GovState in STEM: Students win presentation awards at symposium
By Sarah Shoaf, Staff Writer
Three Governors State University (GovState) students recently took home STEM awards at the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Symposium. The LSAMP Symposium is an opportunity for undergraduates from underrepresented groups in STEM to present their research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Karla Luviano, Lauryn Perry, and Delilah Sutherland all ranked in the top three in their individual categories.
As a Biology major, Lauryn (left) presented on Large Language Models (LLMs) and their applications in research and healthcare. She created a Python script to train the models to process subject data to explore how the AI-driven models process language, their benefits and limitations, and their potential to assist in fields like medicine, data analysis, and scientific research.
For her, the award validates the work she put into her research. “It reinforced my confidence in my ability to communicate complex topics effectively and inspired me to continue exploring the intersection of technology and healthcare.”
Delilah (right), a Chemistry major, shares that confidence-boost feeling and expressed gratitude to her supervising professor, Dr. Sanjaya Ranmohotti (not pictured). “This award reassures me that his support and guidance were not in vain, and I am honored to have had the opportunity to showcase my work.”
Her research focused on synthesizing and studying the structural properties of potassium manganese arsenate with the aim to fill in missing details about the compound’s magnetic behavior and topological transport properties, while contributing to the broader understanding of high-temperature solid-state synthesis techniques.
For Chemistry major Karla (right), winning second place in chemistry for her oral presentation was a bit of a comeback moment for her, having missed third place by a point the last time she attended.
“I hope I made all the people who believed in me and helped me along the way very proud,” said Karla. “It’s very inspiring and motivating to be in a room with other scientists who have achieved many great things and are fascinated by science today and how it is constantly evolving.”
Her presentation was about the creation of crystals using molten salts in a flux technique, a method in solid-state chemistry, where the molten salts act as a medium to facilitate the reaction and formation of new compounds at lower temperatures.
Rankings:
Delilah Sutherland won the first place in Chemistry for her oral presentation, “Synthesis, Structure, and Bond Valence Sum Analysis of Mixed-Valence Mn (II, III) Arsenates and Their Substitutional Solid Solutions.”
Karla Luviano won the second place in Chemistry for her oral presentation, “The Utility of Molten Salts in Flux Technique for the Exploratory Synthesis of Salt-Inclusion Solids.”
Lauryn D. Perry won the second place in general biology for her oral presentation, “Integrating LLMs in Immunogen Design: T Cell Epitope Prediction by Dataset Development and Reprocessing.”
Lauryn D. Perry won the third place in general for her poster presentation, “Integrating LLMs in Immunogen Design: T Cell Epitope Prediction by Dataset Development and Reprocessing.”