UC Davis students shared their research presented at the Undergraduate Research Conference and their experiences surrounding it
By EVELYN SANCHEZ — features@theaggie.org
The 36th annual Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) was held on April 25 and April 26. The 36th year of the conference saw a record-breaking attendance of over 1,000+ students presenting their research.
The URC welcomed research from all disciplines, making space for research in the arts, STEM and humanities by dividing the conference into three possible events. These events included the poster session, arts and design exhibitions and oral presentations. The poster and art exhibitions took place inside of the University Credit Union Center, whereas the oral presentations took place in Wellman Hall on campus in various rooms.
The conference offers a great opportunity to undergraduate students looking for a place to not only present arduous research, but to also gain experience and establish networks with professionals in the field.
Komolika Basu, a fourth-year cinema and digital media (CDM) and theater and dance double major, presented in the arts and design exhibit.
“I’m presenting my honors thesis, which is under the CDM Department and interdisciplinary with the [Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies] Department,” Basu said. “It’s about understanding and analyzing queer and [transgender] representation in Indian cinema, specifically about films from Rituparno Ghosh, who was a queer icon in Bengali cinema.”
Basu’s project was titled “An Indian Film Realism: The Politics of Gender Identity in Indian Cinema Through the Art of Rituparno Ghosh.” The exhibition was featured during the poster session on Friday, where a small tent enclosed the space for a unique viewing experience within the University Credit Union Center.
“I made a short film,” Basu said. “Which is like an experimental video essay that’s going to be on a loop, and a few other objects will be next to it to create an atmosphere. It’s self-reflexive.”
The film was projected for four hours and allowed visitors to walk in and interact with the exhibition. Three posters were on display beneath it, and a few other objects were scattered around in a style similar to an interactive art installation. There was a QR code available for attendees to scan and learn more about Basu’s research.
Prati Mehta, a second-year cognitive science and statistics double major, presented her research on Wav2vec, a speech-learning model, and its tracking of phonetic differences in duration.
“I worked under the Phonetics Lab, and my research is centered around computational linguistics,” Mehta said. “The data was provided […] and my responsibilities were focused on plotting data through models, which also involved training the models using the data, and making visualizations for it.”
Mehta presented at the last poster session from 4 to 5 p.m. It was also her first time presenting.
“I worked on my poster throughout spring quarter,” Mehta said. “I worked on making graphs for it, and the project went through two rounds of editing.”
Alan Abdrazakov, a fourth-year managerial economics major, presented on the “Impact of Government Subsidies and Credit Markets on Corn Oil Prices: A Study of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard” under the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
“I found that credit prices, which are regulated by the California Board of Fuel Consumption, vary,” Abdrazakov said. “I’m trying to find a correlation between increasing [Low Carbon Fuel Standard] credit and corn oil prices. I found that in the end, the credit prices do have an effect on corn oil’s market price.”
Abdrazakov also discussed his experience with compiling lengthy research.
“What really helped me was my professor, Andrew Swanson,” Abdrazakov said. “He helped guide me through the process, and it’s helpful to have a real professional who knows a lot about environmental policies. Every day I’m learning more about this, and the knowledge I had at the beginning of my project versus now is greatly limited.”
Straightforward and great for experience, the Undergraduate Research Conference provides special opportunities to undergraduate students, who have spent countless hours compiling data and research, to present and publicize their work.
For more information on how to register for next year, regardless of major or topic of study, visit https://urc.ucdavis.edu/.
Written by: Evelyn Sanchez — features@theaggie.org
