Student Research News and Events
Upcoming KSU Research Events
Attention Psychology Students!!!
|
West Liberty University Highlands Campus (http://westliberty.edu/highlands/) |
Graduate Research Symposium
Friday, April 21, 2017, 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Kent Student Center.
Annual Student Conference
— Stark Campus
Thursday, April 28, 2017.
Proposals must be submitted by 5 p.m. on March 27, 2017
Additional Research Opportunities
Posters on The Hill — Washington D.C.
Date Pending Congressional Calendar
Submission Period CLOSED.
Bringing Together Brilliant Minds to Create Solutions to the Challenges We Face Today
Want to save the world AND win cash and other prizes in the process?
Participate in the Mission Life VI competition this Fall!
Mission Life is an international competition that brings together groups of students to propose solutions to pressing concerns. The goal of the competition is to foster innovative ideas and entrepreneurship in a multi and interdisciplinary team. This year’s theme is Global Sustainable Solutions in the 21st century. All Kent State University students are eligible to participate. Please sign up so you can develop and share your ideas to save the world!
More information can be found here and here:
For further information contact the Mission Life coordinator, Dr. Edgar E. Kooijman at ekooijma@kent.edu.
An informational meeting for interested students will be held on September 5 in the new Integrated Sciences Building, meet near room 190 at 7 p.m. The registration deadline for the competition is September 11.
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
1 – 2:30 p.m. Student Presentations and judging — Various Locations, Kent Student Center
2:30 – 4 p.m. Reception and Announcement of Competition Awards – Ballroom Balcony, Kent Student Center
The 2017 Undergraduate Symposium on Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity will be held Tuesday, March 21, from 1 to 5 p.m. in the Kent Student Center Ballroom
The event will put more than 150 student research and creative projects on display, and will include cash awards and recognition by Kent State administrators.
Kent State University students Nilin Rao, Ph.D., and Craig Verdin, and Exercise Science and Physiology Professor Ellen Glickman, Ph.D., are the co-founders of TheraPod Medical LLC, a wound-care company that is looking to transform the field of podiatric medicine.
Rao, a fourth-year podiatric student who completed his master’s and doctorate degrees in exercise physiology from Kent State, and Verdin, a second-year podiatric student in Kent State’s College of Podiatric Medicine, have been working with Glickman to research and develop products geared toward helping those with diabetes, which affects more than 29 million Americans and is growing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
They developed and patented a product called the Puncture-Pedic insole to help people with ulcerations on their feet, which affects people with diabetes, and can be very painful without assistance. If the ulcerations don’t heal properly, they can cause infections and lead to possible amputations on the toes and feet. The insole made of a soft, durable fabric fits into a normal shoe and allows certain spots to be punched out so that the person can walk without pressure on the ulceration. This allows the person to easily and comfortably walk without the need for a walking boot until they can recover.
Additionally, their product also can help athletes, such as runners, recover from blisters and calluses that can impede their performance.
“There are not many options at the local drugstore for the millions of people dealing with these types of foot issues,” Glickman said. “The research shows that there really is a need for products like the one we developed, and we are looking toward the future to research and develop proactive podiatric products that use technologies such as liquid crystals to help people.”
Learn more about Kent State’s Exercise Science and Physiology program
Have an allergy that requires you to carry epinephrine? Maybe you have asthma and need to tote around an inhaler? What about that birth control pill you were supposed to take before you left the house, but forgot?
No need to worry - three Kent State University students have you covered, along with your smartphone. Together, with the help of LaunchNET Kent State, the three created Case.MD. Ariella Yager, entrepreneur major in Kent State’s College of Business Administration; Samuel Graska, cell and molecular biology major in Kent State’s College of Arts and Sciences; and Justin Gleason, graduate student in Kent State’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design spent more than a year planning, inventing, designing and 3-D printing smartphone cases that contain vital medication. Wherever your smartphone goes, so does the medication.
“It’s only common sense to pair it to a device we are all glued to, and one that kids are growing up glued to as well,” Yager said.
The ideas started flowing when Graska began working on a midterm project. He looked down at the pen he was clicking, over and over, in his hand. Graska noticed how the spring-loaded cap ejected the pen’s point. He had an idea. Would the same mechanics administer a dose of epinephrine, and better yet, would it work with a vial inside a smartphone case?”
Graska ran the idea by Yager, who then came up with more ideas for smartphone cases. Together they brainstormed two main cases and invited Gleason on board to bring the concepts to life using a 3-D printer.
“I like to dream big and push people to their limits because I think together people can be absolutely amazing. I see this company growing exponentially,” Graska said.
Case.MD started by designing the Epi-case, a case that holds two vials of epinephrine and your smartphone. It is slightly thicker, with both ends covered by safety caps. When someone is having a life-threatening allergic reaction, the caps are removed. The case is then placed against the person’s leg. With the push of a button on top, the needle is ejected from the bottom, administering the medication. As an alternative to the EpiPen, Case.MD says their invention is smaller, costs $400 less and most importantly, users always have it with their smartphone. The idea just won $20,000 in the Youngstown Business Incubator’s and the Burton D. Morgan Foundation AMPED competition.
The second case that the students created is called the Alula. This case discretely holds, protects and dispenses women’s birth control pills so women can always have the meds with them and take them at the proper time. The back of the case contains a dial that, when turned to the appropriate day, dispenses the medication out the side of the phone case.
“We are going to integrate it with an app as well so you can track, and be reminded when to take the pill,” Yager said.
Case.MD is launching a Kickstarter for Alula in the spring.
The money that Case.MD won will be used to pursue intellectual-property protection and more additive manufacturing options for its products.
The students say they are optimistic about the future and plan to continue growing the company when they graduate in May.
“I don’t know which one of us said it first,” Gleason said. “We are striving to be the next Apple. I guess I walked into the right room and the right time.”
The students showed Monica Robins from WKYC-TV how the cases work to save lives and make taking medication more convenient.
Kent State University students in the College of Arts and Sciences will get the opportunity to travel to Japan to do collaborative research in a world-class institute, specializing in primate biology, thanks to a recently signed memorandum of understanding with the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University. By studying primates as a model for humans, the researchers hope to address a variety of topics, including evolutionary genetic analysis, Alzheimer’s disease and aggressive behavior.
The memorandum, signed by Kent State’s Todd Diacon, Ph.D., senior vice president of academic affairs and provost; James Blank, Ph.D., dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; and Kyoto University's Takakazu Yumoto, Ph.D., director of the Primate Research Institute, lays the foundation for Kent State students to conduct summer internships under the guidance of Primate Research Institute faculty through July 2021. The effort was initiated by Hirohisa Hirai, Ph.D., previous director of the Primate Research Institute, and Anthony Tosi, Ph.D., assistant professor in Kent State’s Department of Anthropology.
Anthropology faculty members at Kent State have had collaborations with the Primate Research Institute for years, but recent visits by Mary Ann Raghanti, Ph.D., associate professor and interim chair of the department, and fellow professors Richard Meindl, Ph.D., and Tosi, as well as two student projects, invigorated the relationship and led to the memorandum of understanding.
In both of the last two summers, anthropology graduate students received fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to participate in a collaborative research project at the Primate Research Institute. Both students benefited from not only having access to world-class facilities and faculty expertise, but also learned new techniques and new ways of addressing their research, all while immersing themselves into Japanese culture. Fewer than 200 students from the United States are accepted into the NSF-East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) each year.
Emily Munger, a current anthropology doctoral student who earned her B.A. and M.A. from Kent State, participated in the NSF-EAPSI in 2015. Cody Ruiz, a current M.A. student in anthropology, participated in the same program in the summer of 2016. Both recently presented their experiences during Kent State’s International Education Week on the Kent Campus.
For Munger, both the cultural and laboratory experiences were “life-changing” and she gained important friendships and collaborators who she plans to work with in the future. She worked in the cognitive testing lab of Katsuki Nakamura, Ph.D., and studied the learning and memory abilities of aged marmosets to better understand how their brains age, which could be used as a biomedical model for Alzheimer’s disease.
“I’m very interested in learning and memory, and how the brain has changed to allow for increased memory and learning in humans,” Munger says.
She presented this work at conferences and recently submitted a paper to an academic journal. She also plans to use this work for her doctoral dissertation.
For Ruiz, the cultural experience was “truly memorable” and he gained “invaluable” molecular anthropology research experience while working in the lab of Masanori Imamura, Ph.D., at the Primate Research Institute. He studied the differences among Japanese macaque spermatogenesis genes on the protein level. At Kent State, he studies these same differences on the DNA sequence level.
Danielle Jones, a first-year M.A. student in anthropology, plans to go to the Primate Research Institute this summer to study how genetics contributes to levels of aggression among different macaque species. The work could contribute to our understanding of human pathological conditions that are associated with high levels of aggression and may lead to future therapeutic targets.
Raghanti and Tosi noted the many benefits that the students received by participating in the education-abroad programs.
“They’re building scientific collaborations at a young age, in a world-class research institute, which gives them a leg up on their peers,” Raghanti says.
“The international research experience instills them with far greater confidence in their abilities; it’s transformational,” Tosi adds.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PRIMATE RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF KYOTO UNIVERSITY
LEARN MORE ABOUT KENT STATE’S DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND READ MUNGER’S AND RUIZ’S BLOGS