Digital Commons Network^™

Digitizing An Assessment Protocol To Screen Bilingual Children For Developmental Language Disorder Risk, Ava De La Cruz, Anna Soares M.S., M. Adelaida Restrepo Phd

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

By integrating technology into assessment protocols, administration becomes more streamlined and scores become quicker to calculate. It opens doors for portable evaluations and data, efficient result analysis, and easily searchable records. To take advantage of these benefits, this project developed a digital version of the form used in the Spanish Screener for Language Impairment in Children (SSLIC). SSLIC screens Spanish-English bilingual children for the risk of DLD, utilizing subtests focused on morphology, sentence repetition, and other language-specific measures. Through the survey and database management tool REDCap, each section of SSLIC’s protocol was converted into a digital survey for researchers to …

Beyond Financial Incentives: Barriers That Deter Homeowners From Conserving Imperative Water Infrastructure, Bryan Voliton, Kate Zoltak, Ryan Fugit

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Stalling on sewer inspections is costing homeowners more money and potential health issues down the road. Homeowners play a critical role in the health of local water infrastructure. While it is the local government’s job to oversee that water infrastructure is being maintained, it is the homeowners’ responsibility to ensure the functionality of the private sewer lateral (PSL); the pipe that runs beneath their home and connects to a public sewer main. Immense damage to the home, the homeowner’s wallet, and the environment can result from the impairment of this private line. Previous studies by Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP) …

In Vitro Evaluation Of A 405-Nm Blue-Light–Emitting Antimicrobial Bandage Using Micrococcus Luteus, Daniel W. Wallace, Joseph M. Busher

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Postoperative wound infections remain a major clinical challenge, worsened by rising antibiotic resistance and passive dressings that fail to reduce bacterial growth. Antimicrobial blue light near 405 nanometers shows broad-spectrum bactericidal activity, yet most prior approaches use short, high-intensity illumination from stationary sources rather than continuous, wearable delivery. This study evaluates a wearable 405-nanometer blue-light bandage designed for continuous, low-intensity exposure suited to prolonged wound-adjacent use. Antimicrobial performance was assessed in vitro using Micrococcus luteus, a safe model organism, comparing continuous exposure to matched dark controls. Exposure produced a pronounced, time-dependent reduction in bacterial viability, with near-complete suppression of detectable …

Trait Anticipatory Pleasure, Negative Affect, And The Stimulus-Preceding Negativity During Reward Anticipation, Rishana Amar, John L. Shuford, Gavin Heindorf, Harold A. Rocha, Peter E. Clayson

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Reward anticipation involves the processes engaged while awaiting a potentially rewarding outcome. The stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) is an event-related brain potential component that becomes more negative while individuals anticipate motivationally significant outcomes. We tested whether greater trait anticipatory pleasure predicted allocation of attention during reward anticipation (i.e., more negative SPN), and whether trait negative affect weakens that relationship. We hypothesized that greater anticipatory pleasure would predict more negative SPN and that this association would be weaker among participants with high trait negative affect. Participants (N = 83) completed the anticipatory pleasure subscale of the Temporal Experiences of Pleasure Scale, the …

Protocol For Nod Islet Isolation Using A Novel Two-Filter Purification System, Sama Nayakanti

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease characterized by the inflammation and destruction of pancreatic islets by infiltrating immune cells. As T1D incidence continues to surge worldwide, it is necessary to develop therapies capable of strengthening and protecting islet function.

Our prior research has previously demonstrated the protective antioxidant effects of Cornus officinalis (CO), a medicinal herb with known anti-diabetes properties, using 1.1B4 and NIT-1 transformed pancreatic β-cell lines. Although these cell lines are valuable and cost-efficient β-cell models, they are not fully representative of primary β-cell biology, which may affect their antioxidant response to CO.

