Premed student Emiliano Villa earns Best Undergrad Poster award
GCU faculty and students presented their research and a talk on Saturday at the 64th annual meeting of the Arizona-Nevada Branch of the American Society for Microbiology, hosted by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
A highlight was that pre-med student Emiliano Villa received the Best Undergraduate Poster award for his presentation, "Evaluation of Antimicrobial Potential and Phytochemical Analysis of Selected Desert Plants." Villa's work was conducted in the Antimicrobial Discovery Lab under the mentorship of Dr. Ramesh Velupillaimani, who said the achievement "showcases GCU's ongoing commitment to advancing scientific research and providing students with transformative STEM research opportunities."
Added College of Natural Sciences faculty Dr. Galyna Kufryk, "It (attending the ASM meeting) was a very interesting and rewarding experience that fostered academic interactions between different research groups across the universities of the two states. GCU is always well represented at this meeting."
In addition to Villa's recognition, the following GCU faculty and students participated in the event:
Microbial Biotechnology Division:
- Kufryk gave a talk on the "Novel Findings of Morphological Changes in Cyanobacterial Cells."
- Alumni Sarah Biskner and Jessica Schultz and student Sophia Bagley presented a poster.
Antimicrobial Discovery Lab:
Posters were presented by:
- A group of Dr. Daisy Savarirajan's students: Lindsay Smith, Nicola Greeenwood, Conner Balak, Sebastian Salazar, Jessica Neamtu and Emory Robles.
- A group of Velupillaimani's students: Villa, Aiden Hoffman, Isaiah Barnett, Maximillian Jones, Josh Boadu and Daegan Piequet.
