{"id":27805,"date":"2024-06-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/?p=27805"},"modified":"2024-06-04T15:02:16","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T20:02:16","slug":"across-disciplines-ls-students-give-outstanding-presentations-at-the-undergraduate-research-symposium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/in-focus-2024\/across-disciplines-ls-students-give-outstanding-presentations-at-the-undergraduate-research-symposium\/","title":{"rendered":"Across disciplines, L&S students give outstanding presentations at the Undergraduate Research Symposium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 51ÁÔÆæ Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual event where student researchers from across the university can showcase the results of their work. At this year\u2019s symposium in April, more than one hundred students presented on topics ranging from E-cigarette taxation to drug-resistant bacteria to Hispanic cultural history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But several young researchers\u2019 work especially stood out, including some from the College of Letters & Science. They were honored with Outstanding Presentation Awards at the end of the symposium for their hard work and dedication. Below are three L&S students who received awards, drawn from disciplines across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelsey Sponholz, research in Biological Sciences \u2013 \u201c<\/strong>Enhancing the Production of Antimicrobial Metabolites in Pseudomonas soli <\/em>for Sustainable Agricultural Disease Control<\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few years ago, biological sciences major Kelsey Sponholz did not think she would even attend college, let alone participate in undergraduate research or earn an Outstanding Presentation award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, Sponholz was grappling with some mental health issues after high school and was reluctant to take on higher education: \u201cI didn\u2019t want to do it. It was scary. Not going to do it. Can\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She did it. Standing in her graduation robe at Commencement in May, Sponholz felt \u201cit was really exciting. It was a wonderful reflection on what I\u2019ve done and how far I\u2019ve come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kelsey Sponholz won an Outstanding Presentation award for her research in biological sciences. Photo courtesy of Kelsey Sponholz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Part of that journey was working as an intern for T3 BioScience<\/a>, a company founded by 51ÁÔÆæ Professor of Biological Science Ching-Hong Yang. Yang\u2019s primary focus is on combatting fire blight<\/a>, a disease that targets fruit trees and like apple and pear trees. Left unchecked, fire blight can wipe out entire orchards. The disease is caused by a bacterium that has grown increasingly resistant to clinical antibiotics like streptomycin, which is commonly used to treat infected trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yang has found that a different strain of bacteria, called Pseudomonas Soli <\/em>T307, produces an antimicrobial compound that has proven effective in inhibiting fire blight. The compound is called RejuAgro A (RAA), and it was Sponholz\u2019s job to identify ways to improve RAA production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We induce mutagenesis using chemical treatments, which cause changes in the genetic code similar to natural evolution,\u201d Sponholz explained. \u201cWe now have a couple of different strains of P. soli<\/em> that increase RAA production. Our goal is to understand how these mutations result in higher RAA production.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She tests the bacteria\u2019s RAA-producing abilities by observing how a certain strain affects the growth of the pathogen that causes fire blight. If a strain performs well, the researchers know they\u2019re on the right track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although this is an admittedly slow method, it provides a rich inventory of improved bacterial strains and valuable insights into the metabolic mechanisms of RAA production and regulation by analyzing the genetic codes in these mutants. Additionally, other researchers in Yang\u2019s lab are working to sequence the P. soli <\/em>genome to pinpoint which genes are responsible for RAA production. That project will take time, however, so Sponholz is using the old-fashioned trial-and-error method in the meantime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it has yielded results; Sponholz and other researchers have identified several \u201cmutant\u201d strains that produce more RAA than the original P. soli <\/em>strain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s important because \u201cthis is going to become a commercial product for farmers to use,\u201d Sponholz said. \u201cThe USDA is providing a lot of funding for this project. Our base strain produces a maximum amount of metabolite that we can package easily, but it\u2019s a very finite amount we can get from one batch. \u2026 The goal is to have another strain where we can get more of this product out of each batch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sponholz presented her research at the symposium in April. She was happy to win the Outstanding Presentation award, but \u201cI think the more exciting part was when I got to tell Dr. Yang about it. He was so excited and it made me even happier,\u201d she laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that she has graduated, Sponholz plans to move to the west coast and take a few years