On March 8, the Office of Undergraduate Research announced the winners of the seventh annual Texas Student Research Showdown at an award ceremony.

Students participating in this research communication competition created two-minute videos to explain their research and creative activity to a general audience. A panel of faculty and staff judges scored the videos on their ability to capture an audience’s attention, tell a narrative, convey rigorous scholarship, and target a general audience. Current undergraduates also voted for an audience award winner.

This year’s event featured 25 videos from 51 students competing in two categories (science, technology, and engineering; arts, humanities, and social sciences). The submitters of the winning videos received awards generously funded by a gift from Kimberly and Scott Martin.

STEM Category

First Place ($2000)
Siddharth Thakur

• Watch: Firebot

Second Place ($750)
Manasa Sripati, Athulya Nagarajan, Sandesh Puri, Jennifer Zhao, David Oh, Matthew De Guzman

• Watch Radiative Cooling

Honorable Mention
Malek Ibrahim

• Watch Machine Learning for Marine Soundscapes

Annabelle Grace Vincent, Joshua Quimpo

• Watch: Whitmore’s Disease — An Understudied and Underestimated Illness

Maggie Kappel, Ridah Siddiqui

• Watch: The T Cell: Your Body’s Natural Cancer Fighter

Varshinee Sreekanth, Lokesh Pugalenthi

• Watch: Making Cognitive Screening Easy

Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Category

First Place ($2000)
Thomas Dang, Melanie Milligan, Grace Ozor, Mariana Rendon Flores

• Watch The Case for Connections

Second Place ($750)
Amara Kwiatkowski

• Watch: Voting Rights in Austin after TX Senate Bill 1

Honorable Mention
Emma Ableman

• Watch: Texas Youth Depression and Suicide Research Network

Kaitlyn Ng, Iris Li, Ria Upreti, Hayden Rhodes, Michele Davis

• Watch: The Blanket Identity

Audience Award ($1000)

Emma Ableman

• Watch: Texas Youth Depression and Suicide Research Network