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Undergraduate Research at UMass Dartmouth 

Selected Projects (2016-18) 

Volume 1, September 2018 

AIMS AND SCOPE 

This inaugural issue of the biannual Book of 

Undergraduate Research features summaries of 

a selected number of undergraduate research 

projects conducted at UMass Dartmouth. These 

research activities became possible through 

awards or summer stipends granted by the Office 

of Undergraduate Research between 2016 and 

2018. Earlier versions of these texts appear on 

the Office of Undergraduate Research official 

blog, available at www.ourwork.blogs.umassd. 

edu/. More advanced versions of some of these 

research projects can be found in peer-reviewed 

journals and other published media. Where 

applicable, these publications are cited. Other 

reports capture the preliminary stages of the 

featured research projects and most authors hope 

to develop and publish these works in the future. 

All images used in the reports are properties of 

the authors and/or their collaborators who are 

properly acknowledged. Images that come from 

other sources are fully credited. 

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTION AND DESIGN 

Compiled and edited by Dr. Pamela Karimi, 

Associate Professor of Art History and Media 

Studies and Associate Director of the Office of 

Undergraduate Research (2017-18). 

Supervised by Dr. Catherine Gardner, Professor of 

Philosophy and Women’s & Gender Studies and the 

Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research. 

Design services and aesthetic features donated 

by Pedram Karimi, The John H. Daniels School 

of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the 

University of Toronto. 

© The Office of Undergraduate Research at UMass 

Dartmouth 

285 Old Westport Rd, North Dartmouth, MA 02747 

www.umassd.edu/our 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

These research projects would not have been 

possible without the supervision of many 

professors and mentors at UMass Dartmouth 

whose names are acknowledged in all reports. 

This publication was made possible through a 

generous support from the Office of Research 

& Economic Development, the UMass Dartmouth 

Provost Office, and the Honors Program.

11 

PHYSICS, Biology, History, Child Psy 

of Art and Architecture, Music, Bio 

MATHEMATICS, Fine Arts, Social Psy 

biology, History, CHILD PSYCHO 

of Art and Architecture, Music, B 

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, En 

Mathematics, Fine Arts, SOCIAL 

Physics, Biology, History, Child P 

HISTORY OF ART AND ARCHI 

MARINE BIOLOGY, Physics, Biology 

Mechanical Engineering, ENGL 

Photojournalism, Mechanical En 

Bioengineering, Mathematics, F

chology, Political Science, History 

chemistry, PHOTOJOURNALISM, 

ISH, Rhetoric, Bioengineering, 

chology, Marine Biology, PHYSICS, 

LOGY, Political Science, History 

IOCHEMISTRY, Photojournalism, 

glish, Rhetoric, Bioengineering, 

PSYCHOLOGY, Marine Biology, 

sychology, POLITICAL SCIENCE, 

TECTURE, Music, Biochemistry, 

gineering, ENGLISH, Rhetoric, 

INE ARTS, Social Psychology, 

,History, Child Psychology, MUSIC 

12

Foreword 

13 

Research represents the systematic, original 

inquiry into a field that leads to new knowledge. 

The drive for seeking knowledge, embodied in all 

members of the UMass Dartmouth community, is 

a signature component of the UMass Dartmouth 

educational experience and research is the 

expression of this search. 

Since its inception in 2011, the Office of 

Undergraduate Research has promoted 

undergraduate research in the arts, humanities, 

social sciences and all engineering and 

science fields. The office has financially and 

intellectually supported student-researchers 

on their journeys to global fieldwork or travel to 

national and international conferences. Travels 

to faraway destinations for conducting research 

have been transformative for many students. 

Extensive fieldwork in Okinawa, Japan, 

compelled the dual major in Photography and 

Political Science, Lizzy Santoro ’17 to pursue a 

career in photojournalism. 

Through individualized advising sessions 

students have received feedback on research, 

beyond what is normally available to them 

through mentors in their home departments. 

Over the years, students have learned to solve 

problems in their areas of interest, make 

new discoveries and create new artifacts, 

interact with research faculty outside of the 

classroom, and demonstrate their intellectual 

dedication and academic skills to future 

employers, graduate programs, and internship 

directors. Workshops, roundtables and lectures 

on undergraduate research in all fields have 

brought prominent scholars and researchers 

to our campus. Additionally, the office has 

assisted with the dissemination of the products 

of student research through peer-reviewed 

publications, blogs, videos, poster sessions, 

competitions and conferences. 

Above all, the Office of Undergraduate Research 

has committed itself to supporting UMass 

Dartmouth undergraduates in all aspects of their 

research endeavors by offering research awards. 

These awards have helped offset the costs of 

performing research projects, with research 

being broadly conceived and taking place in 

any and all disciplines. Many of these awards 

are commonly granted during the academic 

year. However, our office has also offered a 

competitive stipend initiative to facilitate the 

fulltime research activity of UMass Dartmouth 

undergraduates during the summer break. 

Through engaging in research activities that 

are often beyond the expected coursework, 

undergraduate students at UMass Dartmouth 

have also learned to improve time management, 

enhance their analytical abilities, and embark 

on leadership roles. Biology major Deborah 

Dele-Oni ‘18 (Honors), whose work is featured 

in the present book, was granted an Endeavor 

Scholarship in leadership. Thus in addition 

to being a successful Biology student, she 

became the president and the founding 

member of a campus organization that 

supports Black female students. Sometimes

the topic of research itself instigates the desire 

to take on leadership roles. As Art History 

major, Mariah Tarentino ’18 describes in her 

contribution to this volume, her research on the 

link between the current socio-political events 

and visual culture has energized her to assume 

several leadership roles on campus, including 

spearheading roundtable discussions and 

juried exhibitions. 

The awards and stipends from the Office of 

Undergraduate Research have empowered and 

encouraged our students to apply for competitive 

grants and fellowships that are offered at 

national and international levels. Specifically, 

through its partnership with the Honors Program, 

the Office of Undergraduate Research 

helps students thrive in their respective 

fields of research. For example, in 2013, Peter 

Jumper ’13 (Honors), was one of the only seven 

finalists nationwide for the highly-prestigious 

American Physical Society Apker Prize for 

research conducted in the UMass Dartmouth 

Physics Department. After receiving numerous 

graduate school fellowship offers, including the 

Dean’s Fellowship at Columbia University and 

the National Science Foundation’s Graduate 

Research Fellowship, Peter Jumper accepted 

a highly-competitive Connaught International 

Fellowship from the University of Toronto. 

Upon graduation, Jacob Miller ’16 (Honors) was 

awarded the highly distinguished Marshall 

Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom. A 

dual Political Science and English major with a 

minor in Leadership/Civic Engagement and Urban 

Studies while at UMass Dartmouth, Miller 

used his scholarship to study management at 

Cambridge University for one year followed by a 

year of studying urban economic development 

at University College London. 

These success stories are particularly intriguing 

when they are about the less-privileged student 

population. Jacob Miller represents one of the 

many learners at UMass Dartmouth who are first 

generation college students. Still many others 

experience difficulties that are hard to overcome, 

due to the absence of a strong community 

support system. We take pride in transforming 

the lives of all of our students, especially the 

lives of those who have been historically marginalized 

by the society. 

The Office of Undergraduate Research continues to 

expand student experience at UMass Dartmouth 

and through this inaugural bi-annual publication, 

we hope to disseminate the outstanding work of 

our students and their faculty mentors beyond the 

confines of UMass Dartmouth. 

14 

Pamela Karimi 

Associate Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research [2017-18] 

Catherine Gardner 

Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research

Contents 

15 

22. 

30. 

38. 

46. 

52. 

60. 

66. 

To Counterfeit is Death: Exploring Benjamin 

Franklin’s Methods 

Daniel W. Everton ‘19 | History 

An Investigation Into The Effects of 

Inverted Growing on Development and 

Strength of Basil 

Megan Scribner ‘19 Honors | Bioengineering 

Evolution of The Princess Culture: 

Discourse Analysis of Film and 

Merchandise Reviews 

Morgan Banville ‘19 Honors | Rhetoric & 

Communication 

Developing Inexpensive Catalysts for 

Buchwald Carbon-Nitrogen Couplings 

Diego Javier-Jimenez ‘19 | Chemistry 

Influence of UV Light on Marine Biofilms 

Alexandria E. Profetto ‘19 | Marine Biology 

An Ethical Analysis of The De-Extinction of 

The Woolly Mammoth 

Carson M. Longendorfer ‘19 | Bioengineering 

Temporary Meddlers: Friars in Measure for 

Measure and Romeo and Juliet 

Sarah Friedman ‘18 Honors | English Literature 

72. 

82. 

90. 

100. 

106. 

114. 

The Effect of Race-Related Words on 

Categorical Perception of Race 

Anna Sullivan ‘18 Honors | Psychology 

Research and Exhibition on African- 

American Students at UMass Dartmouth 

Erick Maldonado ‘18 | Fine Arts 

Identification of SIAT7 in Symbiotic 

Clownfish and A Closely Related 

Non-Symbiotic Fish 

Deborah Dele-Oni ‘18 Honors | Biology 

A Remote Sensing Study of The 

Relationship Between Density Fronts and 

Phytoplankton Blooms in The North Atlantic 

Samuel Filliettaz-Dxomingues ‘18 | Mechanical 

Engineering 

Investigation of In Vitro Vitamin B6 

Treatment to Reverse Deterioration of 

Bone Mechanical Properties 

Jacob Aaronson ‘18 | Bioengineering 

Artistic Responses to Presidential Elections 

and Other Political Challenges 

Mariah Tarentino ‘18 | Art History & Curatorial 

Studies

122. 

128. 

136. 

142. 

148. 

156. 

164. 

170. 

Voter Decision-Making in Low 

Information Election 

David Borges ‘18 | Political Science 

Spheres of Influence 

John Dalton ‘17 Honors | Music 

Researching The Psychosocial Well-Being 

of Siblings of Children with Disabilities 

Catrina Combis ‘17 Honors | Psychology 

Strong Stability Preserving Sixth Order 

Two-Derivative Runge–Kutta Methods 

Gustavo Franco Reynoso ‘17 | Mathematics 

Studying the Potential Applications of 

Dipeptide Nanomaterials 

Lisa Perreault ‘17 Honors | Biochemistry 

A Photo-Journalistic Journey into Okinawa 

Lizzy Santoro ‘17 | Photojournalism 

Emotional Differences in Preschool-Aged 

Children 

Alicia Cronister-Morais ‘17 | Child Psychology 

Exploring the Post-Industrial Landscapes 

of The Northeast 

Hannah Gadbois ‘16 | History of Art & 

Architecture 

182. 

190. 

196. 

Going into the Cloud to Study Renewable 

Energy Extraction from Ocean Waves 

Cole Freniere ‘16 | Mechanical Engineering 

Behavioral Response of Mud Crab 

Megalopae to Chemical Cues from Fish 

Species and Adult Conspecifics 

Jerelle Jesse ‘15 Honors | Biology 

Does Ego-Resilience Impact Friendship 

Outcomes? 

Elizabeth B. Lozano ‘13 | Social Psychology 

16

17

18

19

20


21 

Research in History 

To Counterfeit is Death: Exploring 

Benjamin Franklin’s Methods 

Daniel W. Everton ‘19

Selected Projects 2016-18 

My OUR project was focused on Benjamin Franklin 

and the methods he helped develop in the creation 

of anti-counterfeit measures. To do so Benjamin 

and his colleagues were commissioned to print 

paper money. 

In 2012, the Delaware County Institute of Science 

discovered in its collections a set of metal blocks 

that appeared to be used for printing currency. 

They approached Jessica Linker, who was working 

on her dissertation of a similar topic at the 

time and was a long-time fellow at the Library 

Company of Philadelphia. 

22 

Daniel W. Everton


23 

Upon seeing the blocks on the web, I immediately 

thought of 3D printing a copy. I was initially going 

to venture off by myself to attempt to 3D print the 

blocks. However, upon learning about Dr. Linker’s 

project, I approached her and asked if I could 

contribute to her research. Subsequently, Dr. Linker 

pulled me into her team of undergrads who were 

working on their Digital Scholarship Summer 

Fellows project at Bryn Mawr College. The Fellows 

are Umma Tanjuma Haque, Shuang Li, Linda Zhu, 

and Eleftheria Anagnostou. My focus was to learn 

photogrammetry from the students, assist in the 

project, as well as document the process through 

photography and film. 

What is photogrammetry? Specifically, it is the 

ability to take measurements from series of 

photographs. These measurements allow one to 

measure a surface. A non-profit named Cultural 

Heritage Imaging (CHI) trained individuals at Bryn 

Mawr College, through which they trained the 

Digital Scholarship undergraduate students how 

to do the process. The sage leaf block, pictured 

below, has a very shallow or “low” relief. The image 

on top of the leaves is hard to see. This proved to 

be the hardest thing to photogrammetry since the 

photographs could not provide the software enough 

surface points. It wasn’t until Matthew Jameson, 

PhD candidate in Classical Archaeology at Bryan 

Mawr, suggested putting the leaf block at a tilted 

angle with the assistance of an ingenious piece 

of Styrofoam. After that, our team was able to 

successfully capture the surface points. While there 

were two other blocks with the sage leaf block, the 

sage leaf block is fundamentally the one I am most 

interested in as it relates to my argument which I 

will explain in the following page of this report. 

The software we used to compile all our images 

and put them on the XYZ planes is Agisoft. 

Within Agisoft and thanks to the efforts of all the 

students, we were able to capture up over 120,000 

points within 184 pictures. The screen-shots in 

the following page shows how the pictures are 

Photo of the sage leaf block, Photo by Daniel W. Everton 

The sage leaf block positioned on a Styrofoam wedge, within a 

lightbox. Photo by Daniel W. Everton


24 

Screenshot of Agisoft with Leaf Block photos, totalling 184 photos and 126,586 points. Screenshot taken by Digital Scholarship 

Students and Jessica Linker 

“situated” in space and reflected onto the anchor 

which is the ball. The Fellows taught me how to 

use Agisoft, take the circuits of photos, and how to 

follow the workflow. 

The result of all these, leads into a stunning 3D 

rendering of the blocks with a successful mesh, 

demonstrating the details of the sage leaves on the 

block. As part of Bryn Mawr College Digital Scholarship 

Fellowship, Jessica Linker developed a project 

with the Library Company of Philadelphia where they 

would create a digital exhibit about the blocks. Using 

the Unity software, the rendering made in Agisoft 

Screenshot of Agisoft with Leaf Block photos, totalling 184 

photos and 126,586 points. Screenshot taken by Digital 

Scholarship Students and Jessica Linker


My Argument/Thesis 

can be put into a digital “landscape” where 

individuals can visit the website and explore the 

blocks. The mesh for the blocks will be eventually 

open sourced, and a 3D print of it will be attempted 

later. The result of all these, leads into a stunning 3D 

rendering of the blocks with a successful mesh that 

shows the details the sage leaves on the block. 

While I am a History major, I am also deeply 

interested in art and have taken several art classes 

in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. I 

became interested printmaking and printing, which 

are understood currently as two separate disciplines 

but seem to have been very enmeshed during the 

time of colonial printing. I argue that Benjamin 

Franklin and his team used printmaking methods 

and other very innovative technologies that I feel 

should classify Benjamin Franklin as an artist. I 

think his prints should be taken into consideration 

amongst the work of fine artists, and his subsequent 

bills printed by himself and those within his printing 

25 

Final 3D render of the sage leaf block. Screenshot taken by Digital Scholarship Fellows and Jessica Linker


company to be examples of art. To make his bills 

anti-counterfeit, Franklin had to innovate on current 

technologies and create new ones. The colonial 

bills I encountered at the Library Company have 

utilized monotype printing, intaglio plate processes, 

and of course, the nature-leaf print blocks that 

were custom made. I hope to explore the process 

further in the fall of 2018, when I try to recreate the 

theorized methods of how the leaf blocks were made 

to make my own print editions. 

UMass Dartmouth, I would like to thank Professor 

Amy Shapiro of the English Department and Lan 

Travers and Paula Rioux of the History Department 

for igniting my love of public history. I would also 

like to thank Professor Elena Peteva of the Fine 

Arts Department for answering all of my questions 

about printmaking and for teaching me printing. 

Finally, I am grateful to UMass Dartmouth’s OUR 

grant program and the review committee for the 

opportunity to conduct this research. 

My documentation of the project will be within a 

“vlogumentary”, utilizing a YouTube and traditional 

documentary style methodology to discuss what I 

learned: some history about colonial printing, and 

the process of photogrammetry. I hope to release it 

in the upcoming academic year. 

26 

I am grateful to Bryn Mawr College and their 

Digital Scholarship team on campus, Jessica 

Linker, Umma Tanjuma Haque, Shuang Li, Linda 

Zhu, Eleftheria Anagnostou, Matthew Jameson, 

Anne McShane and Jim Green and other staff 

at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Here at 

Two Dollar Bill for Massachusetts-Bay, March 1780, Printed by Hall 

and Sellers for a “Peter Boyer”. The bill uses intaglio, mono-type 

printmaking, unique registration, and a nature/leaf print block

27

28


29 

Research in Bioengineering 

An Investigation into the Effects of 

Inverted Growing on Development 

& Strength of Basil 

Megan Scribner ’19 Honors


My OUR research project was entitled “An Investigation 

into the Effects of Inverted Growing on Development 

and Strength of Basil.” The objective of the 

research was to determine if growing basil upside 

down influences the plant’s development and the 

mechanical strength of the stems. The initial plan to 

grow basil plants from seeds was modified for the 

sake of time; instead, adult plants were purchased 

and used for experimentation. 

30 

Megan Scribner


31 

Fifteen mature basil plants were purchased, numbered, 

and transplanted into larger pots. Plants 

1–7 were planted traditionally, upright (displayed in 

Figure 1a.), and plants 8–15 were planted in pots 

fashioned so that the plant would hang upside down 

(displayed in Figure 1b.). Stalks that had a second 

set of true leaves, and sufficient space between the 

pairs to make a cut, were pruned. 

After four weeks of growth, it was observed that 

stems of upright plants that had been pruned on 

Day 1 had established pairs of offshoot stems with 

two or three sets of leaves. Stems of upside-down 

plants that had been pruned on Day 1 had established 

pairs of offshoot stems with only one or two 

sets of leaves. This suggests that the upright plants 

experienced increased growth compared to the 

upside-down plants. Figures 2. and 3 display this 

growth difference. 

