2022 Oswald Research and Creativity Competition winners announced

 The University of Kentucky Office of Undergraduate Research recently announced the 21 undergraduate winners of the 58th annual Oswald Research and Creativity awards. Chad Risko, faculty director of the Office of Undergraduate Research, and Research Ambassadors were on hand to congratulate the winners and distribute the awards.

Established in 1964 by then-President John Oswald, the Oswald Research and Creativity Competition encourages undergraduate research and creative activities across all fields of study.

Categories include Biological Sciences, Design (architecture, landscape architecture and interior design), Fine Arts (film, music, photography, painting, and sculpture), Humanities (from creative and critical-research approaches), Physical and Engineering Sciences, and Social Sciences. All submissions are sent anonymously to faculty reviewers in related fields and are judged based on a rubric.

Awards in each category are: First Place $350, Second Place $200 and Honorable Mention, if applicable. Entries are judged on originality, clarity of expression, scholarly or artistic contribution, and the validity, scope and depth of the project or investigation. Organizers expressed special thanks to the judges for their support of undergraduate research.

This year's Oswald student award winners are:

Biological Sciences

• First Place: Artin Asadipooya, junior, Lewis Honors neuroscience major; Mentor: Pavel Ortinski, Ph.D., neuroscience, College of Medicine; "The Effects of Cocaine Withdrawal on Cognitive Flexibility and Claustrum Activity"
• Second Place: Kayli Bolton, senior, Lewis Honors biology major; Mentor: Matthew Gentry, Ph.D., molecular and cellular biochemistry, College of Medicine; "Assessing Glycogen Metabolism as a Therapeutic Target in Ewing's Sarcoma"
• Honorable Mention: Daniel Dailey, senior, Lewis Honors chemical engineering major; Mentor: Rick Honaker, Ph.D., mining engineering, College of Engineering; "Research Proposal to Enable Economic Rare Earth Element Production from U.S. Coal-Based Sources through Bioengineering"

Design

• First Place: Lucas Carlos de Lima, sophomore, architecture major; Mentor: Hannah Dewhirst, College of Design; "Have you been here before? A Study on architectural collage and placebo-induced nostalgia"
• Second Place: Felix Lowery, senior, Lewis Honors landscape architecture major; Mentor: Jordan Phemister, landscape architecture, College of Agriculture, Food and Environment; "Putting the Cool in Coolavin"
• Honorable Mention: Katherine White, senior, landscape architecture major; "BODY / ARCHITECTURE"

Fine Arts

• First Place: Joy Chou, senior, arts administration major; "In Honor of Loss and Reclamation"
• Second Place: Gretchen Ruschman, junior, Lewis Honors agricultural and medical biotechnology major; Mentor: Kathrin Schaefer, University of Lübeck; "Microbial Menagerie: The Unseen Social Inequities within Inflammatory Bowel Disease"
• Honorable Mention: Audrey Alford, junior, interior design major; Mentor: Ingrid Schmidt, interiors, College of Design; "Obscurity"

Humanities: Creative

• First Place: Abigail Mortell, senior, Lewis Honors history major; Mentor: Erik Myrup, history, College of Arts and Sciences; "Surviving the Sertão: A Play in Two Acts"
• Second Place: Savannah Hinton, senior, secondary English education and English major; Mentor: Julia Johnson, English, College of Arts and Sciences; "Freedom From Within"
• Honorable Mention: Isabella Hardin, freshman, English and French and Francophone studies major; "Children of the Sun"
• Honorable Mention: Anna McElhannon, senior, physics major; "Mercy"

Humanities: Critical Research

• First Place: Abigail Mortell, senior, Lewis Honors history major; Mentor: Carol Street, UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center; "Canonization of Irish Authors: Nationalism and the Popularization of 1920s Irish Literature"
• Second Place: Riley Droppleman, senior, Lewis Honors biology senior; Mentor: Molly Blasing, modern and classical languages, literatures, and cultures, College of Arts and Sciences; "The Freedom of Madness: Madness as an Act of Feminine Defiance in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Zenaida Gippius's 'The Mad Woman'"
• Honorable Mention: Colton Barton, senior, Lewis Honors English and gender and women's studies major; "A Potential for a Queer Utopia: Queer Futurity and Potentiality in Octavia Butler's Dawn"

Physical and Engineering Sciences

• First Place: Daniel Dailey, senior, Lewis Honors chemical engineering major; Mentor: Rick Honaker, mining engineering, College of Engineering; "The need to identify predictors and perceptions of mental health help-seeking behaviors in engineering communities to address underrepresentation in the STEM workforce"
• Second Place: Hena Kachroo, sophomore, Lewis Honors chemistry major; Mentor: Christopher Crawford, physics, College of Arts and Sciences; "Designing a Uniform Magnetic Field for nEDM Experiments"

Social Sciences

• First Place: Daniel Dailey, senior, Lewis Honors chemical engineering major; Mentor: Sarah Wilson, chemical and materials engineering, College of Engineering; "The need to identify predictors and perceptions of mental health help-seeking behaviors in engineering communities to address underrepresentation in the STEM workforce"
• Second Place: Colton Barton, senior, Lewis Honors English and gender and women's studies major; "Gaymer Avatars: Analyzing the Relationship Between Gay Men and their Created Video Game Avatars"
• Honorable Mention: Ryder From, senior, psychology major; "The spiral of silence effect on LGBT people and issues"

For more information, visit https://our.uky.edu/oswald-competition.