A New Twist Invigorates the Casabona Future Scientists Competition

Nine teams competed this semester presenting posters and giving talks on the work they are doing with their faculty mentors. Students took feedback from their practice sessions, and were possibly more comfortable having the support of their fellow research students resulting in very difficult scoring for the judges. This was one of the closest scorings between the teams in the competition’s history with a lot of discussion amongst the judges in determining the winner. In the end the following teams were named the winners of this first team competition:

1. Like sushi? You’re going to love this
   Wendy E. Islas, BS in Molecular Biology, and Melissa Spigelman, MS in Molecular Biology, mentored by Dr. Carlos Molina, Department of Biology
2. Creating an Immersive and Interactive VR Game for Advancing Elementary Education
   Anthony Condegni, BS in Computer Science, Jianna Loor, MS in Computer Science, mentored by Dr. Rui Li, School of Computing
3. A potential TB target
   Uchenna Ezichi, MS in Chemistry, Citlaly Hernandez, BS in Biochemistry, Crystal Montero, MS in Pharmaceutical Biochemistry, mentored by Dr. Nina Goodey, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry