 2021) Research Interests: Basic mechanisms of cancer, chromatin biology, regulation of gene expression, genomics.
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William Yelverton, Ph.D. |
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Lu Xiong
Mathmatical Science URECA Projects: Tree-based Machine Learning Algorithms for Analytics of Online Shopper's Purchasing
Intention (Spring 2023)
Research Interests: Actuarial Science, data analytics, computational science and actuarial software development. |
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Hongbo Zhang, Ph. D
Mechatronics Engineering
URECA Projects: Optical Farm: Use of Light to Increase Soybean Yield, 3D Imaging of the Weed Cell
Structure for Effectiveness of UV Light Weed Removal
Research Interests: Dr. Hongbo Zhang’s research interests include robotics, computer vision, and 3D imaging.
He has secured a few external research grants related to robotics navigation, smart
farming, and computer vision related smart object detection.
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Mengliang Zhang, Ph.D.
Chemistry URECA Projects: The Exchange of Nanoparticles and Peptoids (Summer 2023); Investigation of Weathering Effect on Less-Volatile Component Profiles in Ignitable Liquids (Spring 2021); Novel Method for the Forensic Dye Analysis by Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (Spring 2020); Novel method for the detection and quantitation of organic ligands bonded to CdSe quantum dots using direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry (Fall 2019); Fast Screening of Explosives by Ambient Ionization Mass Spectrometry (Spring and Summer 2019); Prolysis DART-MS Analysis of Ignitable Liquids for Forensic and Environmental Applications (Summer 2018); Analysis of local water samples for Algal Toxins: Saxitoxin and Microcytsin-LR (Summer 2018). Research Interests: Analytical chemistry, forensics, material science, chemometrics
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