Category: Student researchers

WFAA: SMU to study recent North Texas quakes

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 10, 2009

SMU researchers will deploy seismic stations in North Texas in an effort to gather information about the recent spate of earthquakes in the area, according to a June 9 report by WFAA-TV Channel 8 news reporter Jason Whitely. Read the full story.

Excerpt

By Jason Whitely
WFAA News
DALLAS — In the frenzied pace of everyday life, few North Texans think much about what happens beneath their feet. However, the recent earthquakes in the Cleburne area have changed that for many.

There were two more earthquakes Tuesday. The first measured 2.4 and the second, which happened an hour later, was 2.1.

“This is not a place where earthquakes occur, so this is not a place where small earthquakes have been studied,” said Dr. Chris Hayward, a geophysics research projects director at SMU.

Southern Methodist University is preparing to embark on a first in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“This is the equipment we’ll be putting out in the field to detect earthquakes,” said Ashley Howe, a SMU earth science student, while standing over a portable hi-tech seismic station.

The university is deploying ten portable seismic stations to better pinpoint why the ground has started to rumble.

Read the full story

Tags Ashley Howe, Brian Stump, Chris Hayward, Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

Student researchers

Student researchers fan out from London to Buenos Aires to Taos

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 11, 2009

Nineteen SMU Honors students have been awarded Richter Research Fellowships through the University Honors Program to conduct independent research around the globe this summer. The undergraduates’ research topics range from child obesity in Australia to nonprofits in the Republic of Zambia.

For the second year, grants also have been awarded to Honors students for independent study at SMU-in-Taos.

“The Richter fellowships represent an important opportunity for Honors students to pursue topics that interest them — inside or outside their primary majors,” says David Doyle, director of the University Honors Program and assistant dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. “Upon returning from one to three months of focused research, our Richter University Honors Scholars write and submit scholarly articles to academic journals and magazines.”

SMU is one of only 12 universities that offer the competitive fellowships, which are supported by the Paul K. and Evalyn E. Cook Richter Memorial Funds.

This year’s winners:

Ashley Bruckbauer, senior art history and advertising major from Round Rock, Texas, will study the influence of foreign teachers in Nanjing, China.

Andrew Coit, senior mechanical engineering major, with Spanish and music minors, from Houston, and Erica Ritz, sophomore international studies and art history major, with a minor in Italian, from Minneapolis, will travel to London and Greece to examine the controversy surrounding the ownership of cultural artifacts such as the Elgin Marbles.

Vivian Costandy, junior majoring in international studies and English, with a Spanish minor, from Plano, Texas, will travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to investigate the fallout of the “dirty war” resulting from the 1976 military coup.

William Elder, junior history and German major, with minors in classical studies and Latin, from Dallas, will investigate early military history in Osnabruck, Germany, and Cambridge, England.

P.J. Gardner, junior political science major from Omaha, Nebraska, will remain in Dallas to continue researching and writing his senior thesis on expansionism and American politics.

Steve Hader, senior majoring in finance, Spanish and Latin American studies from Grafton, Wisconsin, will investigate the e-commerce environment in Madrid, Spain.

Victoria Kean, junior marketing major, with minors in German and Chinese, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will study the effects of the Holocaust on the Jewish people in the German state of Thuringia.

Kate Kirk, junior finance and economics major, with a minor in international studies, from Van Alstyne, Texas, will analyze nonprofit organizations in the Republic of Zambia in Africa to determine their effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability.

Drake Konow, sophomore majoring in foreign languages and religious studies, with a human rights minor, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, will explore religion and the impact of monastic life on life and culture in the south of France.

Patrick Littlefield, junior majoring in religious studies and psychology from Sherman, Texas, will study the Emerging Church movement in London. The worldwide movement seeks to adapt Christianity to a postmodern world.

Preston Kyle Osborn, sophomore political science and accounting major from Dallas, will explore the nature and volume of crime in early modern England through the SMU-in-Oxford program.

Rebecca Quinn, junior majoring in Spanish, French and art history from Dallas, will travel to Barcelona, Spain, to examine the relationship between nationalized Catholicism and church architecture from the 1940s to 1960s during Francisco Franco’s regime.

Astrud Villareal, junior biology major, with minors in chemistry and international studies, from Dallas, will study the child obesity epidemic and its human rights implications in Australia.

In addition, five Honors students received Taos Richter fellowships to pursue research in June at SMU’s New Mexico campus. They are Alexandra Davis, sophomore art history major; Kyle Hobratschk, junior majoring in art and creative advertising; Jacqueline Wilcher, sophomore business major; Caroline French, senior dance and business major; and Thomas (Drew) Washington, senior economics major.

