Honors students combined education and research to produce groundbreaking results during this year’s Honors College Presidential Summer Fellowships (PSF) program. The PSF provided programming and funding for summer fellowships to promote undergraduate research, creative activity, and community engagement among honors students.

Each PSF recipient was awarded $2,500 and worked individually with a faculty mentor for the duration of the project. Students dedicated at least 20 hours a week over a 10-week period from May 18 to July 23. A series of Honors professional development workshops were available to PSF students that were designed to develop their skills and advance their projects, including Controlling the Controllables, Breaking Down Your Project, Why Running Great Meetings is One Key to Being Great at Life, Leadership 2.0, Interview Skills, Posters—How to Actually Make Them, and Money Management for Students.

The PSF allowed students to follow their passion and pursue additional studies outside of their discipline. They cultivated relationships with diverse undergraduate researchers in the program to learn and share ideas. Recipients also used the PSF to help them prepare thesis proposals for future academic and professional opportunities. Due to the global pandemic, this year PSF students conducted their projects in a virtual manner.

2020 Honors College Presidential Summer Fellowships recipients:

• Raegan Adams: “Biology/evaluation of a novel model for sports-related rotational acceleration induced traumatic brain injury" (Mentor: James Bibb, Ph.D.; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Department of Surgery)
• Rose Albert: “Assessment of social vulnerability to volatile organic compounds and the urban heat island effect in North Birmingham” (Mentor: Maryam Karimi, Ph.D.; School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences)
• *Zuka Al-Safarjalani: “Altering IBS symptoms” (Mentor: Jessica Bumpus, Ph.D.; School of Nursing, Office of Student Success)
• *Bailey Dumlao: “Adapting a play Giovanni's Room" (Mentor: Dennis McLernon, M.F.A.; College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Theatre)
• *Hannah Goymer: “Visuospatial search organization in stroke patients: a potential indicator of post-stroke disability?” (Mentor: Victor Mark, A.B., M.D.; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation)
• *Julia Homola: “Defining the effect of Glioblastoma treatment on regulatory T-cells” (Mentor: Jianmei Leavenworth, M.D.; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Department of Neurosurgery)
• *Lauren Moradi: “Quality of life in patients undergoing on vs. off-pump CABG surgery” (Mentor: Rongbing Xie, Dr.P.H., M.P.H; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Department of Surgery)
• Olivia Oh: “Inflammatory biomarkers, cognitive function, and adiposity in children” (Mentor: Marissa Gowey, Ph.D.; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics)
• *Johanna Popp: “Relationship between glymphatic system activity and exercise levels in people with idiopathic generalized epilepsy compared to healthy controls” (Mentor: Jane Allendorfer, Ph.D.; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Department of Neurology)
• *Anna Kuntz Presnall: “The influence of identity on conflict” (Mentor: Renato Corbetta, Ph.D.; College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science & Public Administration)
• *Myra Rana: “Oral microbiome involvement in oral cancer invasion” (Mentor: Hope Amm, Ph.D.; School of Dentistry, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery)
• Karthik Reddy: “Exploring the differences between the assessment of objective and subjective working memory in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia” (Mentor: Donna Murdaugh, Ph.D.; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics)
• * Parker Rose: “Women’s inequality and the gendered division of labor” (Mentor: Brynn Welch, Ph.D.; College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy)
• Kai Schmitz: “Smart city technology, examining the effect on population health” (Mentor: Joshua Robinson, Ph.D.; Collat School of Business, Department of Marketing, Industrial Distribution & Economics)
• Nicholas Southern: “A novel synthetic biology strategy to create prophylaxis for COVID-19” (Mentor: Mathew Might, Ph.D.; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute)
• *Yancy Williams: “Form MATLAB modeling of novel simultaneous two-wavelength axial ratiometry (STAR) Microscopy, to the high throughput analysis of vesicle formation during clathrin-mediated endocytosis” (Mentor: Alexa Mattheyses, Ph.D.; UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology)
• *Jason Zhang: “Screening of already-available drugs to target key SARS-CoV-2 proteins and human proteins for COVID19 treatment” (Mentor: Yuhua Song, Ph.D.; School of Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering)
• *Lynne Zhou: “Solution structure and membrane interaction of the cytoplasmic tail of HTLV-1 gp41 protein” (Mentor: Jamil Saad, Ph.D.; College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry)

After completing their fellowship, students presented their fellowship work-product at the UAB Summer Expo, where 12 PSF students placed.

* denotes PSF student winners who placed in the 2020 UAB Summer Expo