Several obstacles were encountered in trying to 

maintain healthy plants. Challenges included: 

growing basil during the late winter/early spring 

months (which is not basil’s typical growing season 

for this region), securing an indoor location that met 

the environmental needs of basil, and the presence 

of insects. 

Due to the complications with maintaining consistently 

healthy plants, no formal measurements 

with the experimental plants have been taken at 

this time, but there have been several practice 

measurements including extracting chlorophyll and 

measuring the wavelengths with a spectrophotometer, 

staining stem cross sections with toluidine blue 

and observing the plant vasculature under a microscope, 

and experimenting with different grip set-ups 

for tensile testing. Images of the practice stained 

samples are shown in Figure 4. 

Figure 1a. The upright basil plants 

Figure 1b. Some of the upside down basil plants on a garment rack


Figure 2. Pruned stem of plant 6 (upright) with 3 sets of new leaves. The black circle on the left highlights the location of the pruning cut. 

The red circle highlights where the new offshoot stems and leaves grew from the main stem. The sets of leaves are numbered on the right 

Chlorophyll wavelength measurements were taken 

using a spectrophotometer. I am currently reviewing 

published literature for additional information 

about the effect of a plant’s health on its chlorophyll 

production. 

32 

Apart from the plants being used for experimentation, 

an additional basil plant was purchased in 

order to conduct practice tensile tests and find the 

most effective grip set-up for successful testing. 

Since the available pieces of testing apparatus did 

not have fixtures suitable for botanical samples, 

there were no successful practice tensile tests. In 

the majority of the practice tests, the stem sample 

slipped through the grips. Examples of this are 

shown in Figures 5 and 6. In Figure 5, the stem slips 

from the start of testing. In Figure 6, the stem starts 

Figure 3. Two pruned stems from plant 

11 (upside-down), each with 2 pairs of 

new leaves


to deform as desired, but the sample begins to slip 

in the middle of testing. A successful tensile testing 

graph would look more like Figure 7. This graph was 

the result of one of the practice tests; however, the 

sample broke right at the bottom grip (displayed in 

Figure 8), which is not desirable. The sample should 

break more toward the center of the gage length. 

Breaking at the grips occurs due to improper stress 

concentrations through the sample; the grips are 

exerting too much force on the sample and weakening 

it at the grip points. Various materials such 

as sandpaper and rubber were used to try to create 

more friction between the sample and the grips 

without applying too much force, but these attempts 

were not successful. 

The research grant provided to me by the Office of 

Undergraduate Research allowed me to obtain many 

necessary materials including the plants and the 

various materials needed to care for them. While 

no conclusive measurements have been collected, 

these funds and materials provided me the opportunity 

to conduct valuable troubleshooting for 

this project. I would not have been able to pursue 

researching this unique application of mechanical 

engineering without the support of the grant. I would 

like to acknowledge my advisor Dr. Tracie Ferreira for 

her support and guidance with this project. 

33 

An alternative idea for tensile testing has been 

investigated but not yet tested. It involves wrapping 

the ends of the stem sample around hooks instead 

of compressing the ends in grips. This is a method 

commonly used for testing the tensile strength of 

string samples. This set-up does not have all the 

necessary components, but the available components 

have been gathered as seen in Figure 9. There 

may be some need for manufacturing in order to 

complete the testing set up. This will be explored 

further during the fall 2018 semester. 

The current plans for the continuation of this project 

consist of obtaining and maintaining a new set of 

plants over the summer months in order to establish 

a healthier set of samples. Measurements from this 

healthier set of plants will be collected in the fall 

2018 semester. 

Figure 4. Two basil stem cross sections stained with toluidine blue 

and examined under a microscope


Figure 5. Load vs extension graph of a stem tensile testing sample 

that slips throughout testing 

Figure 6. Load vs extension graph of a stem tensile testing sample 

that starts to deform and then begins to slip around 2mm 

34 

Figure 7. Load vs extension graph of a stem tensile testing 

sample. The sample deforms until it breaks at about 1.9 mm 

Figure 8. A stem tensile test sample that broke at the bottom grip 

Figure 9. Top hook for future tensile tests. A bottom hook needs to 

be properly fashioned for this testing set-up

35

36


37 

Research in Rhetoric & 

Communication 

Evolution of the Princess Culture: 

Discourse Analysis of Film & 

Merchandise Reviews 

Morgan Banville ’19 Honors


I am a senior English Literature and Criticism, and 

Writing, Rhetoric, and Communication major. This 

project was created for my Honors Thesis at UMass 

Dartmouth. My project was advised by Professor 

Katherine DeLuca and Caroline Gelmi. Their hard 

work and dedication are greatly appreciated. 

38 

Morgan Banville


The purpose of this study was to describe the 

ways in which film and merchandise reviews for 

Disney princess films such as Pocahontas, The 

Princess and the Frog, Brave, and Moana depict 

Disney’s attempts at becoming progressive in their 

representations of female role models for young 

children. The study was conducted in response to 

the ongoing discussion surrounding the Disney films 

and their inability to represent realistic and attainable 

role models for viewers. The basic design of the 

study was conducted through coding and discourse 

analysis. The study focused on how stereotypically 

racial and gendered rhetoric is used to describe 

the princesses, as well as the reliance on a male 

figure and various sexual innuendos. Despite some 

progress, there are a few issues that remain with 

how Disney princesses are portrayed. Both film and 

merchandise reviews continue to use coded rhetoric, 

which creates unrealistic expectations for young 

children as well as inadequate role models. 

When one hears the word “princess,” more often 

than not the image of a Disney princess comes to 

mind. The image of a Disney princess is usually 

standard throughout the line: the women are 

heteronormative, accompanied most often by a 

39 

Merida from Brave representations. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons


prince, and oftentimes descendants of royal blood 

or married into royal blood. The stereotype associated 

with the princess line are women who display 

incredible beauty, have skinny waists, sleek hair, 

and perfect clothing. Although the flawless features 

of the princesses are a distinguishing feature, this 

poses some issues for those seeking women who 

are not “perfect.” In my research, I analyzed film and 

merchandise reviews because these mediums are 

primarily where the audiences are being influenced. 

Both children and adults alike are highly influenced 

by visual rhetoric; an adult is more inclined to watch 

a film with their child and comment on it rather than 

a child going online and writing a review. In this 

way, the data I gathered allows for an analysis of 

the perceptions parents have of the culture that is 

impacting their children. 

In my research I found that Disney merchandising 

and films have racially charged rhetoric that impacts 

audiences’ perceptions of the princesses. The film 

and merchandise reviews displayed terms relating 

to stereotypical racism in regard to expectations of 

that particular race, as well as terms demeaning the 

race. Disney merchandising and films also perpetuate 

specific beauty standards. The inclusion of 

40 

Pocahontas Film versus Merchandise. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons


41 

demeaning physical descriptions of the princesses 

also serves to weaken their characters and perpetuate 

sexist ideals for women. These perceptions, it 

seems, can lead to internal biases when examining 

the films and even could be a contributing factor to 

the disagreements regarding whether or not princesses 

are negative influences for young girls. 

I applied the methodology of discourse analysis 

and coding method to the film and merchandise 

reviews. Discourse analysis examines how language 

is used to construct “ways of being in the 

world.” Coding categorizes language to make sense 

of dominant trends. Using the coding method, I 

categorized the rhetoric of film and merchandise 

reviews into categories associated with racism/ 

racial terms, gender ambiguity, sexual innuendos, 

and stereotypically feminine/masculine terms. To 

categorize and code the films and merchandise, for 

example, I documented the typical masculine traits 

such as athleticism, bravery, or independence, as 

well as the feminine rhetoric such as any action or 

trait relating to showing emotion, physical features 

(pretty, beautiful, gorgeous), or being submissive. 

After studying the merchandise and film reviews 

of the Disney princesses, the reviews, and thus the 

films, I found the merchandise and reviews reinforce 

traditional gender roles for the princesses, and the 

negative portrayals of Disney princesses in reviews 

have the potential to impact the creation of positive 

role models for young girls by misrepresenting the 

characters that children often admire and emulate. 

This research on the princesses could be extended 

to analyze the portrayal of other female characters 

in Disney movies, therefore contributing to the ongoing 

research on gender in media and the discourse 

between merchandise and films.


42

43

44


45 

Research in Chemistry 

Developing Inexpensive Catalysts for 

Buchwald Carbon-Nitrogen Couplings 

Diego Javier-Jimenez ‘19


Catalyzed cross-coupling reactions using aryl halide 

reagents have found a prominent role in synthetic 

chemistry. The most notable are carbon-carbon 

coupling reactions, for which Heck, Negishi and 

Suzuki received the Nobel Prize in 2010. Similar 

carbon-nitrogen couplings, known as Buchwald- 

Hartwig aryl-amination reactions, have also found 

great utility, with applications in natural product 

synthesis, medicinal chemistry, organic materials 

chemistry, and catalysis. The catalysts in almost 

all cross-coupling reactions are based upon the 

precious metal palladium (price: $58,000/kg). 

Our lab is currently exploring different routes 

for the formation of carbon-nitrogen bonds with 

less expensive metals. In the summer of 2017, I 

studied one such reaction in detail, analyzing the 

mechanism that the reaction follows. 

46 

Diego Javier-Jiminez


My summer research involvement at UMass 

Dartmouth has been one of the most rewarding 

experiences of my undergraduate career. I had the 

pleasure of working with knowledgeable lab mates 

who were always willing to help, explain, and teach 

any skills necessary for me to be successful in my 

research. I would like greatly thank Dr. David Manke, 

working with him has inspired me to become the 

best chemist that I can and more. The experience 

has also significantly reaffirmed my goals of going 

to graduate school to obtain a Ph.D. in Chemistry. 

I would like to thank the Office of Undergraduate 

Research for funding this research, without their aid, 

this research experience would have not been possible. 

We are currently preparing two manuscripts 

that we hope to submit to peer-reviewed journals for 

publication this fall. I plan on continuing this work 

for the remaining two years at UMass Dartmouth, 

and hope that my research accomplishments will 

make me competitive for an NSF graduate research 

fellowship. The OUR has given me the opportunity to 

follow one of my life-long goals. 

47


48

49

50


Research in Marine Biology 

Influence of UV Light on Marine Biofilms 

Alexandria E. Profetto ‘19 

51


Currently I am a rising junior marine biology major at 

UMass Dartmouth. My career here at the university 

started late due to being a member of the Massachusetts 

Army National Guard. After delays from 

training and a deployment in 2014–2015, I began 

my long sought after pursuit of a degree in marine 

biology. Thanks to the funding from the OUR and 

additional assistance by the Dean’s Undergraduate 

Fellowship, I have been able to work on an antifouling 

project, originally started in 2016 by Boston 

Engineering Corporation (BEC) and Dr. Pia Moisander 

at the Biology Department. The project was 

focused around the reduction of growth on marine 

biofilms, specifically on capabilities of a prototype 

device, developed by BEC, based on LED-generated 

ultraviolet (UV) light for use as an antifouling method 

for ship hulls (UV-C band light). 

52 

Alexandria E. Profetto (left) as a member of the National Guard


53 

Biofilms can be found and formed on a variety of 

surfaces, varying from indwelling medical devices 

to natural aquatic systems. Formation of a biofilm 

(“fouling”) begins with an accumulation of microbial 

cells on a surface surrounded in a polysaccharide 

based matrix. Depending on the environment in 

which the biofilm has formed, non-cellular materials 

such as clay or silt particles can be found 

in the matrix (Donlan, 2002). In aquatic-based 

biofilms, the solid-liquid boundary between water 

and the surface, such as a ship hull, offers an 

ideal environment for the attachment and growth 

of microorganisms. Bacteria and diatoms are the 

most dominant forms reported in biofilms and are 

coined as “microfoulers.” These microfoulers play 

a very important role by providing signals for the 

attachment of various macrofouling organisms 

ranging from algae and barnacles to oysters and 

polychaetes (Donlan, 2002). This can be a nuisance 

for aquaculturists as well as commercial and 

recreational fishermen. Traditionally, antifouling 

heavily relied on fouling-reducing marine paints 

that although reduced in toxicity, still contain 

some toxic chemicals which can potentially cause 

harmful environmental impacts. Limited options for 

environmentally friendly and effective eradication 

of biofilms have created a need for alternative 

antifouling methods (Kim et al., 2016). 

During my project over the summer of 2016, we had 

a few goals regarding methodology, toward development 

of a repeatable and controlled experimental 

system for growing marine biofilms in the lab. We also 

wanted to test the capabilities of the UV device on 

biofilms grown under a range of temperatures, using 

microalgal cultures isolated from Buzzards Bay by 

Dr. Moisander in 2016. The biofilms were grown for 

1–2 weeks in 32L of inoculated microalgal cultures 

at two temperatures. Forty aluminum plates, painted 

to simulate a boat hull, with non-antifouling paint, 

30C Plates post sampling one week into the experiment 

30C Experiment Bin


Left: Front View of Setup with 22C Bin 

Plate Arrangement of 22C Bin 

were used to grow the biofilms. At specified times, the 

plates were treated with the UV light with one of the 

three duration times (1, 10, or 20 minutes) and then 

placed back in the bin to continue growth. Triplicate 

plates were included for each treatment. Samples 

were then collected from the treated and non-treated 

areas (one and two weeks after the UV treatment) to 

be analyzed at a later date. Samples were collected 

to investigate presence of chlorophyll a (representing 

microalgal abundance) and abundances of bacteria 

on the surfaces. A second experiment was conducted 

with bacterial mixed cultures in one temperature only 

and a 1-week post-treatment incubation. 

am continuing to complete the bacterial abundance 

counts over the next few months. 

Overall, the UV device appeared to be successful 

in killing existing biofilm and slowing down 

regrowth in the already formed biofilms. The 

observations show that we were successful in 

creating artificial marine biofilms in the lab and 

demonstrate the effectiveness of the UV device on 

these biofilms, mirroring overall results from pilot 

experiments conducted by Moisander lab and 

the BEC collaborators with natural biofilms from 

Buzzards Bay in 2016. 

54 

By the end of the summer, all samples were collected 

for each analysis and experiments completed. I also 

finished the analysis of all chlorophyll samples using 

fluorometry, and started the bacterial counts using 

epifluorescence microscope. The data compilation 

for chlorophyll data is currently in progress, and I 

My research experience was very eye-opening 

regarding where and how I want to work in my 

future research career. I thoroughly enjoyed coming 

up with an experimental design and tackling 

the research challenges with Dr. Pia Moisander, 

as well as seeing the project come to a success-


UV device setup on top of plate prior to treatment 

3D printed plate holder (by Boston Engineering) used for 

precisely sampling the plates 

55 

ful completion. Without her mentoring filled 

with her wealth of knowledge and expertise, my 

problem solving and critical thinking in terms of 

science would not have progressed as well as 

they have. Collaborating with other members of 

the lab team in lab meetings were truly priceless 

experiences that I am so grateful for being 

afforded. Getting other opinions, ranging from 

an REU undergraduate to a post doc, was a great 

way to expand my thinking on my project beyond 

just “what is this data?” My hope for this upcoming 

academic year is to continue assisting with 

this biofilm project or another project, finishing 

up data analysis, and learning as much as I can 

from Dr. Moisander and her three Ph.D. students. 

I’d also like to thank visiting post-doc Mar Benavides 

and REU undergraduate Clay Evans for 

allowing me to bounce ideas off them and learn 

from their research projects.


Refrences 

1. 

Donlan, Rodney M. “Biofilms: Microbial Life on Surfaces.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 8.9 (2002): 881- 

90. Web. 

2. 

Kim, Minhui, Shin Young Park, and Sang-Do Ha. “Synergistic Effect of a Combination of Ultraviolet–C 

Irradiation and Sodium Hypochlorite to Reduce Listeria Monocytogenes Biofilms on Stainless Steel and 

Eggshell Surfaces.” Food Control. Elsevier, 03 May 2016. Web. 

56

57

58


59 


An Ethical Analysis of the De-extinction 

of the Woolly Mammoth 

Carson M. Longendorfer ‘19


During my time studying Bioengineering at UMass 

Dartmouth I have learned a lot about the vast 

potentials of biotechnology. I recall one topic that 

really struck a chord with me from my BIO 121 class, 

de-extinction. The professor described to us how a 

researcher in Australia had brought the southern 

gastric brooding frog back from extinction in his lab 

by using the same technology that made Dolly the 

sheep a reality. He also briefly mentioned to us that 

another research group wanted to use de-extinction 

to bring an ancient Ice Age species, the woolly 

mammoth, back into the wild. I read up on this a 

little more and learned that the project is led by Dr. 

George Church at Harvard University who is helping 

to develop the genetic editing technology known as 

CRISPR/Cas 9. Using this technology he is attempting 

to swap out pieces of the genome of a somatic 

elephant cell until it resembles that of a woolly 

60 

Carson M. Longendorfer


mammoth (Shapiro, Beth). This cell would then be 

implanted into an elephant embryo and carried to 

term by an elephant until the mammoth is born 

(Shapiro, 2016). I found this to be a really interesting 

use of biotechnology as well an intriguing ethical 

question. I became interested in further delving into 

the ethical implications of de-extinction, and so I 

was very excited to learn about the summer grant 

opportunity from the OUR. 

for the environment (Shapiro, 2016). Zimov wants 

to expand the experiment that he calls Pleistocene 

Park to cover a large area of Siberia and to include 

the woolly mammoth (Zimov, 2005). The mammoth is 

especially good for this purpose because of its large 

size, it tramples the snow that acts as an insulator 

keeping the ground warmer. By disturbing the snow, 

it allows for more cold air to reach the permafrost, 

keeping it more frozen (Shapiro, 2016). 

61 

I decided to take a two-pronged approach in my 

research, first analyzing the scientific justifications 

and oppositions and secondly the philosophical 

implications that the de-extinction of the woolly 

mammoth poses. One of the major justifications 

for Church’s project is its potential benefits to the 

environment. Sergey Zimov hypothesized that the 

changes to the environment during the transition 

from the pleistocene to the holocene era did not 

cause the mass extinctions that included the woolly 

mammoth, but instead, it was the extinctions that 

caused the environmental changes. He was able 

to support this hypothesis by fencing off an area in 

Siberia and relocating a few species of large herbivores. 

