Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program Project .

Penn Undergraduate Research MentoringProgramProject DescriptionsSummer 2019Please read this before proceeding to project listings!Application and instructions at https://tinyurl.com/PURM2019Unless otherwise noted, current freshmen and sophomores may apply for any listedproject.Students are encouraged to learn more about faculty interests by reviewing facultywebpages and recent publications to determine your interest level in particularprojects.You never know where you might find a project that interests you! While projectsare listed by primary department, many of them are interdisciplinary in nature. Wesuggest that you use keyword searches in this document to identify additionalprojects that would be of interest to you.Students should NOT contact faculty about their projects until contacted for aninterview or the PURM selection process has been completed.

Return to top of documentTable of ContentsAnnenberg.6COMMUNICATION. 6Arts and Sciences .7AFRICANA STUDIES . 7ANTHROPOLOGY . 8ART HISTORY. 9BIOLOGY . 10CHEMISTRY . 14CLASSICAL STUDIES . 16EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE . 17EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CIVILIZATIONS . 18ECONOMICS . 18ENGLISH . 19GERMAN . 21HISTORY . 22HISTORY & SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE . 24LATIN AMERICAN AND LATINO STUDIES . 25LINGUISTICS . 26NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES AND CIVILIZATIONS . 28PHILOSOPHY . 29PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY . 29POLITICAL SCIENCE . 35PSYCHOLOGY . 37RELIGIOUS STUDIES . 42ROMANCE LANGUAGES . 42SOCIOLOGY . 43Return to top of document2

Return to top of documentSOUTH ASIA STUDIES . 44Dental Medicine.47ANATOMY AND CELL BIOLOGY . 47ORAL SURGERY AND PHARMACOLOGY . 47ORTHODONTICS . 49PATHOLOGY. 49PERIODONTOLOGY . 50PREVENTIVE AND RESTORATIVE DENTISTRY . 51Design .52ARCHITECTURE . 52CITY PLANNING . 56FINE ARTS . 57Education .60EDUCATION, CULTURE, & SOCIETY . 60READING/WRITING/LITERACY. 61Engineering and Applied Sciences .62BIOENGINEERING . 62CHEMICAL AND BIOMOLECULAR ENGINEERING . 63COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCE . 64ELECTRICAL & SYSTEMS ENGINEERING . 69MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING . 71MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AND APPLIED MECHANICS . 72Law .76LAW . 76Medicine .80ADOLESCENT MEDICINE . 80ANESTHESIOLOGY AND CRITICAL CARE . 80BIOCHEMISTRY AND BIOPHYSICS . 88BIOSTATISTICS, EPIDEMIOLOGY, AND INFORMATICS . 89Return to top of document3

Return to top of documentCANCER BIOLOGY . 92CARDIOVASCULAR MEDICINE . 94CELL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY . 97EMERGENCY MEDICINE . 100FAMILY & COMMUNITY HEALTH . 101GASTROENTEROLOGY . 102GENETICS . 104GERIATRIC MEDICINE. 107HEMATOLOGY-ONCOLOGY . 109MEDICAL ETHICS AND HEALTH POLICY . 110MEDICINE . 114MICROBIOLOGY . 124NEONATOLOGY. 127NEUROLOGY . 128NEUROSCIENCE . 136NEUROSURGERY. 140OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY . 143OPHTHALMOLOGY . 144ORTHOPAEDIC SURGERY . 145OTORHINOLARYNGOLOGY . 148PATHOLOGY. 150PEDIATRICS . 157PHARMACOLOGY . 173PHYSIOLOGY . 175PSYCHIATRY . 176PSYCHOLOGY . 186RADIATION ONCOLOGY . 188RADIOLOGY . 190SURGERY . 196Nursing .199BIOBEHAVIORAL HEALTH SCIENCES . 199Return to top of document4

Return to top of documentFAMILY & COMMUNITY HEALTH . 200Social Policy and Practice .203NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP . 203SOCIAL WORK . 204SOCIOLOGY . 206Veterinary Medicine .208BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES . 208CLINICAL STUDIES NEW BOLTON . 209CLINICAL STUDIES PHILADELPHIA. 212PATHOBIOLOGY . 213Wharton .218ACCOUNTING . 218BUSINESS ECONOMICS & PUBLIC POLICY . 218FINANCE . 220LEGAL STUDIES AND BUSINESS ETHICS . 221MANAGEMENT . 222MARKETING . 223OPERATIONS, INFORMATION AND DECISIONS . 224STATISTICS . 227Return to top of document5

