TU students nab top honors at regional STEM competitions
Student presenters win seven awards at Undergraduate Research Symposium; student developer garners grand prize at hackathon
By Megan Bradshaw on December 13, 2018
Towson University STEM majors shone during two regional competitions held at neighboring UMBC.
Physics major Kameron Langford; chemistry majors Justin Kim, Marella Schammel and Tyler Swanson; and biological science majors Jennifer Suon, Amanda Evans and Yishak Woldetsadik each won first place in competitions held during the 21st annual on Oct. 20.
The symposium exclusively features undergraduate research and consists of two poster sessions judged by panels of mentors and qualified volunteer judges.
Biological science major Christopher Burkhardt, along with co-presenter Michelle Darkwa, and chemistry major Hadi Kelani each took second prize. These 10 students were among 30 members of the TU community who presented 20 posters at the symposium.
Sophomore computer science major Santhosh Ramachandran took home the grand prize at the 2018 HackUMBC competition the same weekend.
His second entry into a HackUMBC competition was an app called that uses motion detected by an armband to automatically send an emergency message or call 911.
Inspired by his own 10-year experience with epilepsy, Ramachandran beat out 49 other projects to win the grand prize, an Oculus Rift VR set.
鈥淲inning this prize was important to me,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 am proud I made something that solves a real problem for millions of people living with epilepsy. Being an intermediate coder, I got stuck in a lot of places. One of the valuable lessons that I learned from the hackathon is that being passionate, persistent and hardworking will help you achieve anything.鈥