The Health Sciences Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research announces the 2021 recipients of its NCUR Presentation Awards. The awards cover the cost of registration for undergraduate students presenting original research at the 2021 National Conference on Undergraduate Research. The awardees are the following:
Cody Anderson (University of Nebraska Omaha; mentor: Sara Myers)
Presentation title—Muscle Behavior Adaptations after Supervised Exercise Training in Peripheral Artery Disease: An OpenSim Simulation Anderson’s project investigates how muscle adapts as a result of supervised exercise training in individuals with peripheral artery disease.
Destinyi Cravens (University of Alabama at Birmingham; mentor: Sylvie Mrug)
Presentation title—Perceived Parental Support: Does Maternal Depression and Motherhood Roles Matter? Cravens’s project examines the prospective relationships between maternal depression symptoms, perceptions of parenting roles, and later perceived parental support during adolescence using data from Waves 1–3 of the Birmingham Youth Violence Study (n = 387).
Seth Hubbard (University of Alabama at Birmingham; mentor: Alecia Gross Gutierrez)
Presentation title—Determination of the Role of Cofilin1 in Rod Photoreceptors. Hubbard’s project demonstrates a role for nuclear distribution protein C (NUDC) in the development and maintenance of rod photoreceptors through transgenic shRNA knockdown of NudC in X. laevis tadpoles.
Charlene Mansour (University of Alabama at Birmingham; mentor: Kristine Hurst-Wajszczuk)
Presentation title—Probing the Genetic Diversity of Phages Infecting Arthrobacter globiformis. Mansour’s project sequences and annotates the genomes of newly discovered A. globiformis phages and compares these genomes to those of other A. globiformis phages.
Brian Nguyen (University of Alabama at Birmingham; mentor: Elizabeth Sztul)
Presentation title—Identifying the Role of the ARF Activators BIG1 and BIG2 in Regulating Endocytosis and Recycling. Nguyen’s project seeks to uncover the processes regulated by the BIG1 and BIG2 proteins and to describe the molecular events that are supported by BIG1 versus BIG2.
