The Texas Student Research Showdown, a competition open to undergraduate researchers at UT Austin across all disciplines and majors, featured a number of winning entries from College of Natural Sciences and Freshman Research Initiative students this year. For this contest, students submit a two minute YouTube video to effectively communicate their research projects while competing for recognition and cash prizes worth up to $2,500.
There are two aspects to the competition––faculty judging and student voting. The judges evaluate the full-length two-minute videos and select the top three. UT Austin students watch 35- to 45-second, social media compatible "trailer" versions that some competitors submitted and then vote for an Audience Choice winner.
Thirteen students in the College of Natural Sciences (CNS) are vying for the prizes in the Research Showdown, making up nearly half of all the entries.
Vote for Audience Choice Award
The following CNS students are in the running for the Audience Choice award. Watch the trailers by following the links below. UT Austin students can vote at https://ugs.utexas.edu/our/showdown/voting, where the full-length entries can also be found.
Zoe de Beurs, Physics and Astronomy: Cosmic Bullets: Detection of Particles from Outer Space
Kelsey Mumford, Nursing Honors and Biology: Preventing Racial Bias in Autism Spectrum Disorder Screening
Roman Kuhn, Computer Science: Depression and Immunology
Simren Lakhotia, Neuroscience: Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever Detection via LAMP
Erin Choi, Biochemistry: Developing model substrates to characterize substrate selection by the 26S proteasome
Connie Chon, Biochemistry: Analyzing the Effect of ATM on CDX2
Watch the Rest
The seven other undergraduate researchers submitted two-minute videos to be considered just by the faculty judges, but they span a wide range of disciplines and showcase some of the many opportunities that undergraduates in CNS have to get involved in research. Watch the full-length videos below to learn more about their projects.
Colin Crawford, Biochemistry: Mutant Root Hair Growth and ATP
Jennifer Schlauch, Biology: Pheidole habitat preference and parasitoid interactions
Nicole Barnes, Nutrition: Food Science + Culinary Research: Building a Veggie-Based Burger
Isabel Cachola, Mathematics: Expressively Vulgar
Yun Cheng, Biochemistry: Bite ID Mobile App
Cole Maguire, Biochemistry: Synthesis of Lanthanide and Transition Metal Complexes
Daniel Moore, Computer Science: Auditing Custom Resources in Kubernetes
Winning Entries
- First place: Zoe de Beurs, Physics honors, Cosmic Bullets: Detection of Particles from Outer Space
- Second place: Kelsey Mumford, Biology and Nursing, Preventing Racial Bias in Autism Spectrum Disorder Screening
- Audience Choice Award: Simren Lakhotia, Neuroscience, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever Detection via LAMP
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