Undergrads present research reports at summer forum

By Justine Dougherty

Of the hundreds of students engaged in research at Cornell, almost 80 will be taking part in summer sessions of the Undergraduate Research Forum, along with dozens of students from other universities from as far away as Denmark, Israel, Ghana and Poland.

Beginning July 29 and continuing for the next two weeks, students will be presenting reports with topics ranging from "Exploring the Parameter Space for Henon Mappings" and "Treatment Alternative for Alzheimer's Disease" to "Is Spider Silk an Elastomer?"

Held twice a year, in the spring and summer, the 12th annual forum is sponsored by the Undergraduate Research Board, with funding from the College of Arts and Sciences and gifts from faculty and others. The student presenters have Cornell faculty sponsors.

"Students who are making presentations at the forum are selected because of their exceptional ability and achievement and the fit between their interests and background and the available projects," said Marilyn Williams, director of the program and assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences.

"The forum provides opportunities for all undergraduate researchers to have the pleasure of learning about others' work and to share their own. The disciplinary sessions develop the students' skills in talking about their work with professionals and other students within their discipline, while mixed sessions develop the students' skills in communicating their work to people outside their own discipline. This is not just a showcase; it has a really useful educational purpose," she said.

Besides the mixed and disciplinary sessions, there also will be sessions for Hughes Scholars and students in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs on campus, sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

What follows is a partial and preliminary schedule of the sessions, listing the students, their universities and research topics. A complete schedule will be available July 27. Call 255-5004 or e-mail Marilyn Williams at mew4@cornell.edu.

Wednesday, July 29

Mathematics REU program

Complex Dynamics Session
10 a.m.-noon, 310 White Hall

·David Farris (Harvard), "The Medusa Algorithm I"
·Kuan Ju Liu (Harvard), "The Medusa Algorithm II"
·Suzanne Shontz (Univ. of Northern Iowa), "Computing Homoclinic Bifurcations"
·Karl Papadantonakis (Cornell), "Exploring the Parameter Space for Henon Mappings"

Analysis On Fractals Session
1:30-4:30 p.m., 328 White Hall

·Yvonne Lai (MIT), "Splines on the Sierpinski Gasket I"
·Michael Usher (Berkeley), "Splines on the Sierpinski Gasket II"
·Daniel Sheldon (Dartmouth), "Green's Function on the Sierpinski Gasket"
·Scott Kravitz (Haverford), "Constructing a Laplacian on the Sierpinski Carpet"
·Katharine Walker (Yale), "Deconstructing a Laplacian on the Diamond Fractal"
·Erik Bird (Chicago), "Fractal Fourier Series"

Mixed Sessions
I -- 9-10:30 a.m., 158 Goldwin Smith Hall

·David Clark (St. Lawrence Univ.), "Investigating the Interactions Between T Cell Receptors and Density Resistant Membrane Domains Utilizing Fluorescence Microscopy"
·Jan K. Rainey (Univ. of Guelph), "Characterization of cocaine-displacable RNA molecules on the muscle acetylcholine receptor"
·Danielle Wininger (Barnard College), "Orthonasal versus Retronasal Smell"
·Naa-Dei Nikoi (Cornell), "The variation of electrical conductivity with grain size in Copper (I) Oxide
·Charles Basinger (Cornell), "Creating Step Free Si (111) Surfaces"
·Carlos A. Vargas Alvarez (Univ. of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez), "Design and optimization of the Calibration System of SPIFI"

II --9-10:30 a.m., 160 Goldwin Smith Hall

·Dorian Fougeres (Cornell ), "Building Effective Environmental Coalitions"
·Jodi Pike (Cornell), "Correlating infant movement and attention"
·Julie Miller (Cornell), "Treatment Alternative for Alzheimer's Disease"
·David Baer, (Cornell), "Stereo Image Segmentation: A Combinatorial Optimization Approach"

III -- 1:30-3 p.m., 350 Goldwin Smith Hall

·Matthew Willmann (Cornell), "The Construction of a rep-PCR-based Fingerprint for Phytophthora infestans"
·Jessica Tenenbaum (Cornell), "Satellite remote sensing of 1998 seasonal phytoplankton bloom in Gulf of Maine region"
·Emily Klein (Cornell), "Explosive Crystallization of Germanium"
·Timothy Glotch (Colgate), "Elongated Craters on Venus and the Moon"
·Gabriel Gryffyn (St. John's College), "Chromophores on Jupiter"
·Ronald Paryl (Cornell), "Computer Modeling of Thin Cu films on Si substrates

IV -- 1:30-3 p.m., 124 Goldwin Smith Hall

·Brice Wu (Cornell), "Simulations in Copper Electronic Packages" ·Rebecca Renee Billmeier (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ.), "The Design and Optimization of a New Fabry-Perot Interferometer for SPIFI"
·Tony Levin (Simon Fraser Univ.), "Correlating lunar radar measurements and heavy metal abundances"
·Yana Matsushita (Cornell), "The Fabrication and Characterization of Magnetic Nanostructures"
·Erick Lavoie (Cornell), "Polyimide Flexures for Microelectromechanical Systems"
·Terence C. Flynn (Cornell), "Is Spider Silk an Elastomer?"

August 3, 4 and 6