By Akash Bhatia
The eighth annual Undergraduate Research Symposium was held on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. this past Wednesday in the McGinley Center and Hughes Hall. The Undergraduate Research Symposium provides a medium through which 313 dynamic students shared the new knowledge they have gained.
Topics of the presentations covered a wide breadth of fields, from subjects such as accounting, biology, human rights and finance to theology, history, marketing and chemistry. After each presentation, viewers had time to ask a couple questions about the research.
Anthoula Vasiliou, GSB ’16, spoke about dumping, which she defined as, “Exporting goods at less than a fair market price.” She went on to discussing anti-dumping duties and how the World Trade Organization could settle commerce disputes between countries.
Melanie Falk, GSB ’15, and Rachel Aguilar, GSB ’15, presented their research on the impending water crisis on the United States, demonstrating how, “There is a desperate need to understand the current state of the water crisis.” They described that, while water is used for industrial and hydroelectric purposes, the vast majority of consumptive water usage goes into agriculture. Their solution involved new irrigation techniques, desalination and tax benefits to corporations that meet certain efficiency standards.
Fawziyah Siddiqui, FCRH ‘15, spoke about the recent events in Ukraine. One presentation was analyzed political involvement of Ukrainian students compared to that of American students. This student found that Americans are much more apathetic while Ukrainians were far more likely to vote and protest in political demonstrations. This is in spite of the fact that both groups of youth shared cynicism and disdain toward the government, and that both groups were likely to protest if they were exposed to politics at a young age.
Maria DeCaster, FCRH ‘15, discussed the Euromaidan, the self-organized revolution in response to cancellation of a European Union trade deal by President Yanukovych. This person went on to detail women’s use of direct action tactics in the subsequent political demonstrations and violent response by the police force.
Nicole Iman, GSB ’15, discussed the financial war on terror. This differs from the regular war on terror in that, “The goal is to cut off the terrorists’ finances, making it more difficult for terrorist organizations to operate and thus reducing their threat level.” This would require, as she explained, making terror financing a global issue, implementing sanctions that freeze terrorist organizations out of the global financial system and analyzing financial data in order to prevent donors, extortion and crime from funding terrorism.
So many other research projects were presented in such a short span of time that it is impossible to cover them all. Students delved into using certain polymers to encapsulate organic pollutants, gender roles in advertising, nanoscale drug delivery systems to target cancer cells and more.
Oral presentations on original research were given from noon to 3 p.m., and lunch was served in the conference rooms. Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President of the University, spoke at 3 p.m., and posters of the original research projects could be viewed in the McGinley Ballroom and McGinley Lounge from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., at which time the event concluded.
