Utah State Celebrates Researchers at Research Week, April 11-15

Next week, the Office of Research will host its annual Research Week, with events happening each day from April 11-15 in a celebration of the research accomplishments of students and faculty at Utah State University.

This year's Research Week is notable as it marks a return to primarily in-person events after two years of virtual-only events. It also marks the first Research Week since Utah State attained its status as a Carnegie R1 research institution, a recently acquired title for the university recognizing the highest tier of research schools in the nation.

The timeline for the events for the week is as follows:

Monday, April 11 | Faculty Author Exhibition: The week gets started with the Faculty Author Exhibition, which celebrates the USU faculty who have published a book in the past year, at 3:30 p.m. in the New Books Lounge of the Merrill-Cazier Library. Those interested in attending are encouraged to RSVP.

Three of the authors will speak at the event: Joseph Wilson of the College of Science, Felipe Valencia, and Rebecca Walton, both from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The event will also recognize authors from the previous two years who didn't receive an exhibition event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the published works will be on display in the library, and each of the books from the exhibition will be available through the Digital Commons on Issuu.

For 2022, the authors and their books are:

• Brian McCuskey: How Sherlock Pulled the Trick: Spiritualism and the Pseudoscientific Method
• Felipe Valencia: The Melancholy Void
• Gregory J. Madden: An Introduction to Behavior Analysis
• H.J. Francois Dengah, II: Systematic Methods for Analyzing Culture
• Jason Gilmore: Exceptional Me: How Donald Trump Exploited the Discourse of American Exceptionalism
• Jason Olsen: Mark Gruenwald and the Star Spangled Symbolism of Captain America, 1985-1995
• Joseph S. Wilson: Common Bees of Eastern North America
• Joshua Thoms: Open Education and Second Language Learning and Teaching: The Rise of a New Knowledge Ecology
• Li Guo: Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women’s Tanci Fiction
• Lori Roggman: Working Well With Babies
• Matthew LaPlante: The AFIB Cure: Get Off Your Medications, Take Control of Your Health, and Add Years to Your Life
• Rebecca Walton: Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work: Theories, Methodologies, and Pedagogies
• Reyhan Baktur: Antenna Design for CubeSats
• Ryan B. Berke: Challenges in Mechanics of Time Dependent Materials, Fracture, Fatigue, Failure and Damage Evolution, Volume 2: Proceedings of the 2019 Annual Conference on Experimental and Applied Mechanics
• Ryan B. Berke: Fracture, Fatigue, Failure and Damage Evolution, Volume 3: Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Conference on Experimental and Applied Mechanics
• Ryan Knowles and Steven P. Camicia: Education for Democracy: A Renewed Approach to Civic Inquiries for Social Justice
• Susan M. Cogan: Catholic Social Networks in Early Modern England: Kinship, Gender and Coexistence
• Todd K. Moon: Error Correction Coding: Mathematical Methods and Algorithms, Second Edition

Tuesday and Wednesday, April 12 and 13 | Student Research Symposium Utah State University's largest display of student research is back in the Merrill-Cazier Library, as hundreds of graduate and undergraduate researchers will showcase their research efforts to evaluators and attendees at the Student Research Symposium (SRS).

At SRS, students are given the opportunity to develop skills in research communications and to receive specific feedback from faculty evaluators. This year, the researchers will be sharing their findings through poster displays, slide decks, and art exhibits, with students representing every college and many departments within the university.

The best presentations, as determined by the faculty evaluators, will be recognized at the Student Research Awards ceremony on Friday. SRS will be held in the main atrium and various first-floor classrooms in the Merrill-Cazier Library from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on both event days. Presentations materials will also be viewable online on the Symposium website.

Thursday, April 14 | D. Wynne Thorne Lecture The D. Wynne Thorne Lecture recognizes the previous year's recipient of the D. Wynne Thorne Career Research Award. This year, Dr. Ronald Sims of the College of Engineering and the Biological Engineering Department will share stories and lessons learned in his many years of research at Utah State. The lecture will be at 3:30 p.m. in the New Books Lounge of the Merrill-Cazier Library.

At the lecture, Sims will talk about how he navigated four degrees as a first-generation college student. He will also talk about his work at the Central Valley Water Reclamation Facility, where he is currently trying to figure out how to use algae to recycle the 60 million gallons of waste that flow in every day into the facility. His work has garnered more than $15 million dollars in research funding in his time at the university. Those interested in Sims’ work can RSVP for the event.

Friday, April 15 | Student Research Awards Ceremony The final event of Research Week 2022 is the Student Research Awards Ceremony, which recognizes the college awardees of the Peak Prize: Undergraduate Researcher of the Year, Graduate Student Researcher of the Year, and Doctoral Student Researcher of the Year. The event will also recognize the Student Research Symposium award recipients. The ceremony will be held in the Main Atrium of the Merrill-Cazier Library from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.