February 12, 2013

SEC Symposium Poster Exhibition Awards Announced Tuesday

Faculty, graduate and undergraduate students may present posters during SEC Symposium

By: Bryant Welbourne
SECU (Twitter: @TheSECU)

Atlanta – Six deserving Southeastern Conference students, selected from more than 80 entries, garnered Excellence in Poster Presentation honors on Tuesday to cap off the inaugural SEC Symposium at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta.

The posters, submitted and displayed by students and faculty from each of the SEC’s 14 universities, represented a wide variety of research areas related to the Symposium’s topic: “Impact of the Southeast by the World’s Renewable Energy Future.”

“The poster exhibition is an important part of the SEC Symposium,” said Torie Johnson, Executive Director of SECU. “We had more than 80 entries in a number of different areas. The research of these six students was a truly exemplary and our judges had a difficult task choosing the winners, which is a testament to the quality of work of the students in the Southeastern Conference.”

Undergraduate students, graduate students and post-doctoral scholars were eligible to receive poster awards, and SEC Commissioner Mike Slive was on hand to present the certificates of achievement.

The undergraduate student recipients included: Travis Williams of the University of Georgia (first place) and Sherrard Davidson of Louisiana State University (second place). There was a tie for first place in the graduate student category between Christopher Bobryk of the University of Missouri and Robert Mueller of the University of Florida. The post-doctoral recipients included: Berenger Biannic of the University of Tennessee (first place) and Sougata Bardhan of the University of Missouri (second place).

The University of Florida took home the Excellence in Student Attendance Award, which went to the university with the most students registered and attending at the SEC Symposium. The SEC will make a donation to the University of Florida’s general scholarship fund in recognition of the accomplishment.

“The Symposium offers our students the opportunity to come together as part of a conference and to share information,” Slive said. “When we first started thinking about the Symposium, one of the most important things was to give our students a chance to learn about the educational components of other institutions and to give them a chance to broaden the scope of their own education.”

For complete information on SECU, the academic initiative of the SEC, please follow @TheSECU on Twitter.

Undergraduate Students
1st Place: Travis Williams, University of Georgia
“The Effects of Industrial Processing On Pectin-Rich Biomass Carbohydrate Composition and Ethanol Production From These Substrates”
2nd Place: Sherrard Davidson, Louisiana State University
“Full-Scale Testing Shows Advantages Of A Quantitative Approach To Interpreting Negative Pressure Tests”

Graduate Students
T-1st Place: Christopher Bobryk, University of Missouri
“Modeling the Dynamics Of Aboveground Forest Biomass Within the Missouri River Corridor”
T-1st Place: Robert Mueller, University of Florida
“New Perspective Of Carbon Dioxide/Methane Transport In Carbon Molecular Sieve Membranes Using Pulsed-Field Gradient NMR”

Post-Doctoral Scholars
1st Place: Berenger Biannic, University of Tennessee “Cobalt-Catalyzed Oxidation of p-Substituted Phenols: Developments toward an Efficient Conversion of Lignin to High Value Chemicals”
2nd Place: Sougata Bardhan, University of Missouri
“Screening of Common Herbaceous and Woody Biomass Feedstock Species for Flood Tolerance”

Excellence in Student Attendance Award: University of Florida