Announcing the Winners of the Fall 2020 Honors College Research Symposium & UIC Impact Day!
This year’s symposium was a remarkable one with over 200 attendees! A very special thanks to all of our Faculty Judges for their assistance in adjudicating each of the student presentations and selecting our winners!
It is also worth noting that the Symposium featured remarkably strong work from more than 50 undergraduate students (54 students, 53 presentations), spread across nearly two dozen disciplines and each student was adjudicated by 4 Faculty/Staff Judges (43 in total), which resulted in a fierce competition for the Research Symposium Awards, so fierce in fact that we have a tie for the Award for High Distinction. Thus, winning these awards is no small feat and we hope you will join us in congratulating your classmates on their achievements.
Without further ado, at this time it is our pleasure to announce the recipients of the Research Symposium Awards.
Award for Highest Distinction:
Student Name: Rumi Venkatesh
Project Title: Claiming Roots: A Reclamation of Jewish Identity in Judah Halevi's Kuzari
Project Supervisor: Young Kim
Project Abstract:
Judah Halevi wrote the Kuzari in the twelfth century following the breakdown of the Cordoban Caliphate in Muslim-occupied medieval Spain, also known as al Andalus. The legacy of this “paradise” and its relatively high religious tolerance contributed to a period of flourishing Arabized Jewish culture and a philosophical revival in Spain. Despite some historians’ common perception of the Kuzari as a polemical treatise against Islam and Christianity or a revolutionary explanation of the Jewish religion, we can understand the Kuzari on a deeper level with consideration of Halevi’s sociocultural context as an upper-class member of the Jewish community in twelfth-century Spain. In a society characterized by cultural intermixing and a changing intellectual sphere, Halevi’s Kuzari serves as a reclamation of Jewish identity. Throughout the Kuzari, Halevi establishes the superiority of native Jews as direct descendants of Adam, highlighting the importance of Jewish tradition and the Jewish homeland of Palestine, and he highlights the primacy of the Jewish religion itself. In order to do so, he not only identifies Islam and Christianity as corruptions of the original Jewish religion, but he also depicts philosophical rationalization of spirituality as woefully inadequate. However, as a philosopher himself, Halevi employs logical explanations for many facets of Judaism discussed in the Kuzari. Through the inherent contradiction posed by the use of philosophical methods to reject philosophy, we can see Halevi’s rejection of the “corrupting” influences on Judaism in his society while still being a product of the same society. In his efforts to encourage a return to the roots of Judaism, Halevi works to reaffirm a particular Jewish identity.
Award for High Distinction
Student Name: Srishti Pyasi
Project Title: Investigating Radicalization Pathways in Twitter
Project Supervisor: Chris Kanich
Project Abstract :
Originating from places of congregation, radicalization largely occurs in the virtual world of the internet via social networking platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Given increased screen times amid people staying at home due to COVID-19, this can be problematic, providing a way for people to migrate towards more radicalized Alt-right white nationalist and white supremacist ideas. Our results indicate that there is a pathway from a non-radical to a radicalized account. In the internet age, radicalization largely occurs via social networking platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Given increased screen times amid people staying at home due to COVID-19, this can be problematic. This study shows that a non-radical Twitter account can follow a pathway to radicalization. People may migrate towards the more radicalized Alt-right ideas.
