Researchers of Emory

Kaveri Sheth  is a senior who is double majoring in Psychology and Linguistics. She was awarded a Fall 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on source memory recall in bilingual students under Dr. Patricia Bauer.  I have been working in the Bauer lab for the past three years. In the lab, I have become accustomed to throwing out words, such as self-derivation (the process of combining two separate but related facts), stem facts (the separate yet related facts), and integration facts (a fact that can be self-derived). These words have become the norm for me, just like the paradigm I have been using to test integration of information for my honors thesis. I have used this paradigm in a variety of projects throughout my three years in the lab, so it seems like second nature to me. However, I realized that I became very frustrated when my participants were not fully understanding what I was asking them during the test phase. 

Michael is an Emory senior from Bethesda, Maryland who is majoring in Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies (MESAS) and Arabic. He is currently doing a senior thesis project titled “Framing Azawad in the Age of Facebook: The MNLA, Social Media, Narrative, and Identity”. The goal of his project is to explore the ways in which officials and supporters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (known as the MNLA, its acronym in French), a secessionist rebel group at the heart of the civil war in the West African country of Mali between 2012 to 2015, used Facebook, and what their Facebook postings tell us about the way the movement framed its own identity and goals. To do this project, Michael identified a number of public Facebook accounts belonging to officials involved with the MNLA’s communications, such as spokesmen, and other accounts belonging to supporters of the MNLA. He quantitatively categorized their Facebook postings between 2012 and 2015, approximately 6500

Kino  Maravillas is a senior who is majoring in Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on the Milpa soil microbiome under  Dr. Nicole Gerardo .  The philosophy of scientific research is something I’ve always embodied but could never fully express until I entered Emory. Curiosity, gaining an understanding of the complex, interdependent systems that drive our world, has always driven me to read that extra chapter, linger on that leaf blade in the distance for just a few more minutes, and ponder on that lofty thought that you know will eventually lead somewhere solid. This curiosity was always in the back of my mind; coming into Emory, I applied to the  Scholarly Inquiry and Research (SIRE) program knowing I would finally get to apply this with a lab coat donned. Through my freshman and junior years I’ve been exposed to the grit of day-to-day research, from painstakingly formatting data figures to public speaking at the  annual Emor

Mustafa is an Emory senior from Huntsville, Alabama. He is double majoring in Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies (MESAS) and Political Science. After Emory he plans to attend law school.  While at Emory’s Oxford campus, Mustafa completed an honors research project focused on ethnic minority leaders and miss killings in the context of civil war. Now Mustafa is able to continue this research through his senior thesis. His current project focuses on the 1991 Uprisings in Southern Iraq. His goal is to distinguish the uprisings as a seminal moment in modern Iraqi and modern Shia history. Mustafa credits the wealth of resources in Emory’s libraries and the wonderful professors in the MESAS department for the ability to conduct this research. He says the most valuable aspect of his research has been “challenging my preconceived notions about the Middle East, where my parents come from. I learned to distinguish between certifiable facts and what I have been brought up to understand an

Veronica Vazquez Olivieri is a senior who is majoring in Psychology. She was awarded a Fall 2018 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on the social significance of speaking styles under Dr. Lynne Nygaard.  For someone who wants to pursue a doctoral program after graduation, applying and receiving funding from Emory’s Undergraduate Research Program is a great scaffolding step.  Participating in independent research has been gratifying and valuable since the very beginning of the application process primarily because you have to write a formal proposal of your research. Furthermore, it exposes you to the importance of conducting ethical research when thinking about how you will treat and test participants. Most importantly,  it confers a sense of responsibility and autonomy because you are no longer assisting someone’s research, rather you are the lead researcher and the obtained outcomes will reflect the amount of work you invested.   As a researcher, I am intrigued