{"id":997,"date":"2025-04-25T04:43:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T04:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/urop-2025-spring-symposium-showcases-student-research-projects\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T04:43:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T04:43:47","slug":"urop-2025-spring-symposium-showcases-student-research-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/urop-2025-spring-symposium-showcases-student-research-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"UROP 2025 Spring Symposium showcases student research projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>University of Michigan students gathered in the Michigan League on Wednesday for the annual <a href=\"https:\/\/lsa.umich.edu\/urop\">Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/urop-symposium\/\">Spring Research Symposium<\/a>. The symposium showcased a variety of student research projects with topics ranging from biomedical engineering to social justice.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Students presented their projects over the course of <a href=\"https:\/\/lsa.umich.edu\/urop\/symposium\/spring-symposium\/fall-winter-students.html\">seven sessions<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>The University is currently the <a href=\"https:\/\/seas.umich.edu\/news\/u-m-named-1-public-research-university-us\">#1 public research university<\/a> in the United States, drawing many students to participate in research projects on campus. More than <a href=\"https:\/\/lsa.umich.edu\/urop\/prospective-students.html\">1,300 students<\/a> are members of UROP, and these students are partnered with over 800 researchers across campus.<\/p>\n<p>Engineering freshman Yule Xie presented his project titled \u201cHuman-Autonomy Collaboration for Escaping Local Minima,\u201d which explores the autonomous navigation of unmanned ground vehicles at the <a href=\"https:\/\/mavric.si.umich.edu\/\">MAVRIC<\/a> Lab. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Xie said he joined UROP for the professional development opportunities.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cI wanted to join UROP to get a feel for what the research process was like,\u201d Xie said. \u201cFor 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>LSA sophomore Sasha Jemison told The Daily she joined UROP to contribute to scientific advancements. Her research project, titled \u201cHigh-Throughput Drug Screening in a Zebrafish Endotoxemia Model,\u201d focuses on how different drugs can treat sepsis and other inflammatory conditions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI find it fascinating how we can push the bounds of science, and what we\u2019re able to do with medicine and the lives that you\u2019re able to save with the things that you end up finding,\u201d Jemison said. \u201cI wanted to be a part of that work. I feel like research is so powerful, even as an undergrad student. Even if you\u2019re just doing the foundational work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Daily, biomedical researcher Catherine Ptaschinki said she has served as a <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1wMqvec1L5ukzGZ6Lpep-7vFGWUU-rkJ1\/view\">judge<\/a> 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\u2019t know everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost of these students are in their very first experience with research, and so I don\u2019t expect them to understand every single detail about their project,\u201d Ptaschinki said. \u201cI think that\u2019s what\u2019s really important at this stage, is that students understand that why they\u2019re doing what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Also a UROP mentor, Ptaschinki said UROP is not only beneficial for undergraduate students, but also for mentors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s also really beneficial, I think, for mentors to be able to work with those students at an early stage,\u201d Ptaschinki said. \u201cSometimes we get so involved in our research that we kind of forget about the basic fundamental questions\u2026 it is really helpful to be able to get back to that basic question of why are we doing what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily News Contributor Ananya Bommineni can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/academics\/urop-2025-spring-symposium-showcases-student-research-projects\/mailto:ananyabo@umich.edu\"><em>ananyabo@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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.\u00a0 Students presented their projects over the course of seven sessions from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[299,1118,1117,98,87,1116,1115],"class_list":{"0":"post-997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-projects","9":"tag-research","10":"tag-showcases","11":"tag-spring","12":"tag-student","13":"tag-symposium","14":"tag-urop"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}