Casabona Competition: An Exhibition of Science Thriving at Montclair

Nine students arrived on Wednesday April 9 to the Center of Environmental and Life Sciences in the aftermath of multiple scientific events to present their work to colleagues, faculty, staff and a panel of professional judges. Perhaps it was an excitement with all the recent happenings, an earthquake and an eclipse, or perhaps it was impeccable preparation or even just a uniquely talented group of students, but the excitement and energy in the building was at an all time high. The stage was set, as it always does for this competition, with a poster session. Attendees are able to get a sense for what they’ll be hearing about in the talks later, the judges can connect with the students and their work and the competitors are able to warm up for their time in the spotlight.

From the posters, the event shifted to the eight presentations. Students eloquently talked about intense topics involving fatty acid differentiation, bacteriophage capsid proteins and carbon sequestration. Others spoke about next generation methodologies and technologies for soil revitalization, gravitational wave detection, cyber attack detection and self-driving vehicle simulators.

Teddy Morra, mentored by Dr. Rui Li from the School of Computing presented on the 3D simulator for self-driving cars. This timely work allows for testing to assess solutions that could eventually be implemented into vehicles with the goal of taking control and safely diverting a distracted or incapacitated driver. Teddy’s informative and entertaining presentation earned him the Audience Favorite award. Kaitlyn Cohan, representing the Mathematics Department provided a real-world application of math utilizing network analysis to study soccer. Her studies provide a great example of the value of mathematics beyond theory and education as it often gets stigmatized into. This work, under the mentorship of Dr. Ashwin Vaidya, earned her third place in the competition.

Noah Ramadan, researching bacteriophage capsid proteins under the mentorship of Dr. Quinn Vega from the Department of Biology talked about ways they could employ phage to treat certain viruses. This work earned Noah second place. First place in the Spring 2024 Competition went to Busra Anil mentored by Dr. Ying Cui and representing the Earth and Environmental Studies Department conducting research on carbon sequestration. Busra’s poise, humor and personality shined throughout her presentation enhancing the impact of her work on a significant topic. She talked about her analysis of soil samples from the Antarctic dating back to the Miocene-Pliocene Epoch where they found a period of similar warming. She highlighted our need to take action toward carbon neutrality as we hasten and exacerbate what is naturally occurring. She also provided some methods to achieve this, doing so naturally through sequestration and assisted by us by means of iron fertilization.