20 26
PECIA L ARE A
W I N N E R S C O M P E T I T I O N
The Spring 2026 Undergraduate Research Symposium featured thirteen special area competitions (SACs). Designed to provide discipline and category-specific recognition of excellence in student scholarship, SACs are sponsored by a variety of undergraduate research partners across Mississippi State University.
The 3Minute Research Pitch challenges undergraduates to present their research topic in just three minutes and with a single slide.
Christopher Jolivette (149), Mentor: Allison Jaeger Berena Can Wrong Be Right?
Vineel Vanga (291), Mentor: Galen Collins Does Ubiquitin Activate Ddi2 in trans?
Lela Rose (31), Mentor: David Van Den Heever Birth Control or Brain Control? An FPVS and EEG Study
Undergraduate engineering projects are eligible to recieve the Visual Display of Information or Cross-Disciplinary Research Award.
Visual Display of Information Awardee
Lonnie Tankersley (67), Mentor: Shinde Vilas
Development of an Interactive, High-Fidelity Circuit Modeling Tool for Inductively-Coupled Pulsed Accelerators
Cross-Disciplinary Research Awardee
Callie Simon (63), Mentor: Christopher Hudson A Real-Time, Markerless Computer Vision Pipeline for Lameness Detection in Dairy Cattle
The Gulf Coast Research Award highlights projects that address issues facing the Gulf Coast.
Grant Holladay (145), Mentor: Justin Pinta
The Mississippi Gulf Coast’s Lost Tongue: The Vestiges of French in Coastal Mississippi
Skylar Bates (195), Mentor: SaMin Han
Common Grounds: A Resilient Landscape Strategy for Flood
Adaptation and Community Connection in East Biloxi, Mississippi
This competition is for students studying life sciences and/or engineering and who have conducted research related to preventing, diagnosing, or treating a human medical condition.
April Guo-Yue (231), Mentor: Carl June
st1 nd2 rd3
Determining the Impact of IL-12 and IL-18 Treatment on CARMAIT Cell Anti-Tumor Response
Rayne Rutherford (276), Mentor: Nick Cochran
Advancing Regulatory Genomics in Alzheimer's Disease with Machine Learning and Single-Cell Data Integration
Spencer Lile (249), Mentor: Christopher Johnson
Enhanced Structural Predictions of Voltage Gated Calcium Channels
This award recognizes excellence in research performed by undergraduate students working with CoE faculty or staff.
Judd Albans (126), Mentor: Neil Deochand
Seeing Plaque, Changing Care: A Systematic Review of Plaque
Disclosing Agents
Johanna Hilbun (107), Mentor: Leo Chen
Perceived Balance, Physical Function, and Body Composition in Active Older Adults: A Preliminary Analysis
Cristopher Cordova (106), Mentor: Guillermo Oviedo
Functional Fitness Tests as Predictors of Cardiovascular Health in Mississippi College Students
st1 nd2 rd3
This award recognizes excellence in research performed within the CFR/FWRC.
Rilee Welliver (296): Curtis Coleman
"What's The Buzz?" - Precision and Efficiency Comparison of Human vs. Automated Honey Bee Counting Methods
Allie Wilburn (297), Mentor: Dana Morin
Assessing potential biases in social media reports for monitoring of range expansion of black bears
Madeline Grantham (229), Mentor: Ashley Schulz
Hidden Biodiversity: Arthropod Responses to Forest Heterogeneity
st1 nd2 rd3
This award recognizes one engineering undergraduate who uses their research to help solve problems of critical importance to society.
Emma Cook (14), Mentor: Santanu Kundu
Sustainable Material Design: The Effects of Calcium Ion Concentration on Alginate Fiber Formation
Selection criteria for this award include significance to the field of psychology, innovation, approach, and presentation.
Elizabeth Nichols (169), Mentor: Michael Pratte
The Soap Opera Effect: How High Video Refresh Rates Affect Perception
Christopher Jolivette (149), Mentor: Alison Jaeger Berena
Doing right the wrong way: Integrating across representations supports learning from erroneous examples.
This award is designed to recognize undergraduate student research that incorporated the use of library resources and/or services.
Amanda Gutierrez (29), Mentor: Jessica Pattison
From Farm to Space: Evaluating Sericulture-Derived Silk for Sustainable Spacesuit Design
The Humanities Special Area Competition invites undergraduate students to share outstanding work that demonstrates the insights, values, and real-world impact of humanities scholarship.
Tess Higginbotham (91), Mentor: Aaron White Drawing as Pedagogy in Architectural History
Bradley Tedford (124), Mentor: Morgan Flow
A 'State-Sanctioned Amnesia': How History Shaped and Stunted Mississippi's Curriculum
2
Swineherds and Centrality: How Eumaeus Relates to Odysseus Runners Up
Lauren Rounds (120), Mentor: Lara Dodds
The Beast Born of Beauty: A Study of Humanness through Beauty within Frankenstein
Bradley Burke (115), Mentor: Christian Flow
This award is designed to highlight the important work that undergraduate students at MSU are doing in public health.
Margaret Keith (150), Mentor: Holli Seitz
Evaluating the Effectiveness of HappyHealthy Social Media Posts Using Eye-Tracking and Survey Methods
Maggie Burnett (205), Mentor: Nicole Ashpole
Comparing Morphological Effects of Minor Endocannabinoid Pathways in Zebrafish
Meri Logan Jackson (148), Mentor: Mary Nelson Robertson
Building Cross-Sector Understanding of Farm Stress Through the “On the Farm” Docuseries st1 nd2 rd3
This award is recognizes excellence in research from students in the 2025/2026 CALS/MAFES URSP.
Dilber Annageldiyeva (191), Mentor: Maryam Mohammadi-Aragh
Impact of Hatchery Location and Flock Age on Hatching Egg
Bacterial Abundance
nd2
rd3
Transcriptomic Responses to Weaning: Identifying Differentially Expressed Genes in Abrupt vs. Fence-line Weaned Calves st1
Makayla Walker (293), Mentor: Kelsey Harvey
The Impact of Maternal Aggression in Beef Cattle on Productivity
Molly Montoya (258), Mentor: Federico Hoffman
Emma Grace Koger (246), Mentor: Brandi Karisch
AI-Based Fly Detection in Cattle Using Video Surveillance for Improved Farm Efficiency and Animal Welfare
Sydney Baker (128), Mentor: OP McCubbins
Exploring Perceptions of 360 Video and Virtual Reality
Cadence Jackson (239), Mentor: Leyla Rios de Alvarez
Physiological Variables Associated with Heat Stress in Kiko and Spanish Goats Grazing in Summer Conditions in Mississippi
Rachel Bowers (88), Mentor: Jason Walker
Mapping Access: A GIS-Based Analysis of Park Accessibility in Starkville, Mississippi
Quinn Durfey (219), Mentor: Tongyin LI
Applications of biostimulants in the production of specialty sweet pepper cultivars
The data science SAC recognizes projects that excel in one of three categories: basic research that deepens human knowledge of the underlying methods or techniques central to the field of data science, use-inspired research that advances the field of data science based upon a clear potential use case, and applied research that addresses a well-defined problem by applying data science methods and principles. The innovation award recognizes the best overall project chosen from among the category awardees.
Manning Littlejohn (155), Mentor: Jonathan Barlow
The Moral Cost of Agreement: A Quantitative Benchmark of Sycophancy in Large Language Models’ Moral Reasoning
Kellie Watts (74), Mentor: Jonathan Barlow
The Trust-Performance Problem (TPP): Measuring Calibrated Trust in Business AI Systems through Behavioral Decision Tasks
Rayne Rutherford (276), Mentor: Nick Cochran
Advancing Regulatory Genomics in Alzheimer’s Disease with Machine Learning and Single-Cell Data Integration
Lonnie Tankersley (68), Mentor: Soroush Korivand
Embodied Zero-Shot Task Planning via Hardware-Aware LLM–VLM Integration for Physically Grounded Robotic Manipulation
Rayne Rutherford (276), Mentor: Nick Cochran
Advancing Regulatory Genomics in Alzheimer’s Disease with Machine Learning and Single-Cell Data Integration
The Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Discovery extends gratitude to all Special Area Competition sponsors and judges for supporting student research
Special thanks to the following individuals and their departments/organizations who created and hosted these competitions.
Jonathan Barlow, PhD - Data Science Academic Institute
Anna Marie Clay, PhD - Bagley College of Engineering
Mary Dozier, PhD - Department of Psychology
Jamie Dyer, PhD - Gulf Scholars Program
Steve Elder, PhD - Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
Kristine Evans, PhD - College of Forest Resources
Daniel Gadke, PhD - College of Education
Cory Gallo, PhD - CALS/MAFES
Meg Marquardt, PhD & Morgan Flow, PhD - Institute for the Humanities
Mary Nelson, PhD - Social Science Research Center
KC New - MSU Libraries
Emily McDonald - Theta Tau Professional Engineering Fraternity
Meghan Wolf - The Graduate School