To this end, …

Chemical Effects Of Microplastics On Photochemistry In A Coral-Associated Zooxanthella, Meghan A. Hennings, Matz Indergard, John E. Parkinson

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Coral bleaching is the process by which corals lose their symbiotic microalgae in response to stressful conditions. These photosymbionts, known as zooxanthellae, give corals their color and sustain host growth through mutualistic nutritional exchange. Bleaching events are becoming more common and severe, driving research into coral conservation and the resilience of each partner in the symbiosis. Yet it is unknown how certain pollutants, such as microplastics, may affect bleaching outcomes. Previous research in our laboratory has demonstrated that the presence of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) microplastics inhibits bleaching recovery in sea anemones (a coral model), but it remains unclear whether the …

Synthesis Optimization Of Ruddlesden-Popper Metal Halide Semiconductors, Aiden A. Swain

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

2D metal halide semiconductors are of great interest for increasing photovoltaic efficiency in solar cells and light emitting diodes. Here, we synthesized materials to investigate the mechanical and thermal stability of Metal Halide Perovskites (MHPs) as a function of the Pb—X bond, n-layer thickness, and carbon chain length of the organic linkers, which are known to affect the in- and out-of-plane mechanical properties of 2D materials.

To assess the mechanical properties of 2D MHPs at differing thicknesses and linker lengths, we synthesized pure-phase (BA)2(MA)2Pb3Br10, (HA)2(MA)Pb2Br7, and (OA)2(MA)Pb2Br7 for single crystal Brillouin scattering spectroscopy. Optimization of reaction conditions was necessary, because …

Improved Bounds On The Degree Of Homogeneous Bent Boolean Functions, Megan Du Preez, Kovid Tandon

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Bent Boolean functions have been studied extensively due to their applications in the construction of cryptographic hash functions and block ciphers. A function is homogeneous when all terms have the same number of variables, known as the degree. We show that the bound on the degree of homogeneous bent Boolean functions can be strengthened; for such a function $f: \mathbb{F}_2^n \to \mathbb{F}_2$, the maximum degree is $d \leq \frac{n}{4} + \frac{1}{4}\log_2(n+3) + \frac{3}{2} + \frac{1}{4}\log_2\left(\frac{\pi}{2}\right)$, improving the prior bound from a $\sqrt{n}$ factor to $\log_2(n)$, and explicitly calculating the constants. Using advanced techniques from the field of integer programming and …

Alterations In Intracellular Pathways By Structured Acoustics Across Mammalian Model Systems, Mary B. Holahan, A'Niya Jackson, Jose Rumbaut-Clark, Elaina Schuler, Arnav Chavda, Thanh Mai Nguyen, Junaina Nazneen, Ana Beatriz-Melgar, Sarah Hedenstad, Emily Hernandez

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Music can be defined as structured sound that serves as a “universal language” capable of influencing emotion, cognition, and social connectivity in humans. Its formal application into the medical profession began in the 20th century, following World War I and II.  Human subject research involving music therapy has since reported a myriad of health benefits such as those on emotional (e.g., anxiety, depression, and stress), neurological (e.g., cognitive impairment, sleep issues, and dementia), and physical well-being (e.g., pain, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia). However, the impact of such structured acoustics on biological processes at the cellular and molecular level remains unclear. Towards …

Using Sers For Enhanced Pfoa Detection In Algae, Kyra Everette, Dawson Dodd, Theresa Evans-Nguyen

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Due to growing manufacturing processes runoff and environmental pollution, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals,” bioaccumulate in various waterways, eventually making their way into human bodies. Due to the low intensity signals of forever chemicals, it is notoriously difficult to isolate what cellular processes they impact, especially when using Raman spectroscopy. Here, we employed surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to increase, detect and localize the perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). AuNPs were intracellularly produced in Chlorella and Scenedesmus algae cells, which acted as enhancers to the low PFOA signal. The production of AuNPs within these …

Contain The Drain: Analysis Of Storm-Drain Pollution Educational Materials And Public Perception, Adalyn Case, Thelma Banlav

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

It is crucial for local populations to understand their role in stormwater management. This is especially relevant in Tampa Bay due to its role as a major estuary system in Florida, a long-term goal of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP). The TBEP intervention measures residents’ knowledge of their role to prevent pollution from entering storm drains and contribute to the local environmental health. This project will assess the intervention materials’ accuracy utilizing survey responses sourced from local Tampa Bay residents. Responses were coded thematically and analyzed. The study has found the most effective TBEP marketing materials for improving stormwater …

Development Of High Performance Ammonium Receptors, Angus E. Rhoton, Andrew Victoria, Wenqi Vince Liu

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

The selective recognition of ammonium ions is highly important for the protection of the environment, treatment of wastewater, and in agriculture. The focus of this project is the development and evaluation of potential synthetic receptors that are capable of strongly and selectively binding ammonium. Known receptor structures are modified by varying the cavity size, molecular geometry, hydrogen bonding groups, and electronic properties. The resulting compounds are evaluated through Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Titrations (NMR) and Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) to confirm binding and quantify their affinity for ammonium. The goal of this work is to identify promising receptor structures and to …

Comparing Satellite Gravity Estimates Of The Labrador Current To Mooring Observations, Calvin G. Rose, Jennifer Bonin

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

The Labrador Current is an important component of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and is the primary pathway for deep water transport from the sub polar North Atlantic southward. Understanding the strength of the Labrador Current and its variability can help to better estimate the potential decline of this crucial current system. A previous study (Meyer & Chambers, 2025) used satellite gravity measurements from the GRACE and GRACE Follow-on missions (GRACE/ FO) to approximate Labrador Current variability and demonstrated reasonable monthly values with transport calculated at a mooring array at 53°N. This study adds to that previous study by …

A Study Of Secondary Metabolites From The Deep Sea Bubblegum Coral Paragorgia Arborea, Nylah Barber

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Marine organisms produce chemically diverse metabolites that have significant pharmaceutical potential which makes them great sources of inspiration for future drug development. However, collecting marine organisms is costly, time-consuming, and ecologically problematic, making preserved museum specimens a valuable alternative for natural products research. In this study, the deep-sea octocoral Paragorgia arborea, obtained from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, was selected for further chemical analysis due to its antiviral activity against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) with no detectable cytotoxicity to healthy cells. The extract was purified through high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and resulting fractions were analyzed using mass spectrometry …

Photophysical Study Of A Cyclopropenium Azobenzene-Based Photoswitch, Amya Culbreath, Gabriella Oliver, Chavdar Slavov

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Ionic liquids are salts that exist as liquids at or near room temperature and are of interest because their structures can be tuned to control properties such as viscosity, polarity, solvation environment, and molecular organization. Incorporating photoswitches into ionic liquids offers a strategy for introducing light-responsive behavior, where reversible structural changes can be used to dynamically modulate liquid structure and function. Here, we present the synthesis of a photoswitchable ionic liquid and investigate its dynamic properties using ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy. Our results provide insight into how molecular photoswitching influences ionic liquid structure and dynamics, guiding the development of ionic …

Residue Hotspots For Peptide Refolding, Claire R. Kluthe

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Chameleon sequences and metamorphic proteins are prime examples of fold switchers, sequences that adopt more than one fold. This project addresses the refolding of a designed peptide from ɑ-helix to a β-pin by utilizing molecular dynamics and free-energy simulations. The goal is to reveal which amino acids are hotspots for refolding, as each amino acid has distinct chemical structure and folding propensity. We employed the confinement method, which involved progressive cycles of restrained simulations to convert the peptide to a harmonic oscillator, desolvation and removal of long-range electrostatics. Using the CHARMM 36 force field, the conformational free energy difference was …

Valuable Transformations Of Α-Nitroalkyl Radicals Following Iodination And Photolysis, Isabelle Hoffman

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Nitroalkanes are valuable drug precursors due to their versatile and chemoselective reactivity. Particularly, reducing the nitro group can directly form the amine species, a prevalent functional group in modern day pharmaceuticals. However, α-tertiary amines are conventionally much harder to synthesize than the primary or secondary species. Our method of producing the nitro group via α-nitroalkyl radicals would make green synthesis possible and address selectivity and scalability issues. We begin with constructing the α-iodonitroalkane from a secondary or primary nitroalkane which underwent electrochemical iodination. From here, homolysis of the weak carbon-iodine bond is conducted under visible light sources, resulting in the …

Towards The Asymmetric Total Synthesis Of The Oxeatamides, Myungkyung Kim

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Darwinolide and membranolide, natural products isolated from Dendrilla membranosa, an Antarctic sponge of the family Darwinellidae, have demonstrated activity against Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) biofilm. The oxeatamides, natural products from the New Zealand sponge Darwinella oxeata, are structurally related to membranolide and represent promising candidates for similar biological activity, yet remain synthetically underexplored due to their limited natural abundance and complex structures. Building on prior studies in the Leahy laboratory, which established the asymmetric total synthesis of membranolide and enabled the preparation of key nitrogenous intermediates toward the oxeatamides, efforts are now directed toward the first asymmetric total …

Natural Versus Built Environments: A Secondary Analysis Of Perceived Challenge And Creative Performance, Ajhauna M. Mason, Meixuan Wu, Gabriella Lynch, Chancelor Hardy

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Perceived task challenge is negatively associated with task performance. Exposure to natural environments has been shown to enhance cognitive functioning and improve performance. However, less is known about the robustness of these effects relative to other environments, particularly in the context of higher order cognition. In this secondary analysis, we investigated whether different types of environments influence perceived task challenge and objective performance, and whether environmental context moderates the relationship between challenge appraisal and performance. Sixty undergraduate students were recruited through the USF SONA system. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two environments: a natural environment or a built …

Glycoconjugate Binding: Lectin Affinity For Structurally Differing Sugars On Cavitands, Erica D. Janmey

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Lectins are proteins that interact with sugars on cell membranes and bind with known affinities. Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) can give insight into entropy (ΔS), enthalpy (ΔH), stoichiometry (n) and the dissociation constant, KD. Resorcin[4]arene cavitand glycoconjugates were synthesized by attaching one of three sugar derivatives of glucose, mannose, and lactose to each of the cavitands for the purpose of comparing binding strength for concanavalin A between the glycosides and their simple sugar. The glycoconjugate structure differs from that of glycans, and therefore the differences in interactions between the sugars on the cavitands must be investigated. The multivalent resorcinarene glycoconjugates …

Development Of A Zn(Ii) Based Mof For Directional Photo-Induced Electron Transfer, Mohammad Altaher

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of porous materials capable of encapsulating photoactive guests for applications in light harvesting, gas storage, and photocatalysis. Here we investigate the attempted co-encapsulation of Ru(II)tris(2,2′-bipyridine)(RuBpy3) and Co(II)tris(2,2′-bipyridine) (CoBpy3) or Os(II)tris(2,2′-bipyridine) (OsBpy3) in an RWLC-3 Zn(II) based MOF, for the development of a solid-state directional photoinduced electron transfer (PET) system. The synthesis of the co-encapsulated RuBpy3 and CoBpy3 MOF (RWLC-3 (RuBpy3:CoBpy3)) was conducted using CoBpy3 in place of RuBpy3 under RWLC-3 synthesis conditions, giving a crystalline suspension with a distinctive powder x-ray diffraction (PXRD). Single crystal x-ray diffraction (SCD) revealed a 2D chain with …

When Intensity Becomes Unpleasant: Content-Dependent Effects Of Arousal On Valence, Allison D. Nguyen, Ananya Ranganagoudar, Charvi Koniki

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Trait worry is associated with heightened negative interpretation of internal arousal, raising the possibility that individuals higher in worry may evaluate high-arousing experiences less positively. The most unpleasant and pleasant experiences are also the most arousing. However, individuals higher in trait worry may evaluate highly arousing experiences more negatively, depending on the content of the stimulus. This study tested whether trait worry moderates arousal and valence ratings and whether this association depends on image content.

Eighty-seven students passively viewed emotional and neutral images and provided arousal and valence ratings for images. Image content categories were generated by an AI classification …

Open-Source Software For Computing Code Automorphisms, Mateo Fernandez-Tyson, Gianna Baker

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

An error-correcting code is a mathematical structure that models the flow of information through a noisy communication channel and seeks to mitigate errors through redundancy. These codes have a wide range of uses spanning from satellite transmissions to cryptographically secure communication schemes. An automorphism of a code is a permutation of the coordinate positions that preserves the code, and these symmetries are useful in helping to answer questions of code equivalence, classification, and decoding. Our work focuses on implementing and testing algorithms for code automorphism computation using GAP and the GUAVA package. We present an efficient algorithm for generating all …

Storm Surge Compounded With Heat Waves In Tampa Bay, Emma Burke, Ogugua Onochie, Sidharth Sudheer, Alejandra R. Enriquez

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Coastal communities like Tampa Bay, Florida, are exposed to multiple natural hazards, including extreme high temperatures and hurricane-related impacts such as wind, storm surge, and precipitation. The seasonality of hurricanes and high temperatures increase the chances of compound flooding-heat events, which can produce greater impacts than either hazard alone. In the future, rising global temperatures and sea levels will further increase the likelihood of these flooding-heat compound events. Nature-based solutions can help reduce the impact of these two hazards, as green spaces lower temperatures, increase infiltration rates, and enhance surface friction, effectively reducing flood propagation and depth. Here, we investigate …

Ladbench: A Benchmark For Logical Fault Detection In Images, Sahasra Kondapalli, Lara Radovanovic, Mingyang Mao, Aadi Palnitkar

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Large Vision Language Models (VLMs) excel at visual question answering and semantic grounding, but their capacity for autonomous logical reasoning remains underexplored. Existing anomaly benchmarks emphasize visual errors or direct prompting rather than the physical and social common sense needed for open-world deployment. To address this, we introduce LAD-bench, a benchmark of more than 1,000 curated synthetic images with logical anomalies across four domains: Residential, Urban, Collaborative, and Nature. We further propose a Tiered Prompting Protocol based on progressive disclosure, which measures how much explicit assistance a model needs to localize and reason about a logical fault. Evaluating leading foundation …

Llm-Assisted Detection And Repair Of Hardware Security Vulnerabilities In Verilog Designs, Ethen Santana, Gabriel Gyaase

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Hardware designs, like software, are susceptible to bugs that can introduce security vulnerabilities and create opportunities for malicious exploitation. Unlike software vulnerabilities, however, hardware flaws become permanently embedded in silicon after fabrication, making them difficult or impossible to patch. Many of these weaknesses are categorized under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) framework and include improper access control, exposure of sensitive information, and unintended privilege escalation. To improve the detection of such vulnerabilities, we propose a methodology that leverages a Large Language Model (LLM) to identify potential hardware CWEs directly from hardware designs in Verilog. The proposed approach is evaluated iteratively …

Hardware Performance Counters As Vulnerability Signals On Nivdia Dgx Spark, Josiah A. Hugo, Joshua J. Choi

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Security-sensitive workloads on shared processors can expose vulnerability-relevant behavior through branch predictors, caches, prefetchers, and shared memory resources. This project investigates whether hardware performance monitoring unit (PMU) counters can provide lightweight indicators of such behavior on the ARM-based NVIDIA DGX Spark, which uses Cortex-X925 and Cortex-A725 CPU cores. Unlike prior work that uses counters to detect active attacks, this study evaluates whether normalized PMU metrics can characterize conditions that increase vulnerability exposure without claiming exploitability.

We map Spectre-style speculation, cache side channels, memory-access-pattern leakage, and shared-resource contention to branch miss rate, cache and LLC miss rates, IPC, and stall rates. …

Multi-Omics Informed Drug Response Prediction For Precision Medicine, Iyioluwa O. Adaramola, Anowarul Kabir

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Motivation: Treating cancer in patients is hard within precision oncology due to the heterogeneity in cancer cells. Developing predictive methods that estimate drug-responses in cancer cell lines can improve our understanding of treatment effectiveness. The goal of this study is to explore the fundamental and data-driven limitations of the existing advanced learning methods for drug response prediction for precision oncology.

Approach & Findings: We examine current state-of the-art methods that utilize multi-omics patient data and/or signaling pathways to predict drug response across various cell lines. Our analysis identifies that models that learn molecular and topological manifolds demonstrate richer representation of …

Computational Modeling Of Electrospinning For Predicting Nanofiber Fabrication And Process Optimization, Jadon J. Orr, Rhidita Rahman Khan

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Electrospinning is a widely used Fabrication technique for producing continuous polymeric nanofibers with application in designing more efficient optoelectronic devices, sensors, producing filtration systems, wound healing, tissue regeneration, drug delivery , forming advanced  functional nanomaterial structures. The successful formation of electro-spun fibers depends on complex interaction among polymer concentration, solution viscosity, molecular chain entanglement, solvent properties, applied voltage, tip-collector-distance, and solution flow rate. Determining the optimum electrospinning condition traditionally achieved through repeated experimental trial and error, makes the process time consuming, costly, and difficult to reproduce across different polymer-solvent systems. Developing computational tools capable of predicting fiber formation can significantly …

Oaat: Omla-Like Approach Against Tlglock​, Antonio P. Ruiz, Joshua N. Lam

OneUSF Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium

Due to the rise of outsourced chip manufacturing, methods to protect chip designs and Intellectual Property (IP) are necessary to prevent theft and piracy by malicious actors within these intermediate firms. One such method is Logic Locking (LL), which adds circuitry that “locks” the design with a key so that the circuit only gives the correct output when provided with the correct key. The development of various attacks have allowed older LL methods, which rely on changing the placement policy of XOR/XNOR or MUX key-gates, to be broken. A newer LL solution to address this problem is TLGLock, which simplifies …