The herbivores ate the grass and stimulated 

the conversion of the swamp to grasslands within 

one year (Zimov, 2005). Grasslands are preferable 

to wetlands because wetlands release greenhouse 

gases into the atmosphere causing global warming, 

and when the wetlands are fed by the melting of 

the permafrost underneath, this could be very bad 

In this way, a compelling utilitarian argument can 

be made because the suffering of a few elephants 

and the objectification of the hybrid mammoth can 

be justified for the benefit of the entire planet and 

every species on it. Environmental ethicist Robert 

Elliot, however, claims that nature cannot be restored 

after having been damaged because original 

nature has an intrinsic value that can’t be regained 

since it can never be the same as it was. Therefore, 

the only real way to preserve nature is to stop 

causing further damage, and using de-extinction 

as a restoration method is unhelpful and even more 

damaging (Elliot, 2007). 

I plan to submit my research to the Penn Bioethics 

Journal, a peer-reviewed journal for undergraduates. 

I am grateful for the opportunity that the OUR 

has provided for me and I hope that this experience 

with bioethics research is only the beginning of a 

successful future career as a bioethicist.


Refrences 

1. 

Elliot, Robert. Faking Nature: The Ethics of Environmental Restoration. London: Routledge, 2007. 

2. 

Shapiro, Beth. How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-extinction. Princeton: Princeton University 

Press, 2016. 

3. 

The Telegraph Editorial. “Is Jurassic World closer than we think?” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 

3 Sept. 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/film/jurassic-world/pleistocene-park-dna-dinosaurs/. Accessed 29 

Aug. 2017. 

4. 

Zimov, S. A. “Essays on Science and Society: Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoths Ecosystem.” 

Science 308, no. 5723 (2005): 796-98. doi:10.1126/science.1113442. 

62 

Pleistocene Park, Russia. Photograph courtesy of The Telegraph. and Wikimedia Commons

63

64


65 

Research in English Literature 

Temporary Meddlers: Friars in Measure 

for Measure and Romeo & Juliet 

Sarah Friedman ‘18 Honors


I am an English major and a member of the Honors 

Program at UMass Dartmouth. My paper “Temporary 

Meddlers: Friars in Measure for Measure and Romeo 

and Juliet” was originally developed as my final research 

paper for the Shakespeare course that I took 

in spring 2017 with Professor Jay Zysk of the English 

Department at UMass Dartmouth. During the course 

of the spring semester, my class visited the Boston 

Public Library’s “Shakespeare Unauthorized” exhibit 

to begin developing ideas for paper topics. 

66 

Sarah Friedman


67 

While I was at the Boston Public Library’s “Shakespeare 

Unauthorized” exhibit, I began to think about 

how Shakespeare portrays religion in his plays and 

I developed this concept into a research paper on 

Shakespeare’s friar characters. 

Last summer, Professor Catherine Gardner who is 

the director of OUR, informed me about the peer-reviewed 

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors 

Council (UReCA) and I decided to revise and submit 

my paper. The paper was recently approved for 

publication and in what follows I provide a summary 

of my argument. To read the entire paper, please feel 

free to click on the following image. 

During Shakespeare’s lifetime, religion was a controversial 

topic and the practice of Catholicism in 

England was illegal. I thought it was particularly 

interesting that Shakespeare uses Catholic friars 

as characters in his plays and I wanted to explore 

what those characters might suggest about Shakespeare’s 

religious beliefs. Shakespeare grew up in 

Stratford-upon-Avon and that community was at 

the center of Catholic resistance in England. His 

parents were connected with Catholicism and three 

of his grammar school teachers were Catholic, so 

that definitely had a strong presence in his early life. 

I focused my paper on Friar Laurence in the tragedy 

Romeo and Juliet, and Duke Vincentio, who disguises 

himself as a friar in the comedy Measure for Measure. 

In both of these plays, Shakespeare seems to be 

more sympathetic to friars than his contemporaries 

were. He does not portray them as vicious characters 

who break their vows; instead he portrays 

them as fallible human beings who try to help their 

communities. In both plays, friars keep secrets and 

manipulate politics. Friar Laurence performs Romeo 

and Juliet’s secret marriage, but he does so believing 

that it might end the feud between the Capulets and 

the Montagues. Duke Vincentio takes on the identity 

of a friar, but he uses it to try to stop the corruption 

that is happening in the city of Vienna. In conclusion, 

Shakespeare makes it clear that religion and politics 

are intertwined and earthly matters cannot be easily 

separated from spiritual matters.


Front page of Sarah Freedman’s publication in UReCA 

68 

Featured item Sarah Friedman visted at the Boston Public Library Exhibition. 

Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (The First Folio) » Mr. 

William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (The First Folio). Available at 

www.bpl.org/exhibitions/shakespeare-unauthorized

69

70


71 

Research in Psychology 

The Effect of Race-Related Words on 

Categorical Perception of Race 

Anna Sullivan ‘18 Honors


Categorical perception (CP) refers to the psychological 

phenomenon that occurs when we perceive 

a stimulus existing along a continuum as a set of 

discrete categories (for a review, see Fugate, 2013). 

One way to conceptualize CP is to think of a rainbow 

and the colors it produces. While we see a range 

of different colors, the physical composition of 

the rainbow is in fact a continuous range of visible 

wavelengths of light (Goldstone & Hendrickson, 

2010). Due to the fact that we are unable to perceive 

these wavelengths as they are, we counteract this 

by forming discrete categories in order to divide 

such objects, or in this case colors, occurring on a 

spectrum. From there, we can then differentiate 

the colors we see based on how we perceive their 

differences (Bornstein, Kessen, & Weiskopf, 1976). 

When this happens, the differences of colors in 

separate categories become more prominent while 

the differences of colors in the same category are 

less pronounced (Goldstone & Hendrickson, 2010). 

72 

Anna Sullivan


Early psychological empirical research studied 

how speech sounds were perceived categorically 

(Liberman, Harris, Hoffman, & Griffith, 1957). Due 

to advancing technology and computer software, 

work on CP has also been extended to the human 

face. CP has been found to be present in the 

perception of facial expressions (Etcoff & Magee, 

1992), familiar facial identities (Beale & Keil, 

1995), gender information (Campanella, Chrysochoos, 

& Bruyer, 2001), and emotion (Fugate, 

Gouzoules, & Barrett, 2010). CP has also been 

studied in terms of race. For example, Levin and 

Angelone (2002) found that, similar to gender, CP 

was stronger for different race facial morphs than 

for facial morphs of the same racial group. 

In addition, categorical perception of social constructs, 

including emotion and race, are affected by 

a perceiver’s conceptual knowledge, including his/ 

her language (Barrett, 2006 a/b; Fugate, 2013). Specifically, 

when the meaning of a word is activated, 

people show more willingness to accept non-target 

emotional stimuli as a category member (Fugate, 

Gendron, Nakashima, & Barrett, 2017). Said another 

way, they are less “accurate” at matching images because 

their categories for that item have increased 

to include more instances. In this manner, people 

are becoming more “open-minded” and flexible 

with what constitutes a category member. Directly 

related to the current project, Tskhay and Rule 

(2015) showed that participants perceived racially 

73 

Poster of Anna Sullivan’s research project


74 

Detail from Anna Sullivan’s study 

ambiguous faces as belonging to different categories 

when they are preceded by the word “Black” 

or by “White.” Therefore, semantic information (i.e., 

top-down information) can interact with the stimulus 

characteristics (i.e., bottom-up information) to 

create differentiated judgments. 

The research question for this project was: how do 

different race-related words affect the categorical 

perception of race? This study sought to expand what 

is known about CP of race as it is affected by race-related 

words. To date, no research has directly studied 

the categorical perception of race and language (for a 

review, see Timeo, Farroni, & Maass, 2017). This type 

of research is important because it can provide more 

knowledge of how race-related words (and language 

more broadly) can affect our perceptions of important 

social categories, such as race. 

The objectives of this project were to examine the 

ways in which certain race-related words affect 

an individual’s processing in categorizing racially 

ambiguous faces. My study examined how these 

cognitive processes are influenced by top-down 

information, such as language, and work to establish 

an individual’s perception of race within individuals. 

This work can lead to a better understanding of how 

people “see” race in the world and how the words 

used to describe race can shift perception and 

ultimately change biases. We are all affected by ex-


75 

ternal sources of information, and therefore need to 

continue to explore the ways in which they affect our 

categorization of others into social and racial groups. 

Categorical perception was tested through a typical 

two-stage paradigm (reviewed by Fugate, 2013). 

The first paradigm, classification (or identification), 

defined a participant’s categorical boundary (i.e., 

the point at which an individual distinguishes an 

image as either one race or another). The second 

paradigm, discrimination, was used to test for the 

hallmark of CP which is an increase in the ability to 

discriminate between pictures previously assigned 

to different categories compared with pictures previously 

assigned to the same category, even though 

the physical difference between the pictures is 

always held constant. 

During the classification stage of this research, 

participants were presented with an array of racially 

ambiguous face stimuli that have been created 

using computer software (FantaMorph). These 

faces were created by combining two photos of 

different-race individuals and making systematic 

blends (known as morphs) that depict iterations 

between the two pictures. Participants were then 

asked to identify each stimulus as belonging to one 

of two categories, anchored by the picture endpoints 

or race-related words in different trials. We used 

several different race-related words to see whether 

a person’s threshold changes when evoking different 

race-related words and from when no words are 

evoked (match to picture condition). 

During the discrimination stage of this research, 

participants were presented with two sequential 

morphs, which either span the threshold (established 

in part 1) or do not span the threshold (but 

constitute the same structural difference between 

the faces). The former trials were the “between-category” 

trials. Participants’ increased accuracy to 

discriminate better the “between-category” trials


from the within-category trials is the hallmark of 

CP. We predicted that when participants match 

to race-related words (compared to pictured endpoints), 

they will show increased thresholds (steeper 

category transitions). Moreover, the steeper transitions 

translated into enhanced CP, as demonstrated 

by participants having increased accuracy to the 

“between-category” pairs compared to the “within-category” 

pairs. 

Although similar types of studies and experiments 

have been performed, this project is unique in 

several key ways. First, no one has performed the 

full CP task (both identification and discrimination) 

on racial morphs. Second, the facial morphs are 

unique and were created specifically for this study 

from professional face sets. Third, no one has varied 

how (that is to what endpoint) participants match 

their choices. Words are almost always used as 

anchors. However, in a related CP study of emotion 

in the lab, Dr. Fugate and her students showed that 

matching to pictured endpoints (rather than words) 

increased the transition between categories but 

did not change CP. In addition, we will vary the type 

of race-related words (e.g. “African American” and 

“Black” and “not White” vs. “European American” and 

“White” vs. “Not Black”) to see if specific identifiers 

affect race perception differently. 

Results from the identification portion of this 

research showed that language produces significant 

effects on race perception. Data analysis is still 

underway for the discrimination task, as well as the 

survey that participants completed. This project was 

presented at both the UMass Amherst Undergraduate 

Research Conference and the PSI CHI Research 

Conference. It was also awarded second place at the 

2018 OUR Undergraduate 3 Minute Thesis competition. 

I am grateful to my advisor Dr. Jennifer Fugate 

for her guidance and to the OUR for the financial 

support needed for this research. 

76


Refrences 

77 

1. 

2. 

3. 

4. 

5. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

9. 

Barrett, L. F. (2006a). “Are Emotions Natural Kinds?” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 28-58. 

Barrett, L.F. (2006b). “Solving the Emotion Paradox: Categorization and the Experience of Emotion.” 

Personality and Social Psychology, 10, 20-46. 

Beale, J.M., & Keil, C.F. (1995). “Categorical Effects in the Perception of Faces.” Cognition, 57, 217-239. 

Bornstein, M.H., Kessen, W., & Weiskopf, S. (1976). “Color Vision and Hue Categorization in Young Human 

Infants.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2, 115-129. 

Campanella, S., Chrysochoos, A., & Bruyer, R. (2001). “Categorical Perception of Facial Gender 

Information: Behavioural Evidence and the Face-Space Metaphor.” Visual Cognition, 8, 237-262. doi: 

10.1080/13506280042000072 

Etcoff, N.L., & Magee, J.J. (1992). “Categorical Perception of Facial Expressions.” Cognition, 44, 227-240. 

FantaMorph. (2017). http://www.fantamorph.com/index.html 

Fugate, J.M.B. (2013). “Categorical Perception for Emotional Faces.” Emotion Review, 5, 84-89. doi: 

10.117/1754073912451350 

Fugate, J.M.B., Gendron, M., Nakashima, S.F., & Barrett, L.F. (2017). “Emotion Words: Adding Face Value.” 

Emotion. doi: 10.1037/emo0000330 

10. 

Fugate, J.M.B., Gouzoules, H., & Barrett, L.F. (2010). “Reading Chimpanzee Faces: Evidence for the Role 

of Verbal Labels in Categorical Perception of Emotion.” Emotion, 10, 544-554. doi: 10.1037/a0019017 

11. 

12. 

13. 

14. 

Goldstone, R. L., & Hendrickson, A. T. (2010), “Categorical Perception.” WIREs Cogni Sci, 1: 69–78. 

doi:10.1002/wcs.26 

Levin, D. & Angelone, B. (2002). “Categorical Perception of Race.” Perception, 31, 567-578. doi: 10.1068/ 

p3315 

Liberman, A.M., Harris, K.S., Hoffman, H.S., & Griffin, B.C. (1957). “The Discrimination of Speech Sounds 

Within and Across Phoneme Boundaries.” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54, 358-368. 

Timeo, S., Farroni, T., & Maass, A. (2017). “Race and Color: Two Sides of the Same Story? Development of 

Biases in Categorical Perception.” Child Development, 88, 83-102. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12564 

15. 

Tskhay, C. & Rule, N. (2015). “Semantic Information Influences Race Categorization from Faces.” 

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 769-778. doi: 10.1177/0146167215579053


78

79

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81 

Research in Fine Arts 

Research & Exhibition on 

African-American Students at 

UMass Dartmouth 

Erick Maldonado ‘18


I am a senior Fine Arts major in the Department 

of Art and Design. I also minor in Art History in 

the Department of Art Education, Art History, and 

Media Studies. The goal my OUR-funded project 

was to highlight African-American student life on 

campus. I used the fund to do research, purchase 

painting materials, and organize a solo exhibition 

featuring portraits of African-American students on 

campus. Every portrait is accompanied by a short 

narrative, describing the thoughts of the student 

models I chose to paint. My project was supported 

by Professors Pamela Karimi (Art History) and Bryan 

McFarlane (Painting) and I am extremely grateful to 

both of them for their guidance. 

Erick Maldonado presents his thoughts on art and issues of 

displacement to a large audience at the New Bedford AHA! Festival 

82


83 

As a Dominican-American on campus, I see women 

and men with different complexions living in complex 

environments. As students of color, we sometimes 

feel the barrier of living and communicating 

within our institutions of education. At the same 

time, African-American culture has grown a sense 

of resiliency against the old racial assumptions. 

And this is largely thanks to the efforts of those 

protagonists who made America a better place for 

all of us. During the Harlem Renaissance, many 

African-American artists created works that resisted 

the racial oppression of their time. These artists 

wanted Black voices and Black stories to be heard, 

and by doing so they vocalized their own stories to 

stand up for their rights. By empowering a community 

and continuing to provide a dialogue, many 

musicians, artists, writers, and scholars gathered 

together to make a difference. 

It is important to note that during this time there 

was also a demand for African-Americans to be 

proud of their racial heritage. In later decades 

many African-American artists continued to voice 

their perspective regarding racial oppression. For 

example, Betye Saar made The Liberation of Black 

Jemima. By creating an image of Aunt Jemima 

inside of a frame with a Caucasian child on her 

hip, Saar used iconographic imagery to state and 

comment on African-American women and their 

labor in American history. Romare Bearden, an African-American 

painter, developed a vocabulary with 

sudden bursts of bright hues that helped depict 

African-American men and women. His portraits 

represented black commonalities and helped 

address African-American living conditions. Lastly, 

our contemporary, Kara Walker, uses silhouettes 

and folklore to frame the living conditions and com- 

Erick Maldonato’s solo show, I.D., at the 224 Gallery, UMass Darthmouth


84 

Details of Erick Maldonato’s paintings at the 224 Gallery, UMass Darthmouth 

plex social relations of slaves and slave masters. 

These artists continue to inspire me to turn history 

into art and to use the beautiful language of art to 

address important issues in Black communities. 

The ongoing political and racial issues that continue 

to develop mayhem in this country are what 

I planned to comment on through this research 

project that led to a solo exhibition, titled ID. In 

particular, I wanted to be able to give a strong 

voice to those UMD students who feel incapable of 

expressing themselves. 

Facing the everyday challenge of trying to communicate 

stories, purposes, and lives, my exhibit is a 

reflection of my identity. My subjects include students 

from campus who have succeeded in bringing 

awareness to blackness, continue to inspire and 

change the frame of blackness on campus, and who 

sustain a tradition of black representation that also


85 

emits the beauty of the community on campus. My 

overall vision of my project was to unite a group of 

people in the common goal of embracing culture. As 

evident in our country’s divide, Black students are 

easily more targeted. This OUR-funded exhibit allowed 

me to create a dialogue where students were 

able to use their voice to express their identity and 

culture. Through my paintings and the interviews 

that ensued, students were able to communicate 

who they are. Black students now more than ever 

are afraid to submerse themselves in a controversial 

dialogue. Therefore, I wanted to create paintings that 

would help project their narratives. 

It was truly an honor to be offered an OUR grant in 

Spring 2017. This successful experience gave me the 

courage and confidence to apply for external grants. 

And I am particularly grateful to my professors 

Pamela Karimi (Art History) and Suzanne Schireson 

(Painting), who encouraged me to apply and 

supported my application. The following summer, I 

applied and received a Mellon Summer Internship at 

RISD Museum. My position at the museum was with 

the Contemporary Art department, where I worked 

closely with Richard Brown Baker, Curator of Contemporary 

Art, Dominic Molon, and Nancy Prophet 

fellow Amber Lopez. 

Some of my tasks included overseeing works and 

maintaining files of nearly hundreds of objects in 

the collection and preparing research on works 

for future exhibitions in the galleries. I learned so 

much from this program. RISD Museum’s Andrew W. 

