2013 Undergraduate Research Symposium

The sixth annual Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Illinois Undergraduate Research Symposium took place Friday, April 12, 2013. Organized by Omega Chi Epsilon (OXE) and the department, the symposium provides a platform for students to showcase their undergraduate research and to demonstrate their creativity in solving problems with the mentoring from their research advisors.

This year eight posters were presented by undergraduate students. Jill Bonucci from UOP, LLC and Tom Webb, a private consultant, served as the judges for the competition. The winners of this year’s symposium were Emre Sevgen, first place; Eftalda Becka, second place; and Patrick Corona, third place.

The undergraduate presenters and posters included:

• Josh Walker, “Development of Flavin-binding Fluorescent Proteins as a Robust and Powerful Class of Fluorescent Reporters.”
• Luke Skertich, “Hydrogel Gradient Systems to Examine Paracrine Signaling on Hematopoietic Stem Cell Fate.”
• Aristotle Economou, “Solvent Compatible Microfluidic Platforms for Pharmaceutical Solid Form Screening.”
• Khanh Ngo, “Induction-based Fluidics as an Injection Method for a Levitated Drop Reactor.”
• Eftalda Becka, “Influence of Extracellular Matrix Microenvironment on Glioma Cell Malignancy.”
• Emre Sevgen, “Microfluidic Platform for Antibiotic Susceptibility Screening.”
• Patrick Corona, “Computational Studies of the Dynamics of Single Polymers.”
• Saman Moniri, “Optimization of a Microfluidic Platform for Electrochemical Reduction of CO2.”