Return to top of documentAnnenbergCOMMUNICATIONJoseph CappellaProject: Tobacco Control CommunicationStudents joining our research team will contribute to research focusing on selecting, designing,testing, and evaluating messages for cancer communication research, specifically tobacco relatedcommunication research. Students will help identify and archive tobacco control messages andmanufacturer claims about modified risk tobacco products, including monitoring social mediaand established media for any new claims. Students will also participate in directed literaturesearches and summaries, directed searches for online materials, message coding, and preparingparticipant surveys.Our research team is multifaceted and collaborative. Students who are inquisitive and detailoriented will thrive with our mentorship. Students with an interest in public health research andhealth communication would most benefit from this research experience. By participating in ourresearch, students will gain experience in survey development and design, research methods,participant recruitment, data collection, and data management.Return to top of document6

Return to top of documentArts and SciencesAFRICANA STUDIESMichael HanchardProject: The relationship between fascism and racism in modern politicsProf. Michael Hanchard, Dept. Chair, Africana StudiesDirector, The Marginalized Populations ProjectI am interested in working with two undergraduate students who would serve as my researchassistants during the summer months to conduct research for a book manuscript I am developingon the relationship between fascism and racism, historically and in contemporary politics invarious parts of the world. The main objective of this book is to educate a non-specialistaudience about fascism’s fundamental reliance on racial rule, whose existence in modernWestern nation-states pre-dates the emergence of fascism in the late 1920’s. Racial rule—conquest, colonialism, segregation and apartheid-- was central to the political imaginaries offascism, fascist aesthetics, and the development of bureaucracies designed to categorize andcontrol dominant and subordinate populations inhabiting the same territorial space.Selected students will learn time-honored research skills--working in libraries and archives— inaddition to their deployment of online research skills. Students will also learn qualitativemethodological approaches to phenomena that persist across space and time (cross-spatial andcross temporal analysis). Students will become familiar with scholarship across the disciplines ofhistory and the social sciences, social theory and cultural criticism about the empirical cases offascist and neo-fascist popular mobilization, in addition to actual fascist governance in the1920’s and 1930’s across Europe and the United States, as well as in contemporary Brazil, theUnited States, Greece, the Netherlands and Germany. With this knowledge, students will assistin the redesign of an undergraduate level course on race and racism in comparative perspective.Return to top of document7

Return to top of documentANTHROPOLOGYMorgan HokeProject: Research Assistant for the Biocultural Anthropology Methods LaboratoryThe Biocultural Anthropology Methods Laboratory is a new lab on campus that uses mixedmethods to examine health and wellbeing here at Penn and around the world. The laboratoryincludes a wet lab where we conduct immunoassay analyses of blood and saliva samples toexamine various indicators of immune health, psychosocial stress, and intestinal health as well ashormones like testosterone. In addition to quantitative biological methods, we also use surveydata to better understand health. We also employ cultural and ethnographic methods such asinterviews and participant observation. For this position, we seek motivated undergraduates whoare interested in learning all elements of anthropological data collection and analysis.There are two roles that we are looking to fill. The first is for someone who has a workingknowledge of Spanish. We have a significant amount of survey and interview data that needs tobe processed and analyzed. Duties and responsibilities would include transcription of Spanishinterviews, entry of survey data in Spanish, and some translation. The RA may also be asked tocomplete tasks including photocopying, scanning, and filing. This position comes with thepossibility of serving as an RA on a data collection trip to our main field site in Nuñoa, Peruprovided the student is willing and able to travel. In this case, the student would also learn theprotocol for collection biomarker-based data including anthropometric measurement and driedblood spot sampling. This position will provide the students with a number of important skillbuilding opportunities including but not limited to: data collection (both ethnographic andbiological), data entry and management, data analysis, transcription, translation, and thepreparation of academic manuscripts. The student may also benefit from the opportunity to traveland undertake research in an international setting. There are also possibilities for learning wetlabs technique if the student desires.The second role is oriented toward wet lab analysis. This student would learn basic ELISAtechniques and would be responsible for conducting laboratory analysis at the BAMLab at Penn.This would include managing samples, preparing samples for analysis, running assays, andexamining results. This student may also be asked to participate in data entry, data cleaning, dataanalysis, manuscript preparation, and light cleaning work in the context of laboratorymaintenance. This position also comes with the possibility of serving as an RA on a datacollection trip to our main field site in Nuñoa, Peru provided the student is willing and able totravel and funding can be acquired. In this case, the student would also learn the protocol forcollection biomarker-based data including anthropometric measurement and dried blood spotsampling. This opportunity also offers a number of benefits including wet lab skills inconducting immuno-based assays, laboratory management and maintenance skills, dataReturn to top of document8

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Project: Drawing archaeological finds on Paros (Greece) Paros is a Greek island in the central Aegean Sea and the centre of ancient marble trade in antiquity. The marble of Paros, quarried on the island since the 6th century BCE, is well-known for its clearness and translucence and famous sculptors - Praxiteles, Polykleitos and Skopas -