Mellon summer internship program introduced me 

to museum work, the professional skills necessary 

to work in the arts, and the functionalities inside a 

museum. This experience shifted my perspective of 

how I view myself as an artist. The busy, continuous 

and challenging cycle of distributing art and curating 

work is diligent, practice is valued, and production is 

a priority. One of the most exciting experiences in the 

museum was creating my own program for RISD’s 

Third Thursday, which is an open night when the 

museum audiences engage more with the collection. 

My program consisted of learning about color 

relationships and how they impact shape, form, line, 

symmetry, and space. It was rewarding working with 

such a community. I value my time in Providence and 

the exposure to such programs. 

In conclusion, the Office of Undergraduate Research 

provided the special skills and tools that I needed 

to enhance my knowledge of painting, curation, and 

above all African-American life experience. Learning, 

exploring, and sharing stories of African-Americans 

in my community has helped me provide other students 

with an opportunity to find a space to express 

themselves. This project enabled me to become a 

better curator, painter, and even artist. Above all, it 

helped me become a critical thinker; it allowed me 

to appreciate the importance of art historical and 

anthropological research and to want to encourage 

others to question the world we live in and instill a 

sense of pride in Black communities.


86 

Details of Erick Maldonato’s paintings at the 224 Gallery, 

UMass Darthmouth

87

88


89 

Research in Biology 

Identification of SIAT7 in Symbiotic 

Clownfish & A Closely Related 

Non-Symbiotic Fish 

Deborah Dele-Oni ‘18 Honors


Clownfish live in a close symbiotic relationship with 

sea anemones. This relationship is often used as a 

teaching tool for students to learn about ecology, 

evolutionary mutualism, and species interactions. 

This mutualistic relationship may be due to a sugar 

the anemones detect in the mucus of the prey 

species. An enzyme class known as sialyltransferases 

has been studied because of its importance 

to sea anemone recognition of prey. This class of 

sialyltransferases adds chains of sugars to proteins 

found in mucus. Clownfish may lack a specific type 

of sialytransferases known as SIAT7, which could 

be a factor in why the clownfish do not get stung. 

However, although SIAT7 was not initially seen, 

that does not mean it is not there; rather it could 

indicate inactivation. Alternatively, clownfish may 

have SIAT7 in their genomes but may not express 

it in the cells that make the external mucus. To 

test this, I am studying both symbiotic and closely 

related non-symbiotic species to determine if SIAT7 

is present in these species. I hypothesize that SIAT7 

Deborah Dele-Oni 

90


91 

will be present in both the symbiotic clownfish 

and non-symbiotic closely related species but is 

inactive in the skin of symbiotic species. My goal 

was to test primers on tissues of anemonefish and 

closely related non-symbiotic species to see where 

expression occurred. 

To accomplish these goals, I would: 

• Use degenerate PCR to obtain partial sequences 

of SIAT7 from symbiotic and non-symbiotic 

fish species. 

• Use inverse PCR to determine the sequences of 

the regions surrounding the SIAT7 gene. 

• Use quantitative PCR to determine which tissues 

express SIAT7 in symbiotic and non-symbiotic 

fish species. 

To approach this, I knew that SIAT7 had been identified 

in close relatives of clownfish. If primers were 

designed based from those sequences and added 

to DNA of symbiotic clownfish, there would be a 

product formed if the primers found complementary 

parts of the DNA. In the spring, I completed 

degenerate PCR to try to acquire partial sequences 

of SIAT7 from non-symbiotic fish species. The 

degenerative primers were created from the bicolor 

damselfish (Stegastes partitus; Genbank accession 

XP_008298796.1), and PCR was done on cDNA samples 

from the ocellaris clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) 

and the non-symbiotic Springer’s damselfish 

(Chrysiptera springeri) which is a close relative. The 

PCR yielded some products that are bright bands 

in the gel below (Figure 1.). The brighter the bands 

the more concentration of DNA, showing successful 

replication. These samples were then cleaned 

up and sent off for sequencing. The sequencing 

results were crosschecked with the NCBI database 

and the matches that appeared were not of SIAT7. 

Instead they matched to other genes like protein 

FAM20A isoform X3 inform the Southern pig-tailed 

macaque or monkey (Macaca nemestrina) (Figure 

2.) or to bacterial genes like protein A2680_02525 

from the bacteria Candidatus kaiserbacteria. These 

sequencing results are the DNA of one of the bands 

from the failed attempt using degenerate PCR. 

These results indicate that our DNA in the degenerate 

PCR was not successful at producing a partial 

part of the SIAT7 gene. 

Since the degenerate PCR primer was not successful 

at yielding a partial sequence for SIAT7, another 

approach to obtaining this sequence was taken. 

Marian Wahl, a graduate student in Dr. Robert Drew’s 

lab, had recently sequenced transcriptomes from 

several species of anemonefish and non-symbiotic 

fish. Transcriptomes are all of the RNA that is 

made by genes of an organism. This is of interest 

because it shows exactly what is made and what will 

potentially be translated to proteins. This was not 

available in the spring but became available early 

this summer. I redesigned primers for four species 

of anemonefish (list species) and non-symbiotic fish 

(list species) to be used in the PCR. This provided me 

with a better chance of getting PCR product because 

the primers used in the PCR were designed from the 

exact species they would be testing in. Also, I would 

be able to see right away if SIAT7 was really present 

in the fish species because I would be checking


Figure 1. Gel showing the results of degenerate PCR searching for SIAT7 in springers damselfish (chrisyptera springeri, CSP) and clarks 

clownfish (amphiprion clarkia, ACL) genomic (gDNA) and skin cDNA samples 

92 

their transcriptomes to see if it was present or not. 

If SIAT7 was present, I would get a gene sequence 

from the transcriptomes. 

To do this a reference gene was identified from 

the bicolor damselfish (Stegastes partitus; 

XP_008298796.1). This reference gene was used to 

find matching sequences from the transcriptomes 

of the study species using Local BLAST. I found that 

SIAT7 appeared in all species transcriptomes that 

were checked. From this, I could say that SIAT7 is 

found in both symbiotic and non-symbiotic species 

of fish. However, the specific tissue or tissues it is 

expressed in and to what extent was not known from 

this information. 

After going back to look at the specific gene sequences 

that were used to make the primers, there 

was evidence that SIAT7 across these species may 

be paralogs. Paralogs are genes that have evolved 

by duplication events, resulting in two copies of the 

gene in different locations of the genome. After 

duplication, these copies evolve independently, accumulating 

different mutations. After a long period, 

these paralogs may still encode for the same protein 

but can have very different DNA sequences. This is 

interesting to note because it could be evidence that 

clownfish symbiosis caused this duplication event to 

occur. We found paralogs in the Clarks clownfish but 

not in the other three species we tested, which were


93 

Figure 2. Sequencing results and BLASTx alignment for a sample. The BLAST results show a match with the protein FAM20A isoform X3 

with the Southern pig-tailed macque (Macaca nemestrina) which is a medium-sized monkey 

the staghorn damselfish (Amblyglyphidodon Curacao), 

the three spot damselfish (Dascyllus Trimaculatus), 

and the three stripe damselfish (Dascyllus 

Aruanus). We found this out by aligning the different 

transcripts that were gotten from the Local BLAST. 

When aligned I found that the Clarks clownfish 

transcripts with similar trinity numbers (numbers 

that appear after the letters “DN” in Figure 4.) were 

more closely related than the ones with dissimilar 

numbers. If the sequence used to make the primers 

were made using one paralog, other paralogs will not 

be accounted for in the study and the PCR will not 

yield consistent results. 

To account for paralogs, some bioinformatics was 

done to identify exactly where duplication events 

might have occurred and in what species. To do 

this, transcriptomes for the species of interest 

were identified and aligned to each other using 

computer programs such as MUSCLE, TranslatorX, 

and the NCBI Blast Website (Figure 4). When 

transcriptomes are aligned, the programs will put 

similar sequences together and dissimilar sequences 

further apart from each other. This figure 

highlights that species with the same sequences 

(samples with the same Trinity numbers) may be 

from the same gene. For example, the sequences 

DN83440 and DN182523 from A. clarkii are probably 

paralogs but there are two copies of DN182523


which are probably splice variants or have alternative 

transcription start sites. 

There is still much to do so I am continuing work 

on this project this fall. This figure will be updated 

to include some well-studied fish and re-rooted to 

provide more accurate results. Some cichlid fish 

are better understood in the evolution of fish, and 

using these as references for our SIAT7 sequences 

can provide me with some information on paralogs. 

Once paralogs are completely identified, more 

specific primers can be designed that will hopefully 

yield consistent PCR results. Another approach 

that will be taken is to align protein sequences. 

Right now, the aligning that has been done has 

used cDNA sequences. 

From the work done this summer, I can say that 

SIAT7 is found in symbiotic and non-symbiotic fish 

that I studied, indicating that clownfish did not lose 

SIAT7 as part of the evolution of symbiosis with sea 

anemones. However, I detected evidence of gene duplication 

which introduced paralogs. Going forward, 

I seek to understand when these duplication events 

occurred and if they are related to the clownfish-sea 

anemone symbiosis. I am aiming to determine if the 

evolution of paralogs in SIAT7 allowed anemonefish 

to live symbiotically with anemones or if it is completely 

unrelated. 

The OUR summer research program has provided 

me with an opportunity to continue with a long-term 

research experience. I stepped out of my comfort 

94 

Figure 3. PCR Results using primers designed for Amphirion clarkii (ACL) species and Amblyglyphidodon curacao (AmCu) species


Figure 4. Phylogenetic tree of SIAT7 cDNA samples from Clark’s Clownfish (ACL), Three stripe domino damselfish (DAR), Three spot 

domino damselfish (DTR), and staghorn damselfish (AmCu) 

95 

zone and experienced new things in the lab and 

learned immensely from bioinformatics alone. Being 

able to get results from looking at gene sequences 

and databases on local computers, and searching 

national gene databases, I could answer one of 

my research questions without even picking up a 

pipette. As a biology student, I underestimated the 

wealth of information bioinformatics shows and 

how important it is to do these steps in research. 

Conducting experiments in the lab is rewarding, but 

interpreting the data, and understanding it is the 

main goal. Through this summer research experience, 

I learned to think about long term goals and 

the bigger picture. Having participated only in shortterm 

research experiences before, I was usually just 

thrown into a situation where I had to think quickly 

on my feet and do a series of experiments and interpret 

my immediate results. However, being at UMass 

during the summer, I could continue work I had 

started before. This allowed me to see what a longterm 

project entails. Data interpretation and relating 

results to a goal is something that I have strongly 

developed this summer. I feel much better prepared 

to pursue more long-term projects. I have developed 

myself as a critical thinker and a troubleshooter in 

my research and found a new appreciation for the 

study of bioinformatics.


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99 

Research in Mechanical 

Engineering 

A Remote Sensing Study of the 

Relationship between Density Fronts & 

Phytoplankton Blooms in the North Atlantic 

Samuel Filliettaz-Domingues ’18


My OUR Research for the summer of 2017 grant 

cycle concerned the Sea Surface Density gradients 

to Phytoplankton blooms in the North Atlantic. Phytoplankton 

have an effect on the marine ecosystem 

and climate change. To show a link in the North 

Atlantic between surface density of the ocean, its 

gradients, and phytoplankton blooms (rapid multiplication 

of phytoplankton), I analyzed sea surface 

temperature (SST) and chlorophyll (CHL) gradients 

taken from the Aqua/MODIS satellite for the years 

2011, 2012, and 2013. I sorted each day using an 

algorithm. Small gaps in the data were filled using 

interpolation. Contour and gradient plots were used 

to graphically show the relationship between SST 

and CHL. A database was created of notable days 

where the SST and CHL plots showed a strong link 

between the two. Another algorithm was used to 

try to show a trend between SST and CHL values 

throughout the year 2013, but the results were 

inconclusive. Although there are many other factors 

involved within the ocean that can alter ocean 

properties in a way that triggers a bloom, such as 

wind stress, data suggests that there are cases in 

the North Atlantic in which the CHL growths are 

predominantly formed by the SST gradients. This 

topic needs to be further analyzed to determine 

how frequently this relationship occurs. 

100


In sum, the objective of the research was to find out 

how related are the Sea Surface Density gradients 

and Phytoplankton blooms and whether this relationship 

is the reason why blooms are sometimes 

seen earlier than predicted between winter and 

spring time compared to other parts of the world. 

Knowing this can help oceanographers to better understand 

the North Atlantic. Computer simulations 

were conducted predicting that there is a relationship. 

And satellite data verified that it is indeed the 

case. The next step for this research would be to 

expand on what we found in terms of how frequent 

these density gradient induced blooms occur. 

My research experience during the summer was 

very informative. It gave me a glimpse into what lab 

work for Mechanical Engineers who go into physical 

oceanography would consist of, as well as a new 

perspective on the complexity of ocean mechanics. I 

am grateful to the OUR for providing support for this 

project and to my advisor, Professor Amit Tandon, for 

supervising my research. 

101


102 

Poster of Filliettaz-Domingues’s research on a Remote Sensing Study of the Relationship between Density Fronts and Phytoplankton 

Blooms in the North Atlantic

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105 


Investigation of In Vitro Vitamin B6 

Treatment to Reverse Deterioration of 

Bone Mechanical Properties 

Jacob Aaronson ‘18


In the summer of 2017 I was granted a grant from 

the OUR to join Bioengineering Professor Dr. Lamya 

Karim’s lab and worked alongside undergraduate 

Bioengineering student John Riordan to conduct 

a research project concerning the testing of the 

properties of bone that were placed in a simulated 

diabetic environment. This was an interdisciplinary 

project that allowed us to work with techniques from 

bioengineering, mechanical engineering, biochemistry, 

and biology. Ever since I took a class in Biomechanics 

in the third year of undergraduate studies, 

I have been interested in exploring the mechanical 

properties of human body tissues such as bone. 

Through this OUR-funded project, I exercised this 

interest through hands on research and design. 

106 

Jacob Aaronson


107 

From previous research it has been found that 

patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus have an 

increased risk of bone fracture compared to non-diabetics 

[1]. These patients have normal or high bone 

mass, which is typically beneficial for bone. This 

suggests factors other than bone mass, such as 

changes in bone quality, may play an important part 

in diabetic fractures. In this study, I looked at a possible 

method to inhibit harmful protein crosslinks 

that can accumulate in diabetic patients. I chose 

Vitamin B6 as the inhibitor because it showed 

promising results in rat bone [2]. However, it has 

never been tested in human bone. With this fact in 

mind, the goal of this project was to look at changes 

in protein crosslinks and mechanical properties of 

bone specimens after being placed in a simulated 

type 2 diabetic environment and to test how Vitamin 

B6 might prevent these changes. 

In the first part of this project, my main task was to 

work with human donor bone (tibias or “shin bones”) 

that I cut and polished down to small testable sizes. I 

used a low-speed diamond blade saw and polishing 

machine to accomplish this task. Once all the specimens 

were ready, we then incubated them in control 

and type 2 diabetic environments (a chemical solution 

with ribose sugar) with and without Vitamin B6. 

The bone samples were incubated in these solutions 

for 10 days at 37ºC with pH maintained between 7.2 

and 7.6 to represent the human body environment. 

The second part of this project involved gathering 

data on the incubated bone specimens. When first 

looking at the post incubation samples, we saw a 

Jacob Aaronson (back) and John Riordan (front) making 

solutions for incubation of cortical bone specimens 

significant difference in color between ribose and 

control groups. Samples in ribose solutions were 

brown, which indicates a buildup of the protein 

crosslinks. Meanwhile control groups had no 

significant color change. A biochemical assay was 

run to measure the crosslink content, and cyclic 

reference point indentation (RPI) tests were used 

to measure the mechanical properties of bone 

after incubation.


From the data, we did not detect our expected 

differences in crosslinks or mechanical properties 

between the Vitamin B6 treated group compared to 

the non-treated group. This may be due to our small 

sample size and/or the Vitamin B6 dose being too 

low. Although we did not detect any differences from 

the hypothesized inhibitory effects of Vitamin B6, we 

did have other key findings: 

• In vitro incubation with ribose does increase 

AGEs (protein crosslinks) in human cortical bone. 

• Indentation tests showed there were deteriorated 

bone mechanical properties in a simulated 

diabetic state. 

• Bone specimens with higher crosslink contents 

had weaker mechanical properties. 

By continuing my work with the mechanical 

engineering department, more mechanical testing 

data was derived from the incubated cortical 

beams. Specifically, we performed microindentation 

tests on the samples to measure bone 

stiffness. 

We also carried out another incubation of cortical 

beams to test the efficacy of different concentrations 

of Vitamin B6 combined with the same 

concentration of ribose. The small dose of Vitamin 

B6 used in the previous incubation appeared to 

have no effect on AGE inhibition so we decided to 

increase this parameter. Vitamin B6 concentrations 

of 0.5 mM and 5 mM were used due to their positive 

effects seen in a previous study (Booth et al., 1997). 

Since the 5 mM concentration shows promising 

results it is important to verify this in future studies. 

Therefore, the next step of this project is to confirm 

the correct amount of Vitamin B6 through additional 

incubations followed by mechanical testing, chemical 

testing, and structural analysis. Specifically, 

108 

Diamond blade saw used to cut bone beams 

Cortical beams treated with ribose (top) and cortical beams 

treated with no ribose or vehicle group (bottom)


There was a trend for higher indentation distance (represnting weaker mechanical properties) and significantly more crosslinks in 

the ribose treated group (R) compared to vehicle controls (VEH) 

109 

we would like to carry out bending tests because 

they will give a more complete understanding of 

how the mechanical properties of samples change 

after incubation. We also plan on measuring specific 

AGEs, such as pentosidine, in our assays so that we 

can analyze the exact AGE chemical structures that 

are forming. Lastly, we hope to apply imaging techniques 

such as microCT analysis in order to measure 

microdamage in samples. A long-term goal for this 

project is to utilize our accumulated understanding 

of Vitamin B6 on the inhibition of AGEs in vitro to 

establish reason for animal model testing. 

From this experience, I have learned that research 

Samples treated with ribose had a lower elastic modulus (measure of stiffness) compared to the control group. This trend was seen 

across all age groups (57-87 years)


projects require countless amounts of planning, organization, 

and collaboration. I am thankful that I have 

developed these types of qualities during my time as 

an undergraduate researcher. My plan is to apply this 

research experience to graduate school, industry, and 

everyday life. Working on projects that are aimed to 

help restore health to many people will be something I 

always find highly motivational and invaluable. 

