Researchers of Emory

Amy Krivoshik  is a senior majoring in Psychology. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on how we process spatial information under Dr. Stella Lourenco.  My project addresses the question of how it is that we see the world, not as an amorphous blob of visual input, but as organized into objects units. To know where one thing begins and where another ends, we must individuate objects, establishing whether there is one cohesive object, or separate objects, in a scene. Visual cues, including features like color and shape, and particularly spatial cues, such as distance, may be important for individuating objects. 

Courtney Shin  is a junior majoring in English. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Conference Grant which she used to attend the Native American Literary Symposium . This March, I was honored to attend the Native American Literary Symposium (NALS, nativelit.com ) held in Lake Prior, Minnesota. The previous fall, Professor Mandy Suhr-Sytsma, had encouraged me to apply for the conference with a paper I had written for her Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature course. My research explored Susan Power’s most recent novel, Sacred Wilderness, and how holistic self-understanding results in the deconstruction of narrative borders . With a letter of acceptance, an essay, and a generous conference grant from URP, I found myself with a round-trip plane ticket to Minnesota. However, after months of excitement, a sense of dread filled the final weeks before my flight. I had never attended a conference before, never presented any research, never even been to Minnesota. It seemed that whi...

Cameron Frostbaum  is a senior majoring in Theater Studies and Political Science. He was awarded a Fall 2017 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on microtheatre in Miami, Florida under Dr. Brent Glenn.  My honors thesis project explores and analyzes the Microtheatre movement as a new theatrical experience for the next generation of spectators as well as producing two nights of Microtheatre on Emory’s campus. A study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts found that the three greatest obstacles affecting attendance to performing arts events are limited leisure time, inconvenient event locations, and costs associated with participation [1] . The Microtheatre movement in Spain has revolutionized the spectator experience by addressing these challenges and reinvigorating the performing arts. Recognized this year by the preeminent American Theatre Magazine [2] , Microtheatre has taken Spain and South America by storm. While no academic definition exi...

Kate Norton  is a sophomore double majoring in Psychology and English. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Conference Grant which she used to attend the American Southeastern Writing Center Association Conference. My colleague Lauren and I attended the  Southeastern Writing Center Association’s  2018 conference in Richmond, Virginia. At Virginia Commonwealth University, we presented original research about the  Emory Writing Center  to a group of confederates who were interested in our particular topic, which was “Exploring Attitudes About Conventional Writing Center Sessions and Workshops.” When we began our research, we didn’t have a good handle on what our purpose was, but as we analyzed our data, we came to enlightening conclusions concerning our Writing Center and steps we would like to take to improve it. 

Natalia Brody is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on the relationship between estrogen and fear generalization under Dr. Brian Dias.   The first (and most important) thing a young scientist is taught is “the hypothesis.” In middle school, we are taught that a hypothesis is a potential explanation for a scientific phenomenon. Once a little older, if you’re lucky, the abstract idea of a hypothesis comes to life as you write your own research proposals, posters, and even lectures on these “potential explanations.” But, in perhaps the most important lesson of all, you’ll eventually learn that these hypotheses change— their potential nature comes crashing down just as easily as they were created to begin with. This is an in valuable lesson my participation in the research grant program allowed me.

Mia Morrell  is a sophomore majoring in Physics. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Conference Grant which she used to attend the American Physical Society Meeting in Los Angeles. When shaking parmesan cheese on your pizza, have you mused in frustration why the cheese always seems to clog up in the holes of its container? Have you ever clogged a toilet and wondered what led to this most unfortunate form of humiliation? Or on a more serious note, have you contemplated the arterial clotting of human blood cells in the early phases of a stroke? Our plexiglass hopper chamber displaying hydrogel particles in a clogged state. These questions have fascinated me ever since I was introduced to soft matter physics upon my freshman year at Emory. During my time in Emory University’s  Weeks lab , which focuses on soft matter and complex systems , I have studied soft particle clogging in two dimensions , devising experiments which can be applied to the previously cited situations o...

Tristan Yates is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2017 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on child development and memory under Dr. Patricia Bauer. In my honors thesis work, I am investigating whether the structure of newly-learned information impacts preschoolers’ abilities to extend that information to produce novel understandings of related concepts.   A large part of this journey has been discovering what it is that preschoolers actually know and care about , and as an aside, it is not always listening to a college-aged researcher, regardless of how many stickers she offers during a session. Prior to entering the Bauer Memory Development Lab, I had little experience within the world of child development. Thus, while developing and validating new stimuli for the lab’s memory integration paradigm, I overestimated the types of information four-year-olds could hold in their little brains. This summer, my gradu...