Tags David Doyle, Richter Research Fellowships, University Honors Program

Culture, Society & Family Fossils & Ruins Student researchers

Dig at 16th-century site explores impact of Inca’s empire-building

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 25, 2009

A 16th century estate in Peru will offer insight into how expanding empires subjugate people and appropriate their resources to promote a cause. Kylie Quave, an SMU graduate student in archaeology, has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Fellowship to conduct archaeological fieldwork and research in southeastern Peru, the heart of the ancient Inca empire.

The 10-month fellowship begins in August 2009. During that time, Quave intends to excavate residences on the estate of 16th-century emperor Huayna Capac. She hopes to shed light on the Inca elites who lived there and supervised the estate’s daily operations, immigrant laborers and land, which had been appropriated by the nobility.

“The Incas transformed the rural landscape around their capital into immense sources of private wealth,” Quave says. “I hope to contribute to a global understanding of how empires use people and resources to promote their cause and how local communities respond to the imperial campaign.”

During her fellowship, Quave will collaborate with local archaeologists in the field and laboratory, along with local historians in regional and national archives.

With experience as an SMU teaching assistant and as a researcher and docent for the Dallas Museum of Art, she also plans to work with the local community to create educational programming for children and adults.

“We will bring together our diverse perspectives to understand how the Inca developed private investments in the rural heartland using a multiethnic labor force,” she says. “The community will be involved in the preservation of its past.”

Quave, a native of Brooksville, Florida, earned her Bachelor’s degree in art history in 2005 from Emory University. In SMU’s Dedman College, where Quave earned her Master’s degree in 2008, she has taken courses in archaeological method and theory, and previously has done fieldwork in Bolivia and Peru.

“Kylie’s dissertation will move beyond well-known Inca country palaces like Machu Picchu, developing valuable perspectives on how royal families developed and managed private resources that were key to the economic maintenance of the largest native civilization to develop in the Americas,” says Alan Covey, assistant professor of anthropology and Quave’s dissertation adviser. “Her success is the latest for SMU’s doctoral program in anthropology, which recruits talented students and prepares them to make a professional impact early in their careers.”

Graduate student Amanda Aland was awarded a Fulbright in 2008, also to conduct archaeological fieldwork and research in Peru.

Quave is one of 1,450 U.S. citizens selected to study abroad this year through the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright Student Program. More than 40 SMU students have been awarded the fellowship in the last 35 years. — Sarah Hanan

Tags Alan Covey, Amanda Aland, Dedman College, Kylie Quave, SMU Department of Anthropology

Fossils & Ruins Plants & Animals Researcher news Student researchers

Discovery Channel: Dino young found safety in numbers

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 20, 2009

The work of SMU researchers Timothy Myers and Anthony Fiorillo was featured online March 19, 2009 on the Discovery Channel. “Mass Dino Graves Suggest Young Banded Together” by Jennifer Viegas highlighted findings being published in the April issue of “Science” magazine.

Lead author Timothy Myers, is a Ph.D. graduate student in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College.

Co-author Anthony Fiorillo is an adjunct professor in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences and Curator of Paleontology for the Dallas Museum of Natural History.

Anthony Fiorillo

Excerpt

By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News

New findings on mass dinosaur graves, where several juveniles died together, suggest that young dinosaurs banded together to improve their chances for survival, according to two new studies.

Together, two new studies present three gory ways in which the young dinosaur groups probably met their end: mud traps, droughts and predators.

Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist, and his team studied the remains of a herd of more than 25 young, bird-like dinosaurs of the species Sinornithomimus dongi that died together 90 million years ago at what is now the Gobi Desert. …

Researchers Timothy Myers and Anthony Fiorillo of the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University focused their attention on two other juvenile dinosaur fossil sites, which are described in a paper that will be published in next month’s Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

The first, at Mother’s Day Quarry in Montana, contains the remains of several young sauropods that died en masse during the Upper Jurassic. Skin impressions indicate soft tissue was still present when the animals were buried at the site.

“During droughts, modern animals tend to cluster around water sources,” Myers told Discovery News. “The herd of sauropods preserved at the Mother’s Day Quarry may have done the same.”

He and Fiorillo also studied the remains of three juvenile Alamosaurus sanjuanensis at the Upper Cretaceous site Big Bend in Texas. The minimally weathered bones suggest the young sauropods died together in a single event.

“Given their proximity to a lake shore, it’s possible that they succumbed to drought as well,” Myers said.

