Present your research, receive valuable feedback, win cash prizes!
The 2014 Graduate Research Forum is quickly approaching. This will mark the eleventh year of the event, which provides students an opportunity to showcase their research and creative projects and receive feedback from faculty judges. Cash prizes are awarded to the Best in Category winners.
The College of Graduate Studies and the Graduate Student Association invite all UCF students, faculty, and the community to participate in the Eleventh Annual Graduate Research Forum. This year’s event will be held on Tuesday, April 1, 2014 in the Student Union Pegasus Ballroom from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The submission deadline is 5:00 p.m. on Monday, February 10. Resources to help students prepare for their presentations, such as three informative workshops held in March, printing services, and links to poster design ideas are also available on the Graduate Research Forum website.
Last year, over 200 students participated in Graduate Research Forum representing many of UCF’s diverse colleges and disciplines. Some of the impressive projects that received Best in Category at last year’s event include innovative projects such as Lesley Huynh’s “Food for Thought: Examining the Different Factors Contributing to Food Deserts in Orange County.” Lesley’s project explores factors contributing to the food selection decisions of residents living in a food desert – one mile from access to markets that carry fresh produce. Her study could provide knowledge that might better develop opportunities for Orange County residents to access fresh, healthy food. Huynh was a representative of the Public Administration MPA program in the category of Social Sciences.
Irina Malaescu, Business Administration PhD, Accounting Track, was one of the recipients of Best in Category of Business Administration and Hospitality for her project, “The Effects of Decision and Structural Restrictiveness on Cognitive Load, Perceived Usefulness, and Reuse Intention.” Malaescu’s work focuses on users’ preferred levels of restrictiveness in information technology support systems, adding to the understanding of the effect of user susceptibility to restrictive systems and the reduced knowledge users are able to accrue from using the system.
Konstantinos Mykoniatis, Modeling and Simulation PhD., presented “Cerberus Robot: The Design, Development, and Evaluation of Situation Awareness” and was awarded one of the Best in Category for Engineering, Computer Science, and Modeling and Simulation. This multidisciplinary project describes the integration of human-robot interaction with a specific focus on the enhancement of situation awareness. Learning algorithms allowed Cerberus to recognize human factors and environmental conditions with further developments in navigation capabilities.
These are just a few of the innovative projects awarded Best in Category in 2013. In addition to the aforementioned categories, the Graduate Research Forum includes research covering topics in: Education; Fine Arts and Humanities; Life Sciences; Health Sciences; and Mathematics, Optics, and Physical Sciences.