Discovery Day winners announced

About 100 students presented poster or made oral presentations at this year's Discovery Day, a celebration of undergraduate research on the Columbia campus.

Awards totaling $6,200 from USC's Office of Research and Health Sciences and corporate sponsor Milliken & Co. were given for the top posters and oral presentations.

Winners selected by Milliken & Co. were:

• Grand Prize: Nishita Dalal, chemical engineering, "Analysis of Dipicolinic Acid Released from Spores Treated with Supercritical CO2 ." Faculty mentor: Michael Matthews, chemical engineering.

• Top Posters:
  Rachael Hipp, chemistry, "Chemical Composition of Latent Fingerprints by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry." Faculty mentor: Stephen Morgan, chemistry and biochemistry.
  Heather Taylor, chemistry, and Jennifer Yiu, chemistry, "Systematic Investigations of Environmental Effects on Textile Fibers for Forensic Fiber Examinations." Faculty mentor: Stephen Morgan, chemistry and biochemistry.
  Meredith Tershansy, chemistry, "Solvothermal Synthesis, Structural Determination, Optical Properties and Thermochromic Behavior of Several New Mixed-Metal Bismuth Halide Compounds." Faculty mentor: Hans-Conrad zur Loye, chemistry and biochemistry.

Other winners include, but are not limited to:

BIOMEDICAL
Second place, Heather Mentzer, chemical engineering, "Mapping MSP1-19 Binding Regions in Band 3 Peptide." Faculty mentor: Athar Chishti, pharmacology, University of Illinois at Chicago.

ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
First place, Nishita Dalal, chemical engineering, "Analysis of Dipicolinic Acid Released from Spores Treated with Supercritical CO2." Faculty mentor: Michael Matthews, chemical engineering.

Second place, Kelvin Moore, chemical engineering, "Development of Metal-free Catalysts for PEM Fuel Cells." Faculty mentor: Branko Popov, chemical engineering, and Vijayadurga Nallathambi, PhD candidate, chemical engineering.

Third place, Anna Pickerell, chemical engineering, "Preparation of Silver-Platinum Bimetallic Catalysts via Electroless Deposition." Faculty mentor: Christopher Williams, chemical engineering.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS -- SECTION 2
First place - tie, Robert Freeman, civil engineering, "Vertical Porosity Distributions in Pervious Concrete Pavement." Faculty mentor: Liv Haselbach, civil and environmental engineering.

For complete list of winners, click here.

4/06