off from school before pursuing a graduate degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Rojas, research in Linguistics \u2013 \u201c<\/strong>How Voice-Activated AI Assistants and Humans Share Similar Patterns of Word Recognition<\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Rojas\u2019 research mentor, Jae Yung Song, warned him to temper his expectations for his first Undergraduate Research Symposium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe knew how excited I was and she didn\u2019t want me to feel too down on myself if I didn\u2019t win,\u201d Rojas said with a smile. \u201cI ended up winning and we were both just so excited and so happy. It made me feel like all my hard work was being recognized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Charles Rojas won an Outstanding Presentation award for his research in linguistics. Photo courtesy of Charles Rojas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rojas has worked harder than most. He is a nontraditional student seeking his second Bachelor\u2019s degree after earning his first at UW-Madison in 2019. He is a program assistant working in the Geosciences Department as he works on his Spanish major. And earlier this year, he reached out to see if Song needed a research assistant, since he is particularly interested in learning about language acquisition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She did, and she wanted to study the language acquisition of an unusual subject: Alexa, the AI assistant powered by Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAI is created by humans, but it still learns in a different way than we do,\u201d Rojas explained. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have different parts of a brain focusing on language like humans do. How does AI learn a language? Does it make the same errors that humans do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humans, Rojas explained, have several weaknesses when it comes to word recognition. It is more difficult to recognize words if a speaker is talking quickly versus normally or slowly. We have an easier time recognizing high-frequency words, or words that occur often in everyday speech. We struggle if a word has high density, meaning that a word sounds similar to a variety of other words. For example, the word \u201cbun\u201d sounds similar to \u201cbus,\u201d \u201csun,\u201d \u201crun,\u201d \u201cbut,\u201d and so on, because they all differ by just one phoneme. The word \u201cbun\u201d would therefore be considered a high-density word. A low-density word like \u201cfudge\u201d only has a few phonological neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To test whether Alexa had the same hang-ups, Rojas and his colleagues set up some word-recognition tests for the AI software. They had 21 different human participants ask Alexa to spell a list of 150 words. If Alexa spelled the word correctly, they knew it had recognized the word. If it was spelled incorrectly, the AI had failed its recognition. The readers read the list of words twice, at a normal speaking pace and at a quick pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did Alexa do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHer patterns of word recognition mimic humans very much,\u201d Rojas said. \u201cShe struggled a lot with difficult words, meaning they were low-frequency and high-density. She struggled even more with difficult words at a fast-speaking rate condition. \u2026 In other words, she produced the same errors that we do, and it was very interesting to see that Alexa pretty much learns language how humans do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This knowledge is important because language recognition is a crucial tool for AI software. It can be used to translate foreign languages, or to help disabled people communicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI use my voice-activated AI system for a lot of different things,\u201d Rojas said. \u201cIt would be great if didn\u2019t get confused between two different words from time to time because it struggles with the same word recognition patterns that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rojas plans to graduate in 2026. In the meantime, he\u2019s eager to continue with his undergraduate research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Hale, research in Film Studies \u2013 \u201c<\/strong>Research in the Film Studies Media Collective<\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Hale was not expecting to receive an Outstanding Presentation Award for her oral presentation about her work in the Film Studies\u2019 archive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought, I\u2019m not a STEM major. They\u2019re not going to give it to a (humanities) major. And then I did win. \u2026 That was really cool,\u201d Hale said with a smile. \u201cI think when people think of research, they think of people in a lab coat. You don\u2019t have to be that if you want to do research. I wanted people to see how valuable work in the humanities is and how it can be applicable to a lot of careers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, she showed them. Hale\u2019s presentation focused on her work within the Film Studies Department\u2019s media archive, which houses a library of films and other materials available for use by faculty, staff, and students. Over the course of her time, she completed four major projects, which she detailed in her symposium presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ashley Hale won an Outstanding Presentation award for her research in film studies. Photo courtesy of Ashley Hale.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n