Four UT Dallas students and two staff members won poster contests showcasing their work at Metroplex Day, an annual event that highlights some of the research conducted at UT Arlington, UT Dallas and UT Southwestern.

The event, held March 5 at the School of Management, gave faculty and students an opportunity to collaborate on research.  The winners, recognized in eight categories, received $200 prizes.

“Metroplex Day was a great experience for me,” said UT Dallas graduate student Inderdeep Kalra. “Some of the talks, like the keynote talk on applied biology, I thought were unique as it gave me an integrated view of science and technology. Also, it was a nice opportunity just to be able to present my poster, and winning the best poster award was like an icing on the cake.”

By category, the honorees and their projects were:

  • Biobehavioral Factors in Physical and Mental Health Disorders – Haylie Gomez,  UT Arlington graduate student, “Biobehavioral Markers Of The Rejection Attribution Bias.”
  • Bioengineering – Ziying Tang , UT Dallas a graduate student, “Real-Time Haptic Interactions With Deformable Objects For Medical Applications.”
  • Bioimaging  – Meredith Akins, UT Southwestern graduate student; and Siamak Yousefi, UT Dallas graduate student; “Second Harmonic Generation Imaging As A Potential Clinical Tool For Distinguishing Stages Of Remodeling In The Term And Preterm Cervix.”
  • Biomaterials and Tissue – Mengxiao Yu, a research associate at UT Dallas, “Metal-Peptide Polymeric Nanoparticles.”
  • Biotechnology – Valya Ramakrishnan, UT Dallas graduate student, “The Role Of The GCRE In Gamma Globin Gene Expression.”
  • Genomics, Computational Biology and Bioinformatics – Inderdeep Kalra, UT Dallas graduate student, “The Role Of KLF4 And KLF12 In Gamma Globin Gene Regulation.”
  • Nanomedicine and Drug Delivery – Chen Zhou,  UT Dallas graduate student, “Luminescent Gold Nanoparticles With Efficient Renal Clearance.”
  • Robotics and Medical Electronics Bioimaging – Ruhung Wang, a research associate at UT Dallas, “In Vitro Cytotoxicity Screening And Detoxification Of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes And Graphene Oxide.”

Metroplex Day, now in its fourth year,  rotates among the three North Texas UT campuses.