He is an American Studies and Political Science major as well as a McNair scholar. His career goal is to become an academic and an editorial writer. Prior to his research, he was more interested in policy than discourse analysis. Now, he would like to eventually write books on different types of discourse within America, particularly of a political nature or relating to African-American issues.

Richard's research will explore the cultural and linguistic approach that was used to analyze the effect that speeches by members of the right-wing Tea Party Caucus have had on conservative political discourse. The rhetoric of these politicians after their ascendance in the 2010 congressional elections was compared to the rhetoric used by John McCain, the Republican nominee in 2008, and Donald Drumpf, the Republican nominee in 2016 and current POTUS. This analysis could explain the mind set of the oval office.

Read more about his research here…

The Twenty-first Annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day

April 26, 2017

Become an URCAD presenter!
All disciplines welcome!
Now accepting applications!

Meet Flora,

She is an Ancient Studies major and an URA Scholar. She is also a Designer for UMBC’s Student Events Board, a student assistant at AOK’s Special Collections and is the secretary for the Ancient Studies Club. Her future goals will to become a museum curator, preferably specializing in an ancient roman field.

Flora's research will examine Roman coins from the second and third centuries CE and their use as a means of communication for Rome’s emperors. She will investigate how the physical characteristics of the coins – the amount of silver, the weight, the level of wear and use – all contribute to the emperors’ strategies of communication throughout the period. She will also examine the imagery of coins based on category (tradition, military problems, dynastic emphasis, personal preferences, disasters, and civic prosperity), one can begin to identify trends and their correspondence to contemporary events.

Read more about her research here…

Meet Maniraj,

He is an Interdisciplinary Studies major and an URA Scholar. He also received the La Noue Scholarship to attend the 2016 Association of Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) conference in University of Ottawa, where he presented his interdisciplinary research; a board game that teaches cardiovascular health. His future interests includes medical anthropology and social entrepreneurship, his final goal is to become a physician.

Maniraj's research will explore the leading cause of death worldwide, cardiovascular disease. Understanding the sociocultural construction of this non-communicable disease would advance our knowledge of how to improve care to vulnerable populations. Focused on a specific district in India, the purpose this study is to identify cultural beliefs and attitudes towards cardiovascular health among adolescents. His project was an organic transformation of his extracurricular project in educational health games.

Read more about his research here…

Meet DeVenna,

She is an Environmental Studies major and an URACADian*. Devenna is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Lambda Phi chapter. She would like to continue her research regarding human/environment interaction and how they impact each other. Specifically, how African American’s are impacted by the environment and vice versa. Her future plans will be to join the Peace Corps.

She is will be creating a film that will explore “What does it mean to be Black in America?” Devenna will conduct interviews with a variety of subjects (known and unknown volunteers from the street) before and after the 2015 Baltimore uprising. The purpose of this research is to shed light on the reality of the Black American experience. Moreover, the ultimate goal was to gather individual feelings, to prove that stereotypes should not be used, and that everyone has a different understanding of what it means to be Black.

Read more about her research here…

*URCADian ~ One who participates at URCAD.

Meet Sigfredo,

He is a Physics major and an URA Scholar. Sigfredo transferred from Anne Arundel Community College with an Associates of Arts in Communications. He is an advocate for undergraduate research. "Take the opportunity if you can find it. It is eye opening and satisfying when you reach personal milestones. Find a mentor that you feel comfortable with. Take it as seriously as you would school work."

His research explores the skies above and is trying to understand the current mismatch between our observational and theoretical capabilities in the effort to understand the gamma-ray variable emission of blazars coming from the vicinity of a black hole. The goal of his research is to develop realistic numerical simulations to model the variable gamma-ray emission of luminous blazars, powerful relativistic jets emanating from the vicinity of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of active galaxies.  

Read more about his research here…

Meet Nick,
He is a Biochemistry major and a URA Scholar. He is a real proponent in developing future researchers. He advises, "If you are really interested in the work you are doing and want the project to succeed, then observing and looking into work that others have done in your field is a truly great thing to do. It will give you great insight not only on your own project, but also on the general knowledge associated with the field in which you are working." Nicholas would ultimately like to become a biomedical researcher to assist on developing cures and vaccines for infectious diseases. 

His research will explore the microscopic world of Nanoscience. Electrochemical aptamer-based (E-AB) sensors can be utilized to detect a multitude of different target molecules in a sample. Current methods, however, are limited to ensemble measurements of a large number of target molecules. Conversely, specific single molecule sensing at low detection limits represents a highly sensitive method of detection of analytes in a sample. In this project, I aim to detect Immunoglobulin E (IgE), a protein that is involved with the immune response in the human body, with specific single molecule sensitivity. 

Read more about his research project here...