MRADS students end up enjoying research so much that they choose to stay on campus during the summer to continue their experiences. Read below to learn what six of our students did this past summer!
Sabrina Tobar Thommel
Hometown: Guatemala City, Guatemala
Major: Computer Science
About: My research was about developing a mobile network of radiation detectors and a software stack to communicate all the real-time data to the end client. The network will be a type of Internet of Things for radiation detectors.
Brandon Lecznar
Hometown: Caseville, MI
Major: Mechanical Engineering
About: I conducted summer research within UM's Department of Emergency Medicine. I focused on the synthesis and quality control of gold nanoparticles which were used to develop a process to rapidly identify infection-causing bacteria. Rapid diagnosis is significant in reducing patient mortality and threat of bacterial resistance.
Joyce Ho
Hometown: Ann Arbor, MI
Major: Undeclared
About: I did research within the School of Information. I went through qualitative interview data from participants on their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, social technology experiences, and their opinion on the Not Alone, a socially supportive pregnancy loss application prototype. With this data, I formed a codebook that will contribute to writing an effective research paper on its findings. Hopefully, the paper will be published and the Not Alone application will be officially made!
Kristen Paternoster
Hometown: Clinton Township, MI
Major: Microbiology
About: This summer, I researched mothers' beliefs and practices around feeding their infants and toddlers. Specifically, I studied how maternal behavior influences infant/toddler feeding behavior and is associated with the risk of childhood obesity. In addition to doing data entry, coding videos and interviews, and doing other office work, I had the opportunity to go on home visits, where we interviewed the mothers and did feeding activities with the children.
Marius Kongsoere
Hometown: Thisted, Denmark
Major: Physics and Mathematics
About: I worked on dark matter particle physics. This summer, I created an analysis framework for characterizing photon spectra observed from distant galaxy clusters and compared my data with hypothetical dark matter particle decay - in particular, I worked with the hypothesis that dark matter is so-called “sterile neutrino” particles. Using this assumption, I applied Gaussian machine learning methods to create a rigorous statistical analysis. My goal was to figure out whether as of now unexplained spectral lines from outer space could be coming from decaying dark matter.
Ekim Koca
Hometown: Troy, MI
Major: Mechanical Engineering
About: I researched driver safety and ways to estimate distraction in vehicles caused by the navigation/entertainment system. It optimized the design process and will make vehicles much safer.