Read the full story at Discovery.com …

Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Timothy S. Myers

Student researchers

‘Big iDeas’ net big bucks for SMU undergrads

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 13, 2009

Ten student teams have been awarded grants through SMU’s Big iDeas program to research big challenges facing the Dallas area, ranging from energy and the environment to education and health care.

Big iDeas is an undergraduate research program launched in 2008 by the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. The purpose is for interdisciplinary teams of student researchers to address key Dallas issues. Winning teams are awarded $5,000 stipends for their projects.

As part of the 2008 Big iDeas program, a research project called “Health ‘n’ Motion” brought together a team of five SMU student researchers with five low-income Dallas families to talk about nutrition and fitness.

The program was developed in partnership with a Dallas YMCA. After six weeks of diet discussions and workout sessions, most of the families were exercising together regularly. Some had traded soda and fast food for water and home cooking. Several moms and dads lost weight, and all of the families reported a greater awareness of food choices and exercise.

The SMU Health ‘n’ Motion team at work

“Our project is unique because it emphasizes parents and kids making small, healthy lifestyle changes as a family,” said team member Bahar Ravandi, who will graduate in May with degrees in biology and Spanish.

The Office of the Provost in February announced the 2009 winning interdisciplinary teams based on the recommendations of a review panel. The panel included SMU faculty, students and staff, along with a representative from the Dallas City Manager’s Office and the Communities Foundation of Texas.

“This year’s proposals once again reveal the talent, insight and ambition of SMU’s undergraduates,” Provost Paul Ludden says. “Big iDeas allows these students to develop their interests and career paths, while also building bridges between SMU and the Dallas community.”

The students on the 10 winning teams will present their projects to the SMU community April 17 at the Big iDeas Symposium on campus and will report on their progress in the fall.

This year’s winners include:

“Kids ArT Risk,” which proposes a therapeutic arts and science after-school program for at-risk Dallas students, in partnership with SMU’s ACE House.
— Proposed by Melanie Vettimattam (junior; finance and biology major), Astrud Villareal (junior; business) and Yasmeen Hanif (junior; biochemistry)

“Omega Delta Phi Young Knights Program,” which plans to pair area high school students with SMU mentors who will focus on future achievement, such as college.
— Proposed by Pablo De Santiago (junior; management science), John Trujillo (sophomore; mechanical engineering), Vernon Washington (senior; accounting), Kee Lee (senior; accounting), Winfred Ko (junior; accounting and economics), Cleve Moten (junior; economics and psychology), Danny Fern&#225ndez (senior; accounting), Jake Fields (sophomore; psychology), Ricardo Tovar (sophomore; chemistry and math), Ben P&#233rez (junior; business), Julio L&#243pez (senior; economics and international studies) and Daniel Briones (senior; economics with financial applications)

“Profiting from Nonprofits,” which seeks to support Dallas’ nonprofit sector with research, training and connections with campus.
— Proposed by Amy Koshy (junior; biology), Kristen Arndt (junior; biology) and Jamie Cohen (junior; advertising)

“Real Fuel on Campus,” which proposes a campus processor to convert the vegetable oil used by SMU dining services to biodiesel.
— Proposed by Benjamin Alingh (senior; mechanical engineering), Charles Marshall, Jr., (senior; Spanish and German) and William Daugherty, Jr. (senior; finance)

“SMU Geothermal Project,” which will analyze geothermal resources under the campus and the feasibility of establishing a geothermal power plant on campus.
— Proposed by Andr&#233s Ruzo (senior; geology and finance) and Elizabeth Corey (sophomore; environmental engineering)

“Speak Out Dallas,” which aims to boost Dallas students’ communication skills with a new speech and debate curriculum and teacher training.
— Proposed by Nicholas Elledge (sophomore; political science, economics, public policy and Spanish) and Elizabeth Tsai (sophomore; business)

“Young Dreamer Enterprises,” which promotes art and entrepreneurship to Dallas students, with a proposed art and writing contest and lessons in selling creative products.
— Proposed by Julene Fleurmond (senior; journalism and pre-medicine) and Christy Vutam (senior; journalism)

Three student teams received planning grants for further development of their projects. They include proposals to examine disparities in health literacy, the needs of orphaned children in Dallas and SMU’s smoking policy.

Several of this year’s winners are continuing work begun with 2008 Big iDeas grants, including “Speak Out Dallas,” “Profiting from Nonprofits” and “Young Dreamer Enterprises.” Other projects launched in 2008 include a study of public transportation and business commuters; a micro-loan program for residents of a low-income Dallas neighborhood; and a fitness and nutrition program for low-income families.

Tags Big iDeas Symposium