I would like to thank the Office of Undergraduate 

Research for presenting me with this highly 

sought-after opportunity. I would also like to thank 

Dr. Lamya Karim, Rachana Vaidya, Taraneh Rezaee, 

Kelly Merlo, John Riordan, and the Mechanical and 

Civil & Environmental Engineering departments for 

all the help carrying out this project. 

110 

Results from the most recent incubation where two different concentrations of Vitamin B6 were used (0.5 mM and 5 mM). The 5 

mM concentration seems to have a considerable effect on the number of AGEs when compared to the ribose treated group (R) 

Refrences 

1. 

2. 

3. 

A. Ashley Booth, Raja G. Khalifah‡, Parvin Todd, and Billy G. Hudson. (1997.) “In Vitro Kinetic Studies of 

Formation of Antigenic Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs),” The Journal of Biological Chemistry 

272 (9). Pp. 5430–5437. 

M. Janghorbani et al. (2007), “Systematic Review of Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Risk of 

Fracture,” American Journal of Epidemiology 166 (5/1). doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwm106 

M. Saito, Fujii, K., Mori, Y., & Marumo, K. (2006), “Role of collagen enzymatic and glycation induced 

cross-links as a determinant of bone quality in spontaneously diabetic WBN/Kob rats,” Osteoporosis 

International 17(10). doi:10.1007/s00198-006-0155-5

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Research in Art History & 

Curatorial Studies 

Artistic Responses to Presidential Elections 

& other Political Challenges 

Mariah Tarentino ‘18


The United States has a rich history of politically 

motivated art, from the first political cartoons of 

the American Revolution to the socially conscious 

artists involved in civil rights movements of the 

1950s and 60s and leading up to works of today 

disseminated on social media and as street art. In 

1972 Andy Warhol created “Vote McGovern” for the 

George McGovern Presidential campaign. Rather 

than portraying McGovern, Warhol decided to 

represent his opponent in a negative light. During 

the 2008 elections, the Barack Obama “Hope” poster–designed 

by the renowned graffiti artist Shepard 

Fairey–was widely described as iconic and came 

to represent the 2008 presidential campaign. The 

image became one of the most important aspects of 

Obama’s campaign messages, and arguably affected 

the perception of Obama in a positive way. By 

contrast, graffiti art and posters of President-elect 

Donald Trump, produced by designers and graffiti 

artists, were largely negative. Why do artists react to 

114 

Mariah Tarentino


presidential elections? How does art affect the decision 

of voters? What can we learn from these artistic 

interventions? By looking at the trajectory of these 

artistic responses, we can better understand the 

relationship between art and politics: the ways in 

which art making can have an impact on the general 

public and how art becomes a tool of resistance for 

political dissidents. 

115 

In the 2016-17 polarized election cycle in the US, 

artists used their platforms to make a stand for their 

beliefs. The political art of the past year has come 

to the forefront of protests, awareness campaigns 

and the like. This art has focused on a wide range of 

themes, from women’s rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+ 

rights, and criticism of the economy, to foreign policy, 

and politicians themselves. 

These depictions of political issues have clear and 

cutting messages. Through examining the works of 

artists, one can gain greater insight into the current 

unrest within our nation. And by analyzing what 

makes political art effective in its goals, artists can 

gain greater understanding of how to successfully 

use their skills to become an activist who is engaged 

in the society. 

My fascination with the topic of artistic responses to 

presidential elections and other political challenges 

is owing to my interest in art and activism. I major 

in Art History with a minor in Women’s and Gender 

Studies. In the past three years, I have been a 

student employee at the Center for Women, Gender, 

and Sexuality (CWGS) at UMass Dartmouth. During 

Shepar Fairy’s “Hope.” Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

my time at CWGS, I have been involved in multiple 

projects, including facilitating bystander intervention 

training and organizing awareness campaigns 

for issues like street harassment, domestic violence, 

and sexual assault. Additionally, I have had the opportunity 

to attend conferences on reproductive justice, 

which instilled in me a sense of civic duty and 

activism. In April 2015, I combined my passion for art


and social issues through an exhibition featuring the 

art of sexual violence survivors. Through this exhibition 

process, I saw firsthand the power that art has 

to convey powerful messages. I have seen this again 

in the current political climate. As the University of 

Massachusetts has a respected art college and a 

strong sense of civic and community engagement, it 

seems appropriate to conduct research on the topic 

of art as activism and the role of the artist as an 

activist. In what follows, I provide a summary of my 

research, which was supported by a generous fund 

from the OUR, granted to me in Spring 2017. 

2016 was a year of rising socio-political tensions, 

which the election only seemed to bring to a boiling 

point. Between the Dakota Access Pipeline, Flint, 

Michigan, still in need of clean water, arguments of 

religious freedom and gay rights, the disenchantment 

of the working class, and the ever-growing 

list of innocent Black Americans killed at the hands 

of police—everyone seemed in agreement that 

something had to give, but few agreed on what. The 

country held its breath as election results trickled 

in and collectively exhaled, some in relief and some 

in shock, when Mr. Trump became President Trump. 

In all this unrest and apprehensiveness, art found 

itself in the center of the conversation. 

Art worked to facilitate debate and convey 

messages, and it varied as much as the issues 

it attempted to address. It was seen on protest 

signs, in art museums, and on the internet. However, 

the common thread appeared to be that the 

art made use of appropriation and irony to convey 

its messages; it referenced images and messages 

of the oppressor, in part to illuminate the wrongs 

and in part to reclaim the very same images. Saint 

Hoax’s Make America Misogynistic Again is a 

prime example in this vein. 

116 

Left: Andy Warhol’s “Vote McGovern.” Courtesy of MOMA. © 2018 

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society 

(ARS), New York. Screen-shot taken from 

www.moma.org/collection/works/68705 

I was most interested in the protest images that 

came out of the election and inauguration. My 

OUR funded research consisted of two parts: (1) a 

research paper that examined this political art and 

attempted to place it in a broader historical context; 

(2) an exhibition of local artists’ works regarding the


117 

2016 elections. The Frederick Douglass Unity House 

at UMass Dartmouth was gracious enough to host 

my exhibition (The Art of Resistance). The goals and 

values of the Unity House in creating discussion, 

providing support, and educating the community 

aligned perfectly with my goals for this exhibition. 

My show facilitated a dialogue at a time when 

political issues affected our campus community and 

other surrounding communities we all belong to. It 

also gave students a platform to discuss politics in 

unique and creative ways. In my call to artists, I tried 

to keep submission guidelines as open as possible. 

I hoped that the exhibit would inspire and empower 

others to act, be it through art, protest, calling 

representatives, or other avenues. The exhibition 

took place in mid-April and featured the works of 

students Ashley Lima, Joel Rivera, Grace Augello, 

Shannon Morrell, and Chloe Bartlett, and alumnus 

Johnus Derby. It included photographs, paintings, 

digital works, and protest signs. The diversity of 

the works on display was a small glimpse into the 

diversity of works by artists around the country. 

capacity as the president of the Art History Club, I 

was responsible for organizing this year’s symposium, 

which required coming up with a theme. 

The research grant from the OUR also allowed me to 

advance my career goals by enabling my extra-curricular 

activities in the Department of Art History 

and I am grateful for that. The funding facilitated a 

professional exhibition with ample publicity. It also 

provided support for my research at key libraries in 

the greater Boston area. I intend to attend graduate 

school in curatorial and museum studies. Eventually, 

I’d like to pursue a career in curation, featuring the 

works of artists who focus on challenging social and 

political issues. 

Additionally, I wrote a paper analyzing works from 

all election cycles from 2016 back to Nixon. The 

paper revealed trends not only in art, but also in 

politics; through multiple case studies I discussed 

the ways in which artists and creative agents have 

approached political issues and described how they 

have chosen to agree or disagree. The research conducted 

for this paper allowed me to craft a theme 

for the 2017 UMass Dartmouth Art History Annual 

Undergraduate Symposium: Art and Activism. In my


118 

Poster of “The Art of Resistance,” a juried show designed and curated by Mariah Tarentino

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121 

Research in Political 

Science 

Voter Decision-Making in Low 

Information Elections 

David Borgesn ‘18


An astonishing number of elections in the United 

States occur at the local level. Because of various 

factors, these elections are low-turnout and low-information 

affairs. Frequently, regarding these local 

elections, the general electorate is woefully uninformed, 

and certain variables available to voters in 

more high-profile elections are unavailable to voters. 

Regardless, voters still head to the polls to cast their 

votes for candidates running for various positions in 

their local municipality. 

While much research has been dedicated to evaluating 

voting determinants in higher profile elections, 

like those concerning presidential, senatorial, and 

congressional contests, little has been dedicated 

to studying the more local level. Considering the 

magnitude and frequency at which local elections 

occur, Professors Shannon Jenkins and Doug Roscoe 

decided to study how voters in low-information, local 

elections make their decisions. Thus, I was asked to 

spend time over summer break to help in this study 

and sought OUR funding to do so. 

122


Alongside Professors Jenkins and Roscoe, I was 

involved in multiple aspects of conducting research, 

including data collection, inputting data into SPSS, 

conducting a literature review, formulating hypotheses, 

looking for patterns in the data, and finally 

obtaining results and reaching conclusions. The 

work was originally prepared for and presented at 

the 2016 New England Political Science Association 

Conference and was just recently published in the 

New England Political Science Association Journal. 

process. This experience has been extremely valuable 

to me, thanks to the OUR. Partaking in research 

provides undergraduate students with so many ways 

to explore their interests and bring their educational 

experience to a higher level. 

123 

Participating in this OUR funded project was a 

worthwhile endeavor. I have been able to use what I 

learned from this research both professionally and 

personally. Living in a small town with a similar form 

of government as in the one we studied, I can apply 

findings from our research to my own community. 

Being interested in politics, I have and will continue 

to be involved in local politics in my hometown. I can 

use what I learned to help impact my community in a 

meaningful way. Understanding who votes and how 

they decide whom to vote for in these local, low-information 

elections is a significant advantage. 

Finally, by participating in this project I was able 

to work with two seasoned and distinguished 

researchers, thus learning the process of developing 

and implementing research much more thoroughly. 

Learning about the process in class is one thing, but 

it is a whole new experience to actually carry out the 

The poster of the 2016 New England Political Science Association 

Conference, where Borges presented the final results of his 

research in conjunction with his supervisors


Sample data analysis from Borges’s research 

124 

Screenshot of Borges’s publication in The New England Political Science 

Association Journal

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126


Research in Music 

Spheres of Influence 

John Dalton ‘18 

127


My four years at the University of Massachusetts 

Dartmouth have been a personal artistic journey–a 

journey of self-examination, developing not only as 

a musician but as an innovator and a researcher. 

Throughout this journey I have constantly asked myself: 

Who am I as an artist? What should I do to find 

my own unique, creative voice? These are, of course, 

never ending questions. But for now I can say that 

being at UMD’s Music Department has given me a 

foundation to pursue a career in music that is more 

than just a performer. It is a career that is combined 

with research and innovation. 

128 

Every senior music student is required to put on a 

recital to showcase what they have accomplished 

in their time at the university. As an honors student, 

I knew I had to aim for something more ambitious. 

Therefore, I decided to put together a group of not 

only my peers, but of professional musicians and 

one of my Professors. The group includes current 

John Dalton during performance. Photograph courtesy of Dan 

Waterman


129 

students (myself and Caitlin Walsh), two alumni 

(Miles Flisher and Sean Farias), and one of my 

professors (Jim Robitaille). This is a quintet that 

consists of saxophone (Caitlin), guitar (Jim), piano 

(Miles), bass (Sean), and drums (myself). Bringing 

together this group of people required not only 

research and coordination, but also financial support. 

Thanks to a grant from the OUR I successfully 

executed this complicated project. 

As a jazz musician one makes the decision to throw 

themselves into a continuum– the rich and vast 

legacy of many creative minds who advanced this 

form of music. I am interested in creating new jazz 

music and finding my own personal approach to 

both improvisation and composition. In doing so, 

I get inspired by many sources of influence. At my 

core, I am intrigued by the post-bop traditions of the 

1960’s, which includes such artists as John Coltrane, 

Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, 

McCoy Tyner, and Eric Dolphy. I have also begun to 

draw inspiration from successful contemporary jazz 

musicians, including Brad Mehldau, Donny Mc- 

Caslin, and Kneebody. Also, as a jazz drummer, I am 

inspired by masters of the instrument such as Elvin 

Jones, Roy Haynes, Jack Dejohnette, Tony Williams, 

Bob Moses, Paul Motian, Brian Blade, Jorge Rossy, 

Nate Wood, Mark Guiliana, as well as local drummers 

Luther Gray and Chris Poudrier. These influences 

continue to color my approach as I try to reach 

for something that is uniquely my own expression. To 

achieve this goal, I have created a group under the 

moniker of Spheres of Influence. 

Spheres of Influence is my own modular ensemble, 

which aims to perform both my own music and the 

music that I resonate with. A Sphere of Influence is an 

international relations term which denotes the region 

in which one nation holds power or influence. I decided 

to co-opt this term for my own work as the name 

allows for the group to be modular. Each group under 

this moniker represents its own sphere and its own 

artistic place, thus changing the influences made by 

other groups. In improvised music the range of individual 

players in any particular configuration can change 

the nature of the music. What unifies the concept 

though is the overall character of the music played by 

the whole group. The music is always guided by certain 

aesthetic principles–principles that are universal between 

different iterations. My vision for this group was 

to put on a free public concert in the College of Visual 

and Performing Arts’s main auditorium, showcasing a 

program of primarily original jazz compositions. The 

performance was also recorded and released as a 

high-quality video (view it above). While this concert 

was a collaborative effort between many musicians, a 

great deal of individual work went into it. 

John Dalton’s Spheres of Influence during performance


Rehearsal at the College of Visual and Performing Arts’s main auditorium. Photograph courtesy of Dan Waterman 

130 

Perhaps the best place to start describing my individual 

contribution, is the work I put in practicing my 

instrument. I also practiced particular material for 

this recital and this ranged from different grooves 

and time feels to soloing ideas. I had been thinking 

about the general idea of the recital in my practicing 

for some time, but there were still many concrete 

steps that I had to take. 

Many of these steps taken have occurred in no 

particular order (in fact, they were often simultaneous). 

But I have compiled and listed them here in a 

fashion that makes sense in a chronological order. 

The first step I took was figuring out which musicians 

I wanted to work with. I knew right away that I 

wanted to have both Miles Fisher and Caitlin Walsh 

on the program, as they are two of my closest friends 

and collaborators. I also knew, pretty early on, that 

I wanted to have my professor and project advisor, 

Jim Robitaille. Professor Robitaille is a master musician 

who has worked with many talented musicians, 

in addition to being an excellent player and composer 

himself. I wanted to use this opportunity to 

collaborate and perform with him. Finally, I decided 

to hire Sean Farias to round out the group because 

he has an excellent reputation in the Boston area as 

a musician. 

I also put a great deal of effort into writing and 

arranging some of the pieces. In this concert four of 

the nine tunes are my own compositions, including 

two new pieces I had written over the summer. I also


131 

had to compile the other pieces for the group, which 

included three more original compositions (each 

written by separate members of the group and two 

covers). During this process, I also thought about how 

the pieces should be arranged, according to both my 

tastes and the tastes of my fellow musicians. 

After these preliminary stages, I began to figure out 

the details for booking the space. I decided to use 

the main auditorium as I felt it would be an appropriate 

venue for the musicians I had chosen. In this 

stage I also started to work on assembling promotional 

materials, which included designing a poster, 

as well as contacting various promotional outlets 

(for both inside and outside of the school). During 

the process, I came across the OUR grant opportunities, 

and decided to apply. I was lucky enough to 

be awarded a generous amount that helped support 

part of the recital and the research that went into 

the making of this music. 

The next item on the agenda was organizing two 

rehearsals. Due to the busy schedules of the chosen 

musicians, I booked two rehearsals in October, well 

in advance. The first rehearsal was an interesting 

experience; it was my first time directing a group 

like that. It was especially strange having to give 

directions to Professor Robitaille and Sean, due to 

their reputations and stature as musicians. In the 

second rehearsal I was able to better ascertain my 

bearings and give more clear instructions. It was a 

great experience, as I learned to examine the group 

sound, and make sure that people were playing their 

parts. It was also interesting to experiment with 

different ensemble textures, which I felt needed to 

be worked in, making sure that pieces had a certain 

flow to them. If this were a more regularly working 

group, these sorts of textures and dynamics would 

not need to be said, as they could be formed spontaneously. 

However, due to time constraints it was the 

most logical choice. 

The day of the concert was very gratifying. Playing with 

musicians of this caliber is not only exciting, but also 

educational. There is also a level of comfort and trust; 

and this gives an amazing feeling. Indeed, this is part of 

the beauty of this kind of art form. Jazz is a communal 

experience, and the relationships one has with other 

musicians has an impact on one’s own musical style. 

When there is a deep connection between musicians, it 

can be felt in the way they play together. 

Another interesting facet of this performance was 

the extent to which the results were different from 

my own personal expectations. Many of the solos 

took on different directions than what I had anticipated. 

I really enjoyed this aspect of the project, as 

it is those unexpected turns that bring about some 

of the most powerful moments in improvising. Of 

course, sometimes these risks don’t pay off, but they 

have to be done as part of the process. The thrill of 

improvising when everything comes together makes 

the process worth the risk of things not working out. 

This performance was positively received by both 

my peers and mentors, which I greatly appreciate. 

My greatest achievement was that I inspired some of 

the younger musician peers at the University to work


hard and diligently at their craft. Throughout the 

process of researching and developing this music, I 

learned that my art can be a positive force for change 

in the world– whatever that may be: from advocacy 

to suggestion of a better future, or even making 

someone’s day a little better. I hope that this concert 

can also contribute to my future research on the 

development of improvised music. I look forward to 

searching for new sounds, while also pay homage to 

those that came before me. Above all, I hope that my 

music will continue to build upon the rich foundation 

that I, and many others here at UMass Dartmouth, 

draw inspiration from. 

