geosciences students win student research week awardsundergraduate and graduate students were recognized for excellence in research posters and presentations apr 25 2018student research week award ribbons (photo courtesy of texas a&m srw)student research week 2018 was held march 19-23 at texas a&m university and several students from the college of geosciences were recognized with awards both undergraduate and graduate students competed in poster and oral presentation competition categories university-wide special awards: ace in higher education research award – undergraduate: hilario lumbreras iii 18 gis-t major title: campus map for blind and visually impaired students at texas a&m university college station faculty advisor: dr dan goldberg lumberas received this $500 award which honors the best emergent research in the area of diversity and inclusion issues in higher education it is designed to raise awareness and advance research on diversity and inclusion issues in higher education (accountability campus climate equity policy programming services role of technology student development etc) lumberas is also a member of the texas a&m corps of cadets he noted that josh fiedler '17 and ty crawford '18 also assisted in collecting the data for the project geosciences category awards: graduate poster first place: cesar castillo texas a&m department of geography phd student title: a coupled hydrologic-hydrodynamic model for assessing hydrologic surface connectivity between a river and its floodplainfaculty advisor: dr inci guneralp i plan to graduate in fall 2018 and my post-graduation plans include pursuing a post-doctoral or permanent position within a government or non-governmental organization that focuses on environmental science and management castillo said graduate poster second place: john schiff geography phd student title: stable isotopes in proteinaceous black coral skeletons as proxies for ecosystem variability in the gulf stream over millennial timescalesfaculty advisor: dr brendan roark schiff plans to graduate in may 2019 and then pursue public policy fellowshipscesar castillo and undergraduate researcher yair torres (left) preparing to conduct a bathymetric survey of a river channel (photo courtesy of cesar castillo)victoria ford and john schiff with their srw awards (photo courtesy of ford and schiff)graduate oral first place: flavia bonolo dantas geography phd student title: public-private partnerships: the role of sabesp in the 2014 urban water crisis in são paulo brazilfaculty advisor: dr wendy jepson after completing her phd in 2021 she plans to continue doing research on water security from a political ecology perspective most importantly i wish that my work will contribute to a more just and equal division of burdens from environmental degradation and exploitation she said graduate oral second place: victoria ford geography phd student title: determination of a critical sea ice thickness threshold for the central arctic ocean advisor: dr oliver frauenfeld ford plans to complete her phd in spring 2020 and then work in the public sectorflavia bonolo dantas with her srw award (photo courtesy of flavia bonolo dantas)jessica martin conducting fieldwork in virginia using a magnetometer (photo courtesy of jessica martin)undergraduate poster first place: hilario lumbreras iii 18 gis-t major (see beginning of this article for lumbreras' research information) undergraduate poster second place: kevin connally 18 gis-t minor title: trail trek: encouraging exercise through cooperative gameplayfaculty advisors: dr tracy hammond and teaching assistant puneet kohli connallys project involved the creation of an app named trail trek a team of six senior department of computer science and engineering students worked on its development and connally said he and all of his teammates will be entering the software development field upon graduation i am extremely excited about the potential of this project and i am so proud of what the team has accomplished already hammond said undergraduate oral first place: jessica martin '18 geology and geophysics major title: detection of buried anomalies using magnetics in lexington vafaculty advisor: dr mark everett martin's research projectwas funded by the geosciences dean's office high impact learning experiences program "this wouldn't have been possible without the fantastic support of the college " martin said the second author of the project poster and presentation was geophysics undergraduate student bassam alzayer she said martin's work on this research also recently won in the department of geology and geophysics' student research symposium poster contest undergraduate division "though it is my junior year i'm graduating a year early this may 2018 i have accepted a position as an environmental geologist in houston " she saidthe trail trek app development team: bryce schumacher spencer harder dillon garner kevin connally nahiyan khandker nathan manickavasagam (photo courtesy of kevin connally)by leslie lee '09