University of Michigan students gathered in the Michigan League on Wednesday for the annual Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program Spring Research Symposium. The symposium showcased a variety of student research projects with topics ranging from biomedical engineering to social justice.
Students presented their projects over the course of seven sessions from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., using additional free time to walk around and learn about the research completed by fellow UROP students.
The University is currently the #1 public research university in the United States, drawing many students to participate in research projects on campus. More than 1,300 students are members of UROP, and these students are partnered with over 800 researchers across campus.
Engineering freshman Yule Xie presented his project titled “Human-Autonomy Collaboration for Escaping Local Minima,” which explores the autonomous navigation of unmanned ground vehicles at the MAVRIC Lab. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Xie said he joined UROP for the professional development opportunities.
“I wanted to join UROP to get a feel for what the research process was like,” Xie said. “For example, writing papers, researching new concepts. One of the things UROP really taught me was that you need to have many different sources of information.”
LSA sophomore Sasha Jemison told The Daily she joined UROP to contribute to scientific advancements. Her research project, titled “High-Throughput Drug Screening in a Zebrafish Endotoxemia Model,” focuses on how different drugs can treat sepsis and other inflammatory conditions.
“I find it fascinating how we can push the bounds of science, and what we’re able to do with medicine and the lives that you’re able to save with the things that you end up finding,” Jemison said. “I wanted to be a part of that work. I feel like research is so powerful, even as an undergrad student. Even if you’re just doing the foundational work.”
In an interview with The Daily, biomedical researcher Catherine Ptaschinki said she has served as a judge for the UROP symposium for years. Judges are given a list of criteria to look for, including technical merit and presentation quality, to ensure equal scoring. Ptaschinki said she acknowledges that students new to research won’t know everything.
“Most of these students are in their very first experience with research, and so I don’t expect them to understand every single detail about their project,” Ptaschinki said. “I think that’s what’s really important at this stage, is that students understand that why they’re doing what they’re doing.”
Also a UROP mentor, Ptaschinki said UROP is not only beneficial for undergraduate students, but also for mentors.
“It’s also really beneficial, I think, for mentors to be able to work with those students at an early stage,” Ptaschinki said. “Sometimes we get so involved in our research that we kind of forget about the basic fundamental questions… it is really helpful to be able to get back to that basic question of why are we doing what we’re doing.”
Daily News Contributor Ananya Bommineni can be reached at ananyabo@umich.edu.