Award for High Distinction
Student Name: Shivani Dhebar
Project Title: Enhancing Immunotherapy with Metformin in Drug-Resistant and Metastatic Breast Cancer
Project Supervisor: Josef Goldufsky
Project Abstract:
Over the last decade, an increased usage of immune checkpoint inhibitors in strengthening tumor-specific T cells has shown promising success, shifting tumor immunotherapy to the forefront of cancer treatment. However, the efficacy of these immunotherapies is still restricted to a small proportion of cancer patients who meet required criteria. Current clinical trials have been using combinatorial approaches to enhance the effectiveness of an immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy against tumors. A major challenge preventing patient responsiveness to ICB stems from the metabolic limitations that the tumor microenvironment (TME) imposes on tumor-specific T cells. Previous studies have demonstrated enhanced responsiveness to immunotherapy by using the known antidiabetic drug, metformin in combination with anti-PD-1 therapy to improve T cell tumor-destroying activity by reducing states of hypoxia in the TME. Our experiment sought to understand how metformin, a complex I inhibitor, directly affects metabolism in human and murine breast cancer lines. Our data demonstrate that metformin specifically reduces ATP production in both mouse and human drug-resistant and advanced metastatic breast cancers, by gradually minimizing the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation pathway. Additionally, metformin’s anticancer effects include an increase in reactive oxygen species and diminished proliferation of the cancerous cells. While the metformin treatment of mice bearing drug-resistant and metastatic breast cancer showed a delay in tumor growth and progression, there was no synergistic effect of metformin combined with PD-1 blockade observed. The in vivo data obtained in this experiment did not align with previous studies showing metformin’s ability to incorporate anti-PD-1 therapy and drive T-cell abilities in clearance of the tumor. The limitations of metformin illustrate the need for further investigations to determine its ability to enhance PD1 blockade by reprogramming metabolism in the TME and reinvigorating anti-tumor activity of T cells in breast cancer
Award for Distinction
Student Name: Refah Zabin
Project Title: Understanding the role of DCV1 and SLA1 in Yeast Cell Signaling
Project Supervisor: David Stone
Project Abstract :
The goal of this project is to better understand DCV1 and SLA1. It is hypothesized that DCV1 plays a role in membrane fluidity. DCV1 affects the polarity proteins that are responsible for the polarized growth at specific locations of the cell. This project aims to learn more about DCV1 and SLA1 genes though time-lapse imaging using specialized microscope and to categorize and analyze the acquired data.
Roster of Faculty & Staff Judges
John Abbott
Leila Amiri
Nick Ardinger
Annie Armstrong
Bilgay Balserak
Lauren Bell
Abbey Breckling
Bao Bui
Zackery Bulman
Juan Jose Cabrera-Lazarini
Eliza Callahan
Marcus Casey
Marsha Cassidy
Alan Diamond
Lauren Diegel-Vacek
Asha Eapen
Gail Fisher
Pamela Gampetro
Katey Genrich
Michelangelo Giampaoli
Romi Gomez
Swetha Gowrishankar
Sonia Green
David Greenstein
Nick Huggett
Ashley Hughes
Rohan Jeremiah
Wasim Khan
Vincent LaMotta
Ellen McClure
Neal McCrillis
Chris Messenger
Tyler Nielsen
Sarah O'Brien
Unsal Ozdogru
Eric Pegues
Farideddin Peiravian
Christian Peters
Medha Priyadarshini
Sathya Ravi
Helen Roberts
Anna Roosevelt
Susan Ross
Rachelle Tsachor
Margaret Wardle
Nic Weststrate
Kimberlee Wilkens
Quintin Williams, Jr.
Zeina Zaatari
Roster of Participants
Yasmeen Abdallah
Laith Abuzir
CaraMia Alberga
Nimisha Antony
Jagjit Bhatia
Miranda Bolin
Megan Buduan
Linh Bui Ho Khanh
Caroline Castelino
Marc Cuiriz
Hardik Dabas
Shivani Dhebar
Alaa Elhannouny
Zubia Farooqui
Sean Flynn
Anna Footerman
Kiera Gnatz
Hibah Hassan
Klevi Hazizi
Aaron Hazlett
Eric Hu
Taylor Hutchinson
Nimra Irfan
Pranjal Kadwe
Shaista Khan
Zainab Khan
Ojus Khanolkar
Anjani Maley
Kayla Massey
Nikki Medanovic
Dhruva Mehta
Lora Mickovska
Michael Miklinski
Ananya Mishra
Ayesha Mohammad
Haneen Omar
Dhruvi Patel
Sruchi Patel
Kristina Perchishena
Srishti Pyasi
Angel Rodríguez Vega
Kate Schick
Diana Shlikhtova
Shaniah Singleton
Raeeha Syeda
Nikki Rae Tabliago
Brittany Tamayo
Neil Thimmaiah
Jacob Troia
Rumi Venkatesh
Anita Wary
Samuel Yeo
Refah Zabin