As far as future plans, I would like to make this 

a regular, working group. Upon receiving the recordings, 

I was very pleased with the overall group 

chemistry, but I believe that this group could become 

a more cohesive unit. I felt that the performances 

ran into errors that would not be an issue if we were 

a group that played more regularly. Because of this, I 

would like to perform with this iteration of the group 

whenever the opportunity arises. Additionally, I 

would like to start making inroads in the Boston jazz 

scene, performing with as many different musicians 

as possible– both as a leader and sideman. Overall, 

I am very happy with how this concert turned out. 

It was an honor playing with gifted colleagues and 

mentors, and I hope to do it again in the near future. 

132 

Spheres of Influence in action. Photograph courtesy of Dan Waterman

133

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135 

Research in Social Psychology 

Researching the Psychosocial Well-Being of 

Siblings of Children with Disabilities 

Catrina Combis ‘17 Honors


Through UMass Dartmouth Honors Program and 

thanks to a research grant from the OUR, I launched 

a research study titled “The Relationship Between 

Having a Sibling with a Developmental Disability 

and Indicators of the Typically Developing Sibling’s 

Psychosocial Well-Being.” While brainstorming ideas 

in an introductory Psychology class at the beginning 

of my research process, I immediately thought of my 

own sibling. My sibling was diagnosed with anxiety 

and depression while we were both in high school, 

and the consequent unusual behaviors greatly impacted 

all of our lives. As a Psychology major I strove 

to learn more about my sibling’s diagnoses, and 

decided to dedicate my professional life to children 

with developmental disabilities. 

Left to right: Ramzy Rajeh, Kimberly Schoener, Dr. Christina 

Cipriano, and Catrina Combis. Rajeh and Schoener help code 

Combis’s interviews and Dr. Cipriano is Combis’s supervisor 

136


137 

The purpose of my OUR-funded research is to 

determine how having a sibling with a developmental 

disability impacts a typically developing sibling 

(TDS). Once concluded, this research will help fill 

the gap in the current knowledge about the TDS’s 

psychosocial well-being as well as other factors, including 

the relationship they have with their parents. 

It is essential to understand the relationship between 

the siblings in order to comprehend how that 

relationship affects the development and life of the 

TDS. The research will also highlight the indicators 

of the TDS’s psychosocial well-being. 

When a member of a family receives a medical 

diagnosis, it can have layers of impact on the larger 

family unit. Siblings of children with developmental 

disabilities are a classically understudied population. 

Only recently has there been a rise in studies on 

siblings of children with developmental disabilities 

(Stoneman, 2005). Sibling relationships are one of the 

most significant relationships that humans develop 

and are strongly related to psychosocial adjustment 

(Pollard, Barry, Freedman, & Kotchick, 2013). Although 

much is known about the impact and trajectory of the 

child with a developmental disability, less is known 

about their siblings. 

Developmental disability is operationalized in this 

research as they are described in the Individuals 

with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The IDEA 

federally mandates that schools serve the educational 

needs of eligible students with disabilities 

and ensures students with disabilities have access 

to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). It 

includes a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder 

(ASD), Intellectual Disability, Multiple Handicap, 

Emotional-Behavioral Disorder, and Learning Disability. 

Typical development is operationalized as the 

absence of an IDEA designation. Under the direction 

of Dr. Christina Cipriano, Assistant Professor in the 

Psychology Department, I submitted and received 

IRB approval to compile a list of psycho-educational 

batteries alongside my own developed questionnaire, 

to assess TDS mental health and well-being 

in the community. Using the Qualtrics platform, 

I recruited and surveyed participants, and then 

randomly selected a proportion of participants to 

take part in an information gathering interview. I am 

currently analyzing the Qualtrics and interview data 

using a mixed-methods approach. These include 

descriptive and inferential analyses, and open 

coding for themes. I will be presenting my findings 

at the Annual Meeting of the Council for Excepional 

Children (CEC) in Boston this Spring and will be writing 

up my findings for publication in a peer-reviewed 

psychology journal. 

I have always enjoyed spending my time with 

children since my teenage years and this interest 

has been furthered by the professional connections 

I have developed during my undergraduate education: 

While a student at UMass Dartmouth, I have 

worked for and interned for various organizations 

involving children. I worked for the America Reads 

Program through UMass Dartmouth’s Leduc Center 

for Civic Engagement where I tutored and mentored 

students in schools and after school programs in 

Fall River and New Bedford. I also interned with the


South Coast Autism Center where I modeled social 

skills for young boys with Autism and learned a lot 

more about Autism through observing and interacting 

with many children. I am currently interning 

with Horizons for Homeless Children where I play 

and interact with homeless children in homeless 

shelters that have established therapeutic play 

spaces. As an undergraduate student, I have also 

worked for two professors, Dr. Christina Cipriano 

and Dr. Meredith Dove, on their respective research 

studies. Dr. Cipriano’s research is on the Recognizing 

Excellence in Learning and Teaching (RELATE) 

tool for special education classroom observation. 

Dr. Dove’s research is on nutrition and physical 

activity in childcare settings. My experiences with 

children along with the research opportunities at 

UMass Dartmouth, have formed my professional 

trajectory. Right now I am in the process of preparing 

my applications for graduate school and I look 

forward to pursuing a career in supporting children 

and their families. 

138 

Refrences 

1. 

2. 

Pollard, C. A., Barry, C. M., Freedman, B. H., and Kotchick, B. A. 2013. “Relationship Quality as a 

Moderator of Anxiety in Siblings of Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders or Down 

Syndrome.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 22 (5), 647-657. doi:10.1007/s10826-012-9618-9 

Stoneman, Z. 2005. “Siblings of Children with Disabilities: Research Themes.” Mental Retardation 43 (5), 

339-350.

139

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141 

Research In Mathematics 

Strong Stability Preserving Sixth Order 

Two-Derivative Runge–Kutta Methods 

Gustavo Franco Reynoso ‘17


In the summer 2016 I joined Professor Sigal 

Gottlieb and PhD student Zachary Grant in their 

Computational Mathematics research on “Strong 

Stability Preserving Sixth Order Two-Derivative 

Runge-Kutta Methods.” It was a great experience 

that has helped me understand my abilities and 

my interests. Before I explain the project, I would 

like to go back in time to provide some background 

information about my research. 

142 

Gustavo Franco Reynoso


143 

When I first started taking Computational Mathematics 

curriculum courses back in 2012, I never 

thought research is what I wanted to do. In 2012 I 

joined a class called CSUMS that was centered on 

independent undergraduate research. Even though 

I enjoyed the class, research was not on my mind. 

Eventually, I started taking higher level classes and 

realized that research was the base of everything I 

did, whether it be in my Civil Engineering classes or 

in my Math classes. Subsequently, I decided to do 

research independent of classwork. 

This past summer I approached Dr. Gottlieb to see 

if she would let me join her research group. She 

warmly accepted and started to instruct me in the 

topics I needed to learn. This was just the start. 

Shortly thereafter an OUR summer grant enabled 

me to work with Dr. Gottlieb on a research titled 

“Strong Stability Preserving Sixth Order Two-Derivative 

Runge-Kutta Methods.” Hyperbolic partial 

differential equations (PDEs) describe a wide-range 

of physical phenomena in a variety of fields, such as 

aeronautics, oceanography, and astrophysics. These 

equations describe solutions that have wave-like 

behavior, such as fluid flows and gravitational 

waves. In many cases, the physical behavior of this 

phenomenon and the related solutions to the hyperbolic 

PDE develop sharp gradients or discontinuities. 

In such cases, the numerical methods used to 

approximate the solutions in space and evolve them 

forward in time need to be very carefully designed 

so they can handle the discontinuities and remain 

stable and accurate. 

The design of high order Strong Stability Preserving 

(SSP) time-stepping methods that are advantageous 

for use with spatial discretizations and that have 

nonlinear stability properties needed for the solution 

of hyperbolic PDEs with shocks, has been an 

active area of research over the last two decades. In 

particular, the focus has been to design high order 

methods with large allowable time-step. SSP methods 

in the multistep and Runge-Kutta families have 

been developed. However, these methods have order 

barriers and time-step restrictions. The focus of this 

project was to develop new SSP time discretizations 

by further exploring the class of multi-derivative 

Runge-Kutta methods.


My main job at the beginning was to derive the 

order conditions needed to design higher order 

multi-derivative methods. I derived the two derivative 

Runge-Kutta order conditions up to 6th order 

using what is known as Butcher trees. Just the one 

derivative derivation had 37 trees, after including 

the second derivative, it increased tremendously. 

Some trees had around 15 sub-derivations; this was 

a tedious job that taught me a lot on how to be efficient 

and optimal. After deriving all the order conditions, 

they had to be included into a code that finds 

numerically optimal multi-derivative Runge-Kutta 

methods and tests these methods for accuracy and 

for the sharpness of the SSP condition on test problems 

used previously in the SSP field. We were able 

to find methods that gave us sixth order accurate, 

and after doing so we found that there are 7th order 

methods that work as well. This experience led me to 

realize how I want to further my education. Thanks to 

a summer grant from the OUR as well as help from 

Dr. Gottlieb and Zack Grant, I have decided to pursue 

a PhD at UMD in Engineering and Applied Science. 

This will be an amazing experience and I very much 

look forward to it. To all students out there who have 

yet to find the beauty hidden in the intricate curiosity 

that some call research, I recommend that you get 

involved in research as soon as possible. If you find 

that you don’t like it, it is easy to get out; but, if you 

find it luring and attractive, you will feel like you have 

lost time not doing it earlier. Research is not boring, 

as many students might think. It is challenging 

and never definitive or monotonous. You’re always 

learning something new. Even if you try it once and 

don’t like it, you could still try it again, because there 

are so many topics unexplored that you are bound to 

find something you find interesting. 

I’d like to leave you with this quote by the American 

biochemist and peace activist, Linus Carl Pauling: 

“Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest 

sources of happiness in life.” 

144

145

146


147 

Research In Biochemistry 

Studying the Potential Applications of 

Dipeptide Nanomaterials 

Lisa Perreault ‘17 Honors


I jumped headfirst into computational chemistry 

research at the end of my sophomore year by 

joining the Mayes Research Group, which focuses 

on computational and theoretical chemistry. Now, 

about three years later, I have used this research 

experience to graduate with my Bachelor’s degree 

in Chemistry as an Honors student. I am currently 

continuing this research as a Master’s student, and 

I will use the skills and knowledge I have learned 

through research in my career post-graduation. 

148 

Lisa Perreault


Figure 1. The initial steps of nanotube self-assembly, as investigated in this study. First single dipeptide monomers were studied, 

followed by their dimers, and finally their hexamers 

149 

In my time in the Mayes Research Group, I have been 

able to develop my skills in many different areas. I 

have evolved from an undergraduate student running 

calculations as directed by Dr. Mayes to a graduate 

student coming up with ways to advance our project 

on my own and analyzing results comprehensively. I 

have become confident in using many computational 

programs, such as GAMESS, NAMD, and Spartan16. 

Just as important as the computational chemistry 

skills that I became proficient in, I learned how to 

think and work like a researcher in a collaborative 

environment. I learned how to view a problem from 

different points of view and use these points of view 

to better understand how to approach my research. 

I have had the opportunity improve my presentation 

skills, by sharing my research on several different 

platforms. I have presented research posters on this 

research at on- and off-campus conferences, given 

research talks at chemistry department seminars, 

and even published a paper. These are all skills that I 

will use in my future as a chemist, and I am thankful 

to have gotten to learn them first-hand as a student. 

Dipeptide nanomaterials are relatively new and 

unique biomaterial with many potential applications. 

Their organic nature, rigidity, and flexibility make 

them safe yet strong, lending them to applications 

such as biosensing, tissue engineering, and biological 

scaffolds. Their semiconductor properties make 

them potential alternatives as biological scaffolds 

in solar cells. During the past several years, these 

dipeptide nanomaterials have risen in scientific 

interest and their properties have been investigated 

on both macro- and microscales. However, much 

is still unknown about the self-assembly of these 

dipeptide nanostructures. 

This research aims to understand the early self-assembly 

of aromatic dipeptide nanotubes using a 

variety of quantum computational methods. Four 

dipeptides are considered in this work: linear dityrosine 

(YY), cyclic YY, linear tryptophan-tyrosine (WY), 

and cyclic WY. This research was partially funded 

through a grant from the OUR. All calculations were 

run on the Massachusetts Green High Performance


Computing Center (MGHPCC), a statewide computing 

cluster with high computing capabilities. 

The basic theorized mechanism of nanotube 

self-assembly is that monomers form small aggregates, 

which then form rings, which stack to form 

tubes. So far, I have used a bottom-up approach to 

model these initial steps of nanotube self-assembly 

to provide a fundamental molecular understanding 

of the process. Progress so far can be broken down 

into three basic stages: a study of each of the four 

dipeptides, a study of their dimers, and a study of 

their hexamers (Figure 1). 

In the first stage of the study, conformer analyses of 

the four dipeptides were performed using the MMFF 

implemented in Spartan14 software to determine all 

energetically and geometrically possible configurations 

of the dipeptides. More accurate calculations 

were then carried out with density functional theory, 

specifically DFT-M05/6-31G*, on a few lowest 

stable conformers using GAMESS (General Atomic 

Molecular and Electronic Structure) to determine 

more accurately the lowest-energy conformer of 

each dipeptide, representing their most stable 

forms (Figure 2). Structural analysis revealed that 

the most stable conformers of the linear YY and WY 

dipeptides both featured intramolecular hydrogen 

bonding within their backbones. The most stable 

conformers of the cyclic YY and WY dipeptides 

both feature slightly puckered boat structures in 

their diketone-backbone rings. The orbital analysis 

suggested that π-π stacking, XH-π interactions, and 

charge-transfer interactions likely participate in 

the aggregation and self-assembly of these dipeptides. 

These findings have recently been published 

in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (DOI: 

10.1016/j.comptc.2018.03.031). 

In the second stage of the study, dimers of each of 

the four dipeptides were studied, using the density 

functional tight binding (DFTB) method. The lowest 

energy conformers from stage one were dimerized 

in three orientations: “side by side,” parallel, and 

perpendicular “T.” Analysis of structural and spectroscopic 

properties showed that the side-by-side 

and parallel orientation were found to be the most 

favorable for linear and cyclic dipeptides, respectively. 

This suggests that linear dipeptides mainly 

Figure 2. The optimized structures of the lowest-energy 

conformers of each of the dipeptides studied 

150


depend on interactions between their side chains 

while the cyclic dipeptides have increased interactions 

between their cyclized backbones. 

To investigate the interaction between the dimers 

in more detail, an energy decomposition calculation 

was carried out using the Hartree-Fock, 

HF/6-31G*, level of theory. It showed that for each 

dimer, electrostatic energy, charge transfer energy, 

and electrostatic energy acted as attractive forces 

between dimers and exchange energy acted as a 

repulsive force (Figure 3). The electrostatic energy 

implies the importance of the polar interactions 

between monomers, the exchange energy implies 

the importance of overlapping orbital mixing, the 

dispersion energy implies the importance of weak 

Van der Waals interactions between monomers, and 

the charge transfer energy implies the importance 

of attractive orbital interactions, as in π-π stacking 

or hydrogen bonding. Altogether, this demonstrates 

how several different weak forces come together to 

drive dimerization. 

In the third stage of the study, hexamer rings of 

each of the dipeptides were studied, again using 

DFTB. The lowest-energy conformers from stage one 

151


were arranged into six-membered hexamers. The 

binding energies were found to be moderately large, 

suggesting that the dipeptides have high affinity 

for each other in this hexamer arrangement. The 

binding energies of linear WY and cyclic WY, were almost 

identical, suggesting that both forms of WY are 

equally likely to self-assemble. However, the binding 

energy of cyclic YY was almost twice as much as the 

binding energy of linear YY, suggesting that the cyclic 

form of YY will self-assemble much more readily. In 

fact, the cyclic YY hexamer was found to have the 

largest binding energy of all the dipeptides studied, 

suggesting it is the most likely to form nanotubes. 

The calculated inner and outer diameters of each 

hexamer were compared against experimental data 

for the highly studied diphenylalanine nanotube, 

revealing that these four nanotubes will be slightly 

larger, due to large side chains and higher polarity. 

An interaction energy decomposition was also 

carried out on the hexamers at HF/6-31G* and 

shows that the same forces that drive the interaction 

between the dimers are at play on a larger scale 

also, and therefore likely drive the self-assembling 

of the whole nanotube as well. 

This project can take several directions from here. 

One next step could be to use molecular dynamics 

simulations to study the self-assembly of 

dipeptides by simulating their behavior over time. 

Another next step could be to apply the techniques 

used thus far to tripeptides and tetrapeptides to 

learn about their fundamental properties, as these 

oligopeptides are also commonly used as building 

blocks for peptide nanostructures. 

152

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154


Research In Photojournalism 

A Photo-journalistic Journey into Okinawa 

Lizzy Santoro ‘17 

155


I am a dual major in Photography and Political 

Science. My passion for social and political issues 

always complements my artistic side. In summer 

2016 I received an OUR summer grant to study 

the culture of the American military community of 

Okinawa, Japan. My research was conducted under 

the supervision of Professor Pamela Karimi of Art 

History as well as Professors Victoria Crayhon and 

Sarah Malakoff of the Design Department. 

156 

My decision to do a photo-journalistic research in 

Okinawa was motivated by a personal experience. My 

journey began when I joined an Okinawan martial arts 

dojo, Kodokai, seven years ago. My Sensei is a Marine 

Corps veteran who was stationed in Okinawa during 

the 1970s and learned martial arts during his time 

there. He truly immersed himself in the culture and 

became versed in the conflict between the Okinawans 

and American military. By going to the dojo five days 

a week, three/four hours a day, for seven years I, too, 

learned about the culture and the relationship between 

the American military and Okinawa. 

Lizzy Santoro


157 

There are five times as many American bases in 

Japan than in Afghanistan and 75% of those bases 

are located in just 0.6% of Japan’s landmass, on the 

island of Okinawa. This over-saturation of American 

military on a very small landmass has affected the 

area in many tangible ways—both positive and 

negative. Okinawa’s economy, culture, and history 

have been strongly influenced by America; conversely, 

thousands of Americans have been shaped by the 

Okinawan culture and society. 

important moments and locations and I “framed” 

these moments and locations in meaningful ways. 

Even though the final product—an illustrated 

book—ended up being not too long, it definitely 

proved to be very challenging. The recent history of 

Okinawa is incredibly complicated. It includes 70 

years of injustice and Okinawan bitterness at both 

the Japanese and the American central governments. 

At the macro level, there are fierce political 

debates about how necessary the bases in Okinawa 

are, whether the Okinawan people have been subjugated 

by American and Japanese superpowers, 

and whether the bases do more harm than good. 

But there is also a less polarized micro reality. Most 

Americans are just doing their jobs. They were given 

relatively no choice to be stationed in Okinawa and 

are just fulfilling their duty as honorably as possible. 

Simultaneously, most Okinawans are just living their 

daily lives as best as they can, and as harmoniously 

American soldier shares rations with Okinawan children in 1945 

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

In my recent travel, I did my best to tell the story of 

the American military presence in Okinawa through 

both texts and images. I took notes as I explored 

different places. I interviewed both Americans and 

Okinawans. I did research on my own and I captured 

the culture, utilizing the elegance of the frozen 

moment that only photographs can provide. It is 

important to note that my photographs are not just 

representations of reality; they are mediated images 

with deep meanings. Indeed, I did my best to capture 

Santoro’s photograph of a neighborhood near the American 

base, 2016. American iconography and English Signage are fairly 

common throughout Okinawa, but they are especially prevalent 

near the bases


as possible with their American neighbors. 

There were more challenges than just the complexity 

of my research topic. I struggled particularly 

with the writing portion of this project because my 

upbringing put me on both sides of this debate. I 

grew up in a military family, with a father who was 

a Naval Commander and a brother training to be 

a Marine Corps officer. On the other hand, I have 

strong personal relationships with several people 

who are somewhat critical of the American military 

presence in Okinawa. The only way I could navigate 

through these conflicting emotions was to tell the 

story as accurately as possible. The result of this 

strategy is a book that is as removed from myself 

as I could manage; however, the origins of this book 

could not have been more personal because, for me, 

this research project is about a place where my second 

home was conceived. To read my book, America 

Abroad, and to see more of my photographs, please 

go to this link: www.Issuu.com/americaabroad/docs/ 

okinawa_v03_online_ 

158 

Santoro’s photograph of the Osprey helicopters on Futenma Air Base, 2016


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Santoro’s photograph of two Okinawans taking a selfie with an American at Gate Two street in Okinawa, 2016


160 

America Aborad book cover. To read the book and to view more professionally taken 

photographs go to the link: www.issuu.com/americaabroad/ docs/okinawa_v03_online_

161




Research In 

Child Psychology 

Emotional Differences in Preschool-Aged 

Children 

Alicia Cronister-Morais ‘17


During my first semester as a transfer student here 

at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth I was 

presented with an opportunity to join a research study. 

My advisor, Dr. Robin Locke-Arkerson, was looking 

for interested students to participate in research 

conducted in her Child Emotion Center. Research 

projects in the Child Emotion Center examine emotional 

development in children, with specific interest 

in understanding how various emotional, cognitive, 

and biological processes influence social and emotional 

behavior. Current and future projects of the 

center include individual differences in emotional 

behavior, emotional understanding, neuroendocrine 

(cortisol) and cardiac physiology, attention, language, 

aggressive behavior, bullying, victimization, 

peer rejection, and loneliness. 

Alicia Coronister-Morais and her advisor Dr. Robin 

Locke-Arkerson at the 2017 SRCD (Society for Research in 

Child Development) Conference, where she presented her 

research poster 




Initially I started working in the Child Emotion Center 

as a volunteer, but my interest in research compelled 

me to participate at a greater level. I first assisted 

with a National Institute of Health (NIH) – funded 

study that examines multiple factors associated 

with emotional differences in preschool-aged 

children. Later, this complex study of child emotion 

gave me the opportunity to train on various behavioral, 

cognitive, and biological assessments. Given 

the multitrait-multimethod design employed by 

the study, I was exposed to various forms of data 

collection, including child interviews, physiological 

assessments, teacher- and parent-reports, as well 

as behavioral measures. The behavioral measures 

are very expansive, with many tasks spanning the 

realm of various emotions. The interview measures 

tap into child receptive language skills and knowledge 

of their own and others’ emotions. 

Most importantly, the OUR summer grant and CAS 

Dean’s fellowship provided an opportunity to examine 

questions on how language comprehension 

and emotion knowledge relate to peer rejection and 

externalizing behavior. Preliminary findings from my 

research indicate that children with lower recognition 

of emotional faces and emotional situations 

were more likely than other children to be rejected 

by their peers. Furthermore, a child’s tendency 

to attribute anger to non-anger faces was also 

associated with greater peer rejection. In addition, 

language comprehension was related to emotion 

knowledge and attention problems. 

During this period I also submitted an abstract to 

present some of the preliminary results from the 

study at the biennial meeting of the Society for 

Research in Child Development (SRCD) in Austin, 

This cumulative exposure to the preparation and 

implementation of the study in Dr. Locke-Arkerson’s 

lab prepared me to engage in an individual research 

project. The summer grant I received from OUR and 

the CAS Dean’s summer research fellowship provided 

me with the funds to examine unique research 

questions within this complex study on child emotion. 

I independently carried out all roles required to 

conduct this research project. I was invested in all 

aspects of the study from the beginning (participant 

recruitment) to the end (participant compensation). 

I interacted with many of the school staff and 

families that so kindly volunteered to participate in 

this important research on child emotion. 

Cronister-Morais administering the Peabody Picture Vocabulary 

test as an assessment of receptive language during an 

interview with a preschool-aged child, 2016


Texas, in April 2017. A future goal of mine is to submit 

a manuscript based on my findings for publication in 

a peer-reviewed journal of psychology. 

Being offered the opportunity to work at a greater 

capacity on this research project helped me understand 

the many different techniques employed by 

researchers to gain insight and information into how 

to improve everyday life. In particular, I am thankful 

for a greater understanding of how children’s language 

and emotion knowledge are important for 

adaptive social functioning and how they could be 

helpful in guiding early intervention and prevention. 

Recognizing deficits at an early age increases 

the ability to facilitate improvement in important 

aspects of a child’s relational functioning. 

In addition to addressing my own research questions, 

the data collection that occurred under the 

OUR summer grant and CAS Dean’s fellowship 

will be used to address goals of a broader future research. 

Research in psychology is very important: it 

helps elucidate what makes people think, feel, and 

act in certain situations. It can also give clinicians 

a better understanding of how relationships within 

families can improve. As a Psychology major, I 

wanted to get more involved with research in the 

field. When I first started at the university I hoped 

to gain as much experience within the discipline 

of psychology as I could; I wanted to better understand 

how research is conducted. The opportunity 

to work in Professor Locke-Arkerson’s lab was 

extremely valuable to me. Above all, it prepared me 

for graduate programs in clinical psychology. I am 

currently a full time graduate student in the Master’s 

in Social Work Program at Bridgewater State 

University continuing my education. I will graduate 

in 2020, after which I will obtain my license and 

become a therapist. My ultimate goal is to be an 

LICSW and open my own practice working with children 

and families. Choosing this clinical psychology 

path, I want to develop treatment models based 

on the factors that influence social development. 

Understanding how and why research is conducted 

has helped me in term of my future career goals. I 

look forward to assisting children and families develop 

the skills needed for productive relationships 

and better social interactions. 






Research In History of 

Art & Architecture 

Exploring the Post-Industrial Landscapes 

of the Northeast 

Hannah Gadbois ‘16


I graduated from the Art History Department in 

May 2016. I am from Seekonk, Massachusetts, and 

became interested in art history while attending 

high school there. As a native of New England, I was 

always intrigued by the post-industrial landscapes 

of this region. This post-industrial landscape 

became even more interesting to me when I took 

Architecture & Sustainability in the American 

Post-Industrial City, a course offered by Professor 

Pamela Karimi. The body of literature we covered in 

this class introduced me to the many ways of looking 

at America’s post-industrial environments. 

Gadbois and her classmates taking a tour of abandoned zones 

and vacant lots in the city of New Bedford, 2015 

170


171 

Since the closing of American factories in the late 

1970s, post-industrial ruins have appeared in many 

parts of the United States. Whether left abandoned 

or transformed into new uses, the post-industrial 

building is a prevalent force on the Northeastern 

American setting. Accordingly, these buildings 

(especially their ruinous shells), have been popular 

subjects of both art and art historical research and 

are particularly of interest to photographers. Having 

read a vast body of literature on the American 

post-industrial city, I learned that, unfortunately, 

many of these urban contexts end up remaining in 

ruins, a problem particularly common in Detroit. 

Foreign tourists come to see the abandoned factories, 

forcing the city to remain in disrepair with a 

low quality of life for its citizens. What is the history 

of the fetishization or the neglect of the industrial 

ruin in the New England region? How far back does 

this history go? What can we learn from this history? 

How can this historical knowledge allow us to come 

up with better ways of representing these cities and 

even providing remedies for them? 

character in photography is also directly tied to their 

complicated relationship to American history. The 

industrial factory and its corresponding neighborhood 

was at once a symbol for American power and 

wealth as well as a reflection of the flawed class 

system that forced many into difficult labor. The 

period of prosperity in which factories were prominent 

was also a time of intense race and gender 

boundaries, and reflections on the post-industrial 

building are innately tied to the society created by 

powerful class borders. Americans’ relationship 

to the post-industrial ruin is inherently entwined 

with our complicated feelings about our difficult 

past. However, ruins are fundamentally ambiguous; 

the empty spaces can be nostalgic, prophetic, or 

escapist, so the meaning heavily relies on artists’ 

intentions and viewer expectations. 

In fall 2015 I received a grant from the OUR to investigate 

the ways in which the post-industrial landscapes 

of the Northeast were depicted in the work of 

late-twentieth century artists. My research analyzed 

Northeastern American post-industrial ruins in the 

work of six artists from four perspectives: ruins as 

prophetic, ruins as nostalgic, ruins as disappointment, 

and ruins as problematic. The ambiguity of the 

ruin allows these vastly different lenses to color the 

interpretations of ruins photography. Their complex 

Bernd and Hilla Becher, Coal Tipple, Goodspring, 

Pennsylvania,1975. Screen-shot from the Museum of Modern 

Art website. Screen-shot taken from www.moma.org/collection/ 

works/109523?locale=en. © Museum of Modern Art, New York City


The first and possibly most instinctive way to 

analyze photography of the post-industrial ruin is 

from the perspective of memory and nostalgia. In 

describing the famous photographs of abandoned 

factories taken by her and her husband, Hilla Becher 

says, “the olden days will never come back… there 

is nothing left of the facilities but memories.” In that 

same interview, Becher discussed how her husband 

began to photograph factory ruins as a method of 

preserving them and the memories they held (Becher 

2012). The post-industrial ruin, from the moment 

of the industry’s closing in America, was doomed 

to crumble. Although the factory workers were not 

living incredibly prosperous lives, the buildings still 

represented the American Dream. The time of the 

American factory was a time of self-made men and 

affordable goals. The factory was a way to set out on 

the path to prosperity, a fair-paying job that paved 

the road to success. The Bechers’ photographs 

reflect the sudden loss of a pervasive dream. The 

world rapidly changed, leaving many without steady 

jobs and a predictable role in society. With the economic 

downturn and outsourcing came turmoil. The 

Bechers’ abandoned coal tipple reminds the viewer 

of the coal workers who had built lives around the 

industry, lives that were made suddenly transient. 

The reminiscence surrounding ruins is not entirely 

innocent. Looking nostalgically back can inspire 

“ideological phantasms” (Huyssen, 2011) where we 

imagine better, more simple pasts and void this period 

of American history of its underpinnings of racism, 

sexism, and classism. Many argue for a return 

to the factory period and neglect to acknowledge 

Joachim Koester, Boarded Up House, Philadelphia, 2011. Screenshot 

from Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen. Screen-shot taken 

from www.nicolaiwallner.com/artists.php?action=details&id=3. 

© Galleri Nicolai Wallner 

the negative basis of the era. Art historians Magali 

Arriola and Andreas Huyssen both warn against 

this possible role of ruins, cautioning against the 

destructiveness of the “picturesque ruin” (Arriola, 

2011) on accurate historical memory. From this perspective, 

the ruin can serve to delude recollections 

into overly sentimental and optimistic views of a 

deeply flawed past. However, the ruin can also act to 

reignite memory. Rebecca Solnit (2007) argued that 

our memory is incomplete and ruins are “our guides 

to situating ourselves in a landscape of time.” Artist 

172


173 

Joachim Koester (2010) shares this appreciation 

for ruins as providing an awareness of our place in 

history, allowing us to shape our future in “better and 

surprising ways.” Of course, the difficultly here lies in 

the ambiguity of the ruin. The same building can be 

analyzed by one as a call to action and by another as 

a call to return to the past. Koester speaks passionately 

about his photographs of ruined buildings as 

liminal spaces that incite change, but their ambiguity 

lends itself to a multitude of interpretations, often 

reflecting what the viewer wishes to see. 

Another prominent perspective in the realm of 

ruins photography is the ruin as prophetic. This lens 

stretches back to the beginning of ruins scholarship 

and specifically the popularity of Roman ruins in 

art. Denis Diderot analyzed the interest in ruins in 

the quote, “We contemplate the ravages of time, 

and in our imagination we scatter the rubble of the 

very buildings in which we live over the ground; in 

that moment solitude and silence prevail around 

us, we are the sole survivors of an entire nation that 

is no more. Such is the first tenet of the poetics of 

ruin.” (1995). The destruction of powerful buildings 

of the past inspires the viewer to look prophetically 

forward and predict the end of their own civilization, 

reminded of the ephemerality of society. This 

perspective is reflected in the work of Walker Evans 

(2004) who encouraged artists to “Photograph the 

present as it would be seen in the past.” 

This sense of a forewarned future is very present 

in Walker Evans’s cityscapes with their absence of 

human presence and partly destroyed facades. The 

city objectively existed during the period of factory-closings 

in the 1960s and 1970s but it looks as if 

it foretells a distant future, the future fall of our own 

civilization. This element of the foreseen destruction 

of a building is also a focus in the scholarship of 

Robert Smithson (1996) who describes the phenomena 

of the “ruins in reverse,” that “rise into ruin 

before they are built.” Often, these reverse ruins are 

in construction sites, projects begun during periods 

of economic wealth and abandoned during slower 

economic times. Inherent to Smithson’s ruins in 

reverse is the concept of entropy, or that all things 

increase towards chaos. Even in the process of 

building, the ruins are prophesized and subsequently 

inevitable. A similar analysis to Walker Evans’s work 

can be made of Stephen Shore’s. Shore photographed 

the American Northeast during the same period of 

the factory closings. His works share that prophetic 

emptiness, of a city vacant before its time. The closing 

of factories did not just produce abandoned factories, 

it created abandoned cities, empty of people and past 

prosperity. With that incredibly permeable barrenness 

came mixed feelings about the events that brought 

the cities to their current state. 

Reflecting on the situation of many Northeastern 

cities after the closing of major businesses, many 

artists and art historians turned to the ruin as a 

sign of their disappointment. Edgar Martins, the 

photographer of the photo series “Ruins of the 

Second Gilded Age” (later called “This Is Not A 

House”) described his photographed ruins in the 

statement, “They deploy the metaphor of struggle 

between poetic failures and the promise of success


to suggest a place uncertain of its future” (Dunlap, 

2009). Martins’s photographs reference the concept 

of failure as he creates spaces that are almost ghost 

towns stuck in a “capitalist limbo” between “boomtown 

prosperity and quiet devastation” (Williams, 

2011). While analyzing Martins’s work, art historian 

Gilda Williams (2011) wrote, “So much human failure 

from the recent past is tied up with ruins.” She 

further argued that artists turned to ruins to lament 

the collapse of modernist ideas (Williams, 2011). 

The hopeful and booming future that modernism 

had ceaselessly moved towards had suddenly 

collapsed. With the disappearance of the promised 

future came a reversal of the concept of progress. 

No longer was life getting steadily better, and many 

people now found themselves questioning the future 

they had always been certain of. Martins’s haunting 

photographs of buildings are interestingly timeless; 

they could have been abandoned minutes ago or 

decades ago. This immutability embodies the other 

perspectives, whether these ruins project our future 

or capture our past; they address a disappointment 

with our place in history. 

The final, and oft forgotten, perspective on photographic 

ruins is their problematic nature. Scholarship 

on the abstract nature of the ruin regularly 

neglects the fact that people still live in these areas. 

Though many fled to suburbia during the factories’ 

prosperity, the areas surrounding the industrial 

buildings still held a large population. Camilo Jose 

Vergara addresses that in his photo series, “Fern 

174 

Stephen Shore. Holden St, North Adams, Massachusetts, 1974. 

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Screenshot 

from the personal website of the artist. Screen-shot 

taken from www.stephenshore.net/photographs/six/index. 

php?page=8&menu=photographs 

Edgar Martins, Untitled, Connecticut. From This Is Not a House 

Series, 2008. Screen-shot taken from Purdy Hicks Gallery’s 

website. Screen-shot taken from www.purdyhicks.com/display. 

php?aID=243#2. © Purdy Hicks Gallery, London


175 

St., Camden” and “5th Ave at 7th Street” in which 

he photographed several streets in industrial 

areas of Camden and Newark, New Jersey, from 

1979, the time of many factory closings, until 2014. 

Vergara (2013) describes his images as “bricks 

that when placed next to each other reveal shapes 

and meanings of neglected urban communities.” 

His buildings are not ruins, they are homes. Of all 

the meanings that the ruin can hold to a removed 

observer, they cannot be more powerful than the 

understanding of the ruin as part of your home 

environment. Even if artists photograph with this in 

mind, these images of “gutted buildings can never 

adequately describe the longstanding causes of 

urban poverty” (Woodward, 2013). The reflective 

nature of a photograph allows for meditation on the 

subject, but without hearing from the people who 

are living among ruins, one cannot truly understand 

the basis of the ruin. Furthermore, this reflection 

does not improve the neighborhood. Fetishizing 

ruins does nothing for the efforts to revitalize 

urban areas. Although the goal of this paper is to 

understand artistic intentions and the discourse 

surrounding the ruin, it is still necessary to address 

the abstracted nature of ruin photography. 

ruin exists in the hometowns of real people. As art 

historian Lucy Lippard once remarked, “Poverty is 

a great preserver of history” (Solnit, 2007, 355). It is 

vastly important that we understand the complexities 

of our own place in history without romanticizing 

the past, but it is exceedingly important to 

address the ruin not as a hypothetical but as a real 

issue. The photographed post-industrial ruin points 

to the American past of prosperity and unequal 

wealth while also gesturing toward our increasingly 

ambiguous future. The building itself cannot stand 

as a reminder to this, it is not “liminal,” or “marginal,” 

it is real and it must be addressed as such. 

While conducting my research on the portrayal of 

post-industrial cities in the Northeast, I worked 

on several off-campus research projects including 

one concerning the work of the renowned American 

landscape painter, Albert Bierstadt, for an exhibition 

at the New Bedford Art Museum. 

The American perspective on post-industrial ruins 

is above all else, temporal. The ruin is at once 

analyzed as nostalgic, prophetic, and a timeless 

symbol of failure. Tied up with our understanding 

of ruins are our feelings about our American past, 

our understandings of our flawed history and our 

shared hopes for what the future holds. Among all 

these hypotheticals, however, is the fact that the 

Camilo Jose Vergara, 5th Ave at 7th Street, Newark. NJ, 1980. 

Screen-shot from the artist’s website. Screen-shot taken 

from www.camilojosevergara.com/Camden/Former-Camden-Free-Public-Library/1. 

© Camilo Jose Vergara


Upon graduation I received a Mellon Summer 

Internship grant from the RISD Museum. There I 

worked with Emily Peters at the Department of 

Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. My contributions 

involved cataloguing Flemish prints in the extensive 

RISD archives as well as publishing an essay in RISD 

Museum’s online journal, Manual. 

I am now continuing my research on the architecture 

of the city of New Bedford’s Abolitionist neighborhood. 

The project, called The Aesthetics and 

Architectonics of an Abolitionist Neighborhood is 

led by Professor Karimi and is funded by a Creative 

Economy Grant. So far, in my capacity as a research 

assistant to the project, I have conducted research 

at the archives of the Whaling Museum, the New 

Bedford Registry of Deeds, and the New Bedford 

Public Library. These research projects have prepared 

me well for graduate school. I am currently 

applying to several graduate programs in Art History 

and I hope to be a professor of Art History, training 

the future generation of Americans. 

176 

Gadbois exploring New Bedford’s abolitionist homes at the New 

Bedford Registry of Deeds, 2016 

Snapshot of Gadbois’s article for RISD Museum’s Manual journal


Refrences 

177 

1. 

2. 

3. 

4. 

5. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

9. 

Magali Arriola, “A Victim and a Viewer: Some Thoughts on Anticipated Ruins,” in Ruins, ed. Brian Dillon 

(Cambridge, MIT Press, 2011), 174. 

Hilla Becher, “Hilla Becher Interviewed at Paris Photo,” Phaidon, November 12, 2012, accessed March 

29, 2016, http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2012/november/21/hilla-becher-interviewed-at-paris-photo/. 

Denis Diderot, Le Salon de 1767, trans. John Goodman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 

1995), 196-197. 

David W. Dunlap, “Behind the Scenes: Edgar Martins Speaks,” The New York Times, July 31, 2009, 

accessed April 2, 2016, http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/behind-10/?_r=0. 

Walker Evans, “Walker Evans (1903–1975),” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (New York: The Metropolitan 

Museum of Art, 2000–). http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/evan/hd_evan.htm (October 

2004). 

Andreas Huyssen, “Authentic Ruins,” in Ruins, ed. Brian Dillon (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 53. 

Joachim Koester, “Questionnaire: Joachim Koester,” Frieze, November 1, 2010, accessed March 30, 

2016, https://www.frieze.com/article/questionnaire-joachim-koester/. 

Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” in Robert Smithson: The Collected 

Writing, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 68-74. 

Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California 

Press, 2007), 354-355. 

Camilo Jose Vergara, “From the Inner Cities to the White House,” Time, July 9, 2013, accessed April 1, 

2016, http://time.com/3800841/from-the-inner-cities-to-the-white-house-photographs-by-camilojose-vergara/. 

Gilda Williams, “It Was What it Was: Modern Ruins,” in Ruins, ed. Brian Dillon (Cambridge: MIT Press, 

2011), 96-99. 

Richard B. Woodward, “Disaster Photography: When is Documentary Exploitation?” ArtNews, February 

6, 2013, accessed April 1, 2016, http://www.artnews.com/2013/02/06/the-debate-over-ruin-porn/.


178

179




Research In Mechanical 

Engineering 

Going into the Cloud to Study Renewable 

Energy Extraction from Ocean Waves 

Cole Freniere ‘16


I joined the Computational Multiphase Flow Research 

Group in the summer after my sophomore 

year. Led by Dr. Mehdi Raessi, the research group 

is primarily focused on Computational Fluid Dynamics 

(CFD) simulations of two immiscible fluids 

interacting with moving or stationary solid bodies. 

Specifically, I was assigned to a project funded by 

the National Science Foundation (CBET Grant No. 

1236462), which involved simulations of Ocean 

Wave Energy Converters interacting with ocean 

waves. These Wave Energy Converters are complex 

to simulate, and require a large supercomputer to 

run for an extended period of time. How quickly the 

supercomputer solves the problem mainly depends 

on its hardware—processors, network cables, etc. 

There are several supercomputers available to us 

Cole Freniere watching the clock count down before he begins 

his timed presentation at the American Physical Society Division 

of Fluid Dynamics conference, 2016 




as university researchers, but we wanted to explore 

a new option—Cloud Computing. Amazon, whom 

we all know for its large online store, also offers 

computing resources in the Cloud, which customers 

can essentially rent. It is possible to build a supercomputer 

in the cloud, for a cost that depends on 

how powerful the hardware is, and how long we 

use the resources. The grant I received from the 

OUR provided the funds we needed to “benchmark” 

Amazon’s Cloud to see if it would be an economically 

feasible option for us. The outcome of the study 

was that Amazon’s Cloud offers a high amount of 

flexibility, and short term benefits, but over the long 

term it is not an economically feasible alternative to 

university supercomputers. This is mainly because 

we need access to these resources continuously for 

long periods of time, which is not the Cloud’s strong 

suit at this point. However, it seems more appealing 

for smaller, short term projects, for example, 

engineering consulting work. The cloud is also 

compelling because it offers so many different sets 

of hardware, which are all inexpensive to test, and 

enables exploration of the many different flavors of 

hardware available. 

the experts in computational physics, and a great 

learning experience. 

I presented the results from this project at the 

American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics 

conference, which had more than 2,000 

attendees; this was during my senior year, and it 

is rare for an undergraduate student to be able 

to make a conference presentation. In addition, I 

gave presentations at three other local research 

conferences. I was also able to publish my work in 

In this OUR supported project, I worked with Prof. 

Mehdi Raessi and his PhD student Ashish Pathak 

(both from the Mechanical Engineering Department) 

as well as Dr. Gaurav Khanna, professor at the 

Physics Department and the associate director of 

the Center for Scientific Computing & Visualization 

Research. Dr. Khanna is well known for his Playstation 

supercomputer that is used for black hole 

simulations. It was a pleasure collaborating with 

The cover page of the CiSE journal


the journal Computing in Science and Engineering, 

co-published by the IEEE Computer Society and the 

American Institute of Physics. 

My OUR funded project was very fruitful for many 

reasons. It provided insight into an unexplored alternative 

to meet my research group’s supercomputing 

needs, and the journal publication contributes to 

a specialized area of research. Also, the project 

enabled me to experience presenting at a research 

conference, and publishing a paper. Finally, it was a 

valuable experience because I learned something 

about a growing field of interest, High Performance 

Computing (HPC). This changed the way I view 

science and made me reflect on the capability of 

computer models. Additionally, it made me wonder: 

to what extent can we really simulate physical phenomena? 

Nowadays, the scope of simulations that 

scientists and engineers are implementing is incredible, 

and new advances are being made all the time. 

I find scientific computing a compelling subject, and 

it is the main reason I decided to pursue a Master’s 

Degree in Mechanical Engineering. 

This project was related to my research on Ocean 

Wave Energy Converters, because it introduced me 

to the field of High Performance Computing, and 

gave me an idea about how the simulation model 

performs on different types of supercomputers. 

Supercomputers come in many different flavors, and 

it is not always apparent which flavor is the best, 

because different algorithms require specialized 

hardware to run efficiently. For instance, data analytics 

and molecular dynamics models would require 


Computer simulation of an ocean wave energy converter. The 

device is a buoyant flap that pivots around a shaft on the ocean 

floor. Courtesy of Ashish Pathak 

The front page of Freniere’s undergraduate research 

publication, which was partially supported by the OUR


a completely different structure of supercomputer 

for optimal efficiency. When we get access to better 

hardware, we can do larger simulations that solve 

higher levels of complexity of the ocean wave motion 

as it interacts with the Wave Energy Converter. This 

can significantly increase insight into the physical 

problem. I was very excited to present the Wave Energy 

research at the 2016 American Physical Society 

conference in Portland, Oregon. 

As a mechanical engineering student, I was compelled 

by the subject material, and I was eager to 

get involved with undergraduate research. I also 

enrolled in the 5 year BSMS program, which enabled 

me to take graduate courses my senior year, counting 

toward both a bachelor’s and master’s degree. In 

my view, undergraduate research can be an excellent 

way to accelerate a graduate degree. Research 

is also interesting because during the course of 

conducting a research project, one always learns 

something new; it never really gets old and, above 

all, it is intellectually challenging. Another noteworthy 

issue is that everybody’s research trajectory is 

different. So, I can’t really tell you what it’s like to do 

research–you will need to see for yourself! 



Refrences 

1. 

Cole Freniere, Ashish Pathak, Mehdi Raessi, and Gaurav Khanna, “The Feasibility of Amazon’s Cloud 

Computing Platform for Parallel, GPU-Accelerated, Multiphase-Flow Simulations,” Computing in 

Science & Engineering, vol. 18, no. , pp. 68-77, Sept.-Oct. 2016, doi:10.1109/MCSE.2016.94. 






Research in Biology 

Behavioral Response of Mud Crab 

Megalopae to Chemical Cues from Fish 

Species & Adult Conspecifics 

Jerelle Jesse ‘15 Honors


During the summer of 2014 OUR funded my honors 

research with Dr. Nancy O’Connor. This research has 

recently been published in the Journal of Experimental 

Marine Biology and Ecology, and in what 

follows, I provide a summary of this research for the 

OUR blog readers. 

In Massachusetts, Asian shore crabs have become 

more abundant than native mud crabs. Crab survival 

can be enhanced by antipredator behaviors in 

response to chemical cues released by predators. 

190 

The purpose of this study was to determine if and 

how mud crab megalopae (the last larval stage of 

the crab) respond to chemical cues from local fish 

predators and adult crabs of the same species and 

to understand the way local mud crab megalopae 

behaviorally respond to chemical cues. The study 

focused mainly on the importance of early life stages, 

the origin of the chemical cues, and their ability to 

respond to chemical stimuli. This could potentially 

shed light on how an invasive species can be more 

successful than a native species in this habitat. 

Jerelle Jesse


191 

Female egg-bearing mud crabs were collected from 

the rocky intertidal habitat during low tide periods. 

When the females became close to releasing larvae 

they were transferred to a small finger bowl, then 

placed in the incubator. 

Once the larvae were released they were cared for 

until they reached the megalopae stage when they 

were designated to an experiment. 

Chemical cues for the experiment were made by 

the fish species or adult mud crabs being held in 

artificial seawater tanks to let their cue release 

into the water. The chemical cue seawater flowed 

through the apparatus, a glass pipe-shaped piece of 

equipment with an inflow opening, outflow opening, 

and a middle opening on top. The middle opening 

was used to drop the individual megalopa into the 

apparatus with the cue flowing through. 

Once the megalopae were dropped into the apparatus 

they displayed 1 to 3 different behaviors, and 

then flowed out into the sink. The behaviors were 

categorized based on the orientation to the flow, 

the limb position, and the action performed. These 

behaviors included: control swim, random swim, 

perimeter swim, cyclone swim, closed roll, open roll, 

swim out, sideways walk run, slide, and push. 

The data were analyzed using generalized linear 

modeling. The results show no difference in behavioral 

responses between the two mud crab species. 

However, more open rolling behavior was seen for 

the mummichog cue, and significantly more walking 

on the bottom was seen for the adult cue. This 

indicates that megalopae can detect and respond to 

chemical cues in their environment. Megalopae can 

also tell the difference between adult conspecific 

cues and predator cues, and they can perform a 

different behavioral response depending on the cue. 

My research experiences in Dr. Nancy O’Connor’s 

lab are some of my best memories from my time at 

UMass Dartmouth. I had so much fun conducting the 

research that summer, then rising to the challenge of 

analyzing the data, and ultimately getting the opportunity 

to present my work at multiple conferences. 

It was a rewarding experience that made my career 

Asian shore crab 

The chemical cue flowed from the reservoir to a flow stabilizer, 

then a glass apparatus, and finally the sink. The megalopae were 

dropped into the middle funnel shaped opening in the apparatus


at UMass Dartmouth truly special. Currently, I am 

working for the Division of Marine Fisheries and applying 

to graduate schools. I know that this research 

helped me become better prepared for fieldwork and 

graduate school. Being able to work with a master’s 

student, Ami Araujo, while I was an undergraduate 

gave me insight to the process and hard work involved 

with graduate school. Without OUR’s help I would not 

have been able to conduct this research, and help 

fulfill my dream of working as a marine biologist and 

going to graduate school. 

Egg-bearing female mud crab 

Control swim 

Megalopa on its back 

192 

Mud crab megalopa 

Snapshot from the official website of the Journal of 

Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, where Jesse’s 

research results were published 

Incubator with glass bowls of mud crab larvae before reaching 

the megalopal stage as well as females almost ready to release 

larvae in small glass finger bowls

193

194


195 

Research in Social Psychology 

Does Ego-Resilience Impact Friendship 

Outcomes? 

Elizabeth B. Lozano ‘13


I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, as well 

as a Master’s degree in Research Psychology 

from UMass Dartmouth. Currently, I’m a first-year 

doctoral student studying Social Psychology at the 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The 

story of my research began in 2009 as a freshman 

at UMass Dartmouth. Having always wanted to be 

a “doctor”, I felt completely unsure of my future and 

where I was headed. Luckily, Dr. Trina Kershaw’s 

PSYCH 101 class (in particular, her weekly book club) 

got me really excited about Psychology! This interest 

quickly developed into my active involvement as an 

undergraduate research assistant. 

196 

Elizabeth B. Lozano (right) and Dr. Mahzad Hojjat at the International 

Association for Relationship Research (IARR) conference, 2015


197 

As the next few years passed, the passion for serving 

as an RA blossomed into my undergraduate thesis 

as a Commonwealth Honors Program Scholar and 

consequently, my desire to attend graduate school. 

I was extremely fortunate to have a faculty member 

whose research was closely aligned with my own. Dr. 

Mahzad Hojjat had a keen interest in Positive Psychology 

which led to my idea of studying resilience 

and positive emotions in the context of friendship. 

As daunting as the project was at times, I knew it 

was going to help me further my goals. 

Looking back, the person who truly inspired me was, 

indeed, my advisor, Dr. Hojjat. Despite every challenge, 

she encouraged me to keep going. Every week I looked 

forward to our talks about research and academia. As 

we bonded throughout the years, Dr. Hojjat became 

the role model that I wished to emulate. 

By the time application deadlines for graduate 

programs approached, I was certain that my dream 

was taking hold. Not only had I established fruitful 

contact with potential lab directors (i.e., PIs), but 

I possessed summa cum laude standing, approximately 

four years of research experience, and 

leadership in extracurricular activities. In an effort to 

present myself even better, I chose to pursue a terminal 

Master’s degree in Research Psychology and 

a teaching assistantship for my tenure of graduate 

school. Through these opportunities I obtained valuable 

experiences, such as supervising an undergraduate 

honors student on her thesis and co-teaching 

the lab component of a graduate-level statistics 

class. Above all, I published the results of my OUR 

funded honors thesis research. The research examined 

the connection between resilience and beneficial 

outcomes in young adult friendships. It was 

Snapshot from Lozano’s article, written in conjunction with Mahzad Hojjat and Judith Sims-Knight


found that resilience and positive emotions were 

associated with desirable friendship outcomes such 

as closeness, maintenance behaviors, and received 

social support. Most importantly, we are among the 

first to discover that positive emotions mediate (or 

explain) this relationship. Our results have important 

implications for interpersonal functioning, most 

notably that positive emotions may lead to positive 

behaviors (i.e., friendship maintenance) and higher 

quality friendships. 

cultivate my strong work ethic and desire to excel 

in research, thanks to the passion and support of 

faculty and staff. I can safely say that my scholarly 

experience as a Corsair effectively prepared me 

for the challenges of today, where I am a student 

at one of the best Social Psychology programs in 

the country. It is my hope that sharing my research 

journey will encourage readers to pursue their passion 

despite the many challenges and roadblocks 

that may lie ahead. 

Two years later, and with considerably more experience, 

I applied to PhD programs. I had two options. 

The first option was to work as an IRB Analyst at 

Tufts University in Boston, close to home, while the 

second prospect involved moving my life to Illinois to 

work in a research lab at U of I. Rather than focusing 

on the short-term sacrifices (e.g., location, time, 

and money), I recognized that the research position 

would give me more opportunities to network, all the 

while allowing me to do what I love. I was accepted to 

the PhD program in Social Psychology at the University 

of Illinois In Urbana-Champaign. 

198 

Fast forward to October 2016 and I’m about a 

month into my long-awaited journey as a doctoral 

student. My new advisor and I are working on a 

series of experiments investigating whether blame 

and praise are socially contagious. We’re particularly 

interested in the ways that individuals quantify 

these judgements. 

The six years at UMass Dartmouth were some of 

the best years of my life—every experience helped 

The cover page of the Journal of Individual Differences, where 

Lozano’s OUR funded research was published


Refrences 

1. 

Elizabeth B. Lozano, Mahzad Hojjat and Judith Sims-Knight, “Does Ego-Resilience Impact Friendship 

Outcomes?” Journal of Individual Differences (2016), 37, pp. 128-134. DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000197. 

© 2016 Hogrefe Publishing. 

199


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