Environmental Engineering
Third Award
One of the biggest problems of modern society is the over pollution of single-use plastics. Thus, the goal of this project is to chemically break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plasti…
Materials Science
Composite dental fillings (CDF) are used to repair teeth. Initially, in the form of a paste, CDFs are polymerized using curing lights. Curing lights use different wavelengths that interact w…
Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics
Third Award
The high power model rocketry field has become very paint-by-numbers. Enthusiasts are encouraged to buy a kit, put it together, buy a motor, launch it and recover it by parachute to earn a c…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Fourth Award
In North America, the spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis) has killed more spruce trees than any other natural cause (Colorado State Forest Service, 2020). The purpose of this research pr…
Embedded Systems
Fourth Award
The CDC recommends that people wash their hands before and after touching their mask, and only touch it by the ear loops. However, as masks have become ubiquitous over the past year, it has…
Translational Medical Science
Shown to ameliorate the symptoms or even target the root pathology of conditions ranging from cancer to chronic pain, cannabis and its derivatives have the potential to improve the quality o…
Engineering Mechanics
The purpose of this project is to design and construct an autonomous or manually controlled inexpensive UAV prototype that can assist in information gathering for the civilian population. Ev…
Biomedical and Health Sciences
BACKGROUND- Three million people in the U.S alone suffer from gluten intolerance/celiac disease. My aim is to identify which of the natural fruits, and herbs have the ability to breakdown gl…
Animal Sciences
Compartments in development are defined as separate cell populations that organize cell destiny and differentiation. Of particular interest is the anterior-posterior compartment. First analy…
Translational Medical Science
Patients with delirium suffer severe confusion, paranoia, hallucinations, and struggle to understand or pay attention to what is happening. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the already sev…
Biomedical Engineering
More than 10 million people worldwide live with Parkinson's Disease. Receiving an early diagnosis is critical to a patient's prognosis and quality of life. However, existing diagnostic proto…
Translational Medical Science
Stress is a growing issue in society, and results in the excretion of the stress hormone, cortisol. Cannabidiol (CBD) is anecdotally suggested to reduce stress; yet very little scientific re…
Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design
Fourth Award
In the process of thermal radiation, many materials release heat as light. A transmission window in the atmosphere allows infrared light to pass through. Because of this, the heat that is re…
Robotics and Intelligent Machines
Current robotic and vehicular systems for navigation, such as SLAM, rely heavily on sensory input to reconstruct and navigate environments but are unable to detect the structural integrity o…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Sunspot records only go back a few hundred years, so there is limited information available to predict solar behavior. This project studied high-resolution ice cores which store 10k+ years o…
Physics and Astronomy
Second Award
For much of the history of science it has been postulated that the behavior of dynamical systems, such as atmospheric circulation via convection, can be fully predicted once the parts are co…
Animal Sciences
On average, beef cattle have twins once in every 100 births or a 1% twinning rate. My family’s herd of 35 cattle had five sets of twins in the 2020 calving season, which is 14% of the herd.…
Physics and Astronomy
Fourth Award
Neutral hydrogen is abundant in the Milky Way, making its radio emissions at 1420 MHz a key tool for mapping the distribution of matter within the Galaxy. Because the center of the Galactic…
Environmental Engineering
Third Award
Microplastics pose an increasing risk to beach ecosystems around the world. The abundance of microplastics negatively impacts natural processes such as evaporation, water flow, and heat tran…
Environmental Engineering
Second Award
Arsenic contamination of drinking water is a worldwide problem. It is recognized that at least 140 million people in 50 countries have been drinking water containing arsenic at levels above…
Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design
Solar energy is clean and free, and in abundance. Fossil fuel consumption is growing globally at an unstainable rate, and there is a need for renewable, nonpolluting sources of energy. Newer…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Fire-retardant slurries have become a popular method for extinguishing fire, particularly when man-made structures are at risk. However, the chemicals within fire-retardant slurries are know…
Translational Medical Science
In December 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus, (SARS-CoV-2) emerged, resulting in a global pandemic. Temperature monitoring is often conducted before entry into school/work to check for fe…
Biomedical Engineering
Computed tomography (CT) is an extensively used imaging technology that stacks hundreds of x-ray radiographs captured around a patient to generate detailed physiological images for various c…
Biomedical Engineering
The blind need a better way to get interpretable sensory data because current competing products and methods are too expensive or ineffective at compensating for the lack of sight. The essen…
Plant Sciences
My research project focused on the potential spread and influence of Gambel’s oak within Gunnison’s Sage-grouse habitat near their nesting and lekking areas within the Poncha Pass satellite…
Biomedical and Health Sciences
Prescription opioid addiction is a national health crisis. Today, patients or physicians do not have a way of diagnosing if a painkiller given for relief is causing addiction. Current approa…
Translational Medical Science
Beta-secretase (BACE), an enzyme responsible for the endoproteolysis of amyloid precursor protein to produce the hallmark amyloid-beta plaques of Alzheimer's pathology, has been of considera…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
This project in its present form is the result of a simplified method to analytically measure ground-level ozone in the atmosphere in our rural town at low temperatures. The researchers hypo…
Engineering Mechanics
The purpose of this project is to design and construct a lightweight glider that would house the atmospheric sensor payload of a radiosonde weather balloon and be carried to 100,000 feet whe…