![\"SRP](\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2017\/08\/SRP2017FullFeature.png?n=4732\" "\\"SRP")
<\/p>\nWEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. \u2014 Students and faculty members from across the scientific spectrum came together to present the results of their nine-week-long research in the Monmouth University School of Science Ninth Annual Summer Research Program (SRP) Symposium, held on Aug. 10, 2017 in Erlanger Gardens on the university campus.<\/p>\n
A total of 42 research projects were presented in biology, chemistry and physics, computer science and software engineering, mathematics, and from the university\u2019s Urban Coast Institute.<\/p>\n
Many of the project teams took advantage of the university\u2019s unique location less than a mile from the Atlantic coast to study sharks and rays, the effects of salt water on area trees, developing assessments of coastal lakes, beach-nesting birds, and even the development of a 3D hurricane escape simulation mobile application using actual New Jersey evacuation routes.<\/p>\n
Rising sophomore Stephanie Okereke took a less regional path as she explored ways for people across the country to access laws that could impact their lives. Okereke, who hopes to study computer science and mathematics, is developing an application, searchable by keyword, that would allow users to see both summaries and the full text of laws.<\/p>\n
As she explained, \u201cA person can go on the app and type in a keyword, such as \u2018water,\u2019 and it will pull up the most popular and relevant laws associated with water, so the user can actually access [the law], read it, and apply it to their life.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that the impetus behind her idea was the media coverage of the lead-contamination crisis in the Flint, Mich., public water supply. Okereke said she believed that if people had known more about the law, perhaps more could have been done to possibly avert the crisis.<\/p>\n
Okereke\u2019s research mentor, William F. Tepfenhart, Ph.D., said that while many students ask what projects they can work on, \u201cStephanie, while still a first-year, came to us with an idea and wanted to know who would work with her to pursue it. That\u2019s rare. It\u2019s been an absolute pleasure working with her over the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tepfenhart says he plans to continue working with Okereke to see the project through to completion.<\/p>\n
Rising senior Angela Rella worked with fellow student Justin L. Badamo on the project \u201cUse of Pomegranate Juice Extract and Apple Extract to Treat and to Inhibit Inflammation in Cancers of the Oral Cavity and Glioblastomas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the association between inflammation and cancer has been widely studied, Rella explained, her team wanted to see if pomegranate juice extract or apple extract could selectively inhibit the inflammation of or kill off the cells that they were using in the experiment.<\/p>\n
Rella and Badamo\u2019s faculty mentor, Jeffrey H. Weisburg, Ph.D., who has done extensive research in inhibiting inflammation using nutraceuticals \u2014 products derived from food sources that have additional health benefits \u2014 said that while he wasn\u2019t surprised by the results of the research, the team did discover that the pomegranate extract was more toxic to the cancer cells than was the apple extract.<\/p>\n
The findings of this research project, \u201claid down the foundation for us to do future experiments,\u201d said Weisburg, calling the research, \u201cvitally important\u201d for developing subsequent experiments.<\/p>\n
Rella, a Medical Laboratory Science major, will be spending her senior year completing an internship at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in preparation for a career as a medical technologist. Students majoring in Medical Laboratory Science complete 96 credits of collegiate work at Monmouth University, prescribed by the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences (NAACLS), followed by a 12-month internship in an affiliated NAACLS-approved hospital.<\/p>\n
A transfer student, Rella has high praise for the university and its faculty.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a personal relationship with basically every professor that I\u2019ve ever had here,\u201d she noted, saying that she has been much happier here than at her previous institution. \u201cThe [School of Science] really cares about what you\u2019re doing and where you\u2019re going and how you\u2019re doing in a specific class. So, this research experience has been the same: a very positive experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some summer research projects are open to both Monmouth students and high-achieving high school students, as was the case for the project mentored by Cui Yu, Ph.D., an associate professor of computer science and software engineering. Clark Wang and Kevin Yan, both rising seniors at High Technology High School in Lincroft, N.J., joined Andrew Parise, a rising Monmouth senior computer science major in the development of a goal tracking application aimed at children and teenagers.<\/p>\n
The application, called Planbook, streamlines task management and rewards allocation between parents and children and teachers and students, explained Parise. \u201cIt allows them to create different tasks and push them out with different deadlines and sets a point value that can be redeemed for certain incentives.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea for the application came about, said Yu, because of an increasing amount of time children and teens are spending on video games and social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted this project to be innovative, solve a real-world problem and positively impact the community,\u201d Yu explained. \u201cOn top of that, I wanted the students to be proactive at identifying problems around them that could be alleviated or solved using computer science and technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both high school students wanted to join Monmouth\u2019s summer program to get more hands-on experience with coding and connecting databases to actual websites in development. Wang said that working on research at the college level was a \u201creally new experience. This was the first time that I\u2019ve worked on a big project like this. It\u2019s been very rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Parise, who has professional industry experience, and Yu, had plenty of praise for the high schoolers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI must say that these two high school students did extraordinary work on completing this project,\u201d said Yu. \u201cSome skills were picked up from scratch. Many challenges were addressed. I just can\u2019t be more impressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parise said that \u201cthese guys are really intelligent people and they learned very fast. I\u2019m very proud of the work that they\u2019ve done. So, we hit it head on!\u201d<\/p>\n
Yu hopes to continue to refine the application, develop a group of testers and, ultimately, make it available for use in the future.<\/p>\n
Weisburg said that he sees the SRP as \u201ca wonderful way of getting students to do cutting-edge and meaningful research. In the summer, students work one-on-one with faculty members, an experience that cannot be had in any classroom or laboratory section [during the academic year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SRP is also a terrific experience for me,\u201d he continued, \u201cas I get to watch my students not only gain knowledge in the subject that we\u2019re researching, but also gain confidence in themselves. This all culminates in the symposium where students finally realize that they are experts in this field and are able to handle questions\u201d about their research projects.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. \u2014 Students and faculty members from across the scientific spectrum came together to present the results of their nine-week-long research in the Monmouth University School of Science Ninth Annual Summer Research Program (SRP) Symposium, held on Aug. 10, 2017 in Erlanger Gardens on the university campus. A total of 42 research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":40802218865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,215,423,170],"tags":[],"person":[],"audience":[14,20,17,11,8,29],"school":[68],"program":[],"class_list":["post-40802216300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-excellence","category-experiential-education","category-faculty-perspectives","category-research","mediacontact-mark-blackmon-director-news-public-affairs","audience-alumni","audience-alumni-affairs","audience-community-member","audience-current-student","audience-faculty","audience-media","school-school-of-science"],"squareimage":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802216300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802216300"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802216300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802229238,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802216300\/revisions\/40802229238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40802218865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802216300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802216300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802216300"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=40802216300"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=40802216300"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=40802216300"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=40802216300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}