Josh Cogan is part of an interdisciplinary team working on wireless sensor networks for monitoring soil in various city sites. Behind him are team members Razvan Masaloiu-E and Andreas Terzis and Cogan's faculty sponsor, Katalin Szlavecz. PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

PURA grants in hand, 42 undergrads explore the world of research

In research, questions often outnumber answers and it's anyone's guess where the journey will end, or how long it will take to get there. This year's recipients of Provost's Undergraduate Research Awards found this to be true as they peered into Shanghai's past, investigated a mysterious figurine's origins, attempted to design a long-term wireless soil monitoring system and conducted various other projects.

On Thursday, March 16, Steven Knapp, university provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, will host the 13th annual PURA awards ceremony, which will honor the 39 projects carried out by 42 students in the summer and fall of 2005.

Since 1993, about 40 students each year have received PURA grants of up to $3,000 to conduct original research, some results of which have been published in professional journals. The awards, funded through a donation from the Hodson Trust, are an important part of the university's mission and its commitment to research opportunities for undergraduates.

The awards are open to students in each of the university's four schools with full-time undergraduates: the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Whiting School of Engineering, the Peabody Conservatory and the School of Nursing.

The 2006 ceremony will be held in the Glass Pavilion at Homewood. The entire Hopkins community is invited to the event, which begins at 3 p.m. with an informal poster session allowing students to display and talk about their projects. A recognition ceremony hosted by Knapp will begin at 4:30 p.m. and will include two presentations by PURA recipient Andrew Arceci of Peabody. A reception follows at approximately 5:15 p.m.

Whether students found solutions or just scraped the surface of a larger puzzle, the journey to discovery provided valuable lessons learned. A sampling of the winners follows.

 

A vexing votive figure

Megan Goldman-Petri, foreground, worked with Eunice Dauterman Maguire to try to identify an artifact from the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Collection. PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

PURA winner Megan Goldman-Petri asserts that the best art historian is one who can tell you what a particular artifact is — or isn't — in the blink of an eye, based solely on the imaginary exhibition catalog of all the pieces he or she has seen over the years.

"The trick is to find the right person who has seen something like it before so they can place it," Goldman-Petri says.

But some of the best minds' eyes in the business were stumped when Goldman-Petri showed them a mysterious figure, presumably a votive carving, from the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Collection. From the British Museum to the Freer Gallery in D.C., none of the renowned scholars Goldman-Petri consulted could recall seeing anything quite like the well-worn, 12-by-4-inch "tannish gray" figure at the heart of her PURA project, "Cult Practice, Technology and Science: A JHU Archaeological Collection Case Study."

"They all agree it's old, but how old, no one can agree for sure," says Goldman-Petri, a junior from Timonium, Md., who is double majoring in History of Art and Classics. A materials analysis showed it's probably made from shale or steatite, but scholars she consulted on its intangible qualities told her mostly what the votive figure is not. Pressed to hazard a guess herself, Goldman-Petri treads lightly.

"As for what it is, my best guess is that it's Spanish, Catalan or Egyptian," all locales that were subjected to Christian influences at some point, Goldman-Petri says. Linguists can't read the inscription as either standard Greek or Coptic. "And I'm also told that it's not a 'magical' inscription."

She takes a stronger stance when it comes to the figure's provenance. Goldman-Petri believes it is part of a large contribution of artifacts made to the Hopkins collection by Harry Langford Wilson, a JHU professor of classics, in the early 20th century. Wilson, like Goldman-Petri, had an affinity for normative artifacts, or items used by regular people for everyday tasks or for marking the burials of their dead. Goldman-Petri believes her PURA project figure falls into this category.

"It's not something that was used for a state-dictated purpose," Goldman-Petri says. "Studying these kinds of pieces gives you the opportunity to think like an everyday person using them would have. They allow you to put yourself in their shoes and really see the world and what it was like for them."

Her quest to place the figure was sparked by a fall 2004 course titled Creating a Museum Exhibition with her future PURA adviser, Eunice Dauterman Maguire, curator of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Collection and a senior lecturer in the History of Art Department. Maguire has researched and published art historical material related to the Christian period in Egypt and was able to introduce Goldman-Petri to other specialists as well. All told, eight members of the JHU faculty in four departments examined the carving to give their opinions, along with graduate students from several departments and specialists from a number of museums.

"Her project is an excellent example of the role of the Archaeological Collection in providing unique and unplowed territory for student research," Maguire says.

The open-ended nature of her PURA project is, in its own way, a blessing. Even though her PURA was technically undertaken during fall 2005, Goldman-Petri is still on the case, having made it the subject of an independent study project. And her honors thesis for her Classics degree is also an extension of her PURA work — she's studying votives.

"It's a study for life because I'll probably be thinking of it forever," she says. "And then one day, I'll open a book and see it in there and say, 'Oh, that's what it is.'"
— Amy Lunday

 

Old Shanghai in posters

Back from Shanghai, Warner Brown does further study on 'yuefenpai.' He'll present his findings next month at the Association for Asian Studies' annual meeting. PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

Warner Brown's PURA project took him across the globe to Shanghai, China. Brown, a senior history major from Shreveport, La., went to the storied city to delve into the world of early-20th-century commercial art.

Specifically, Brown focused on yuefenpai (calendar posters), a popular form of advertisement in the 1920s and 1930s. Contemporary Shanghainese have been gripped with a nostalgia for the period, in particular its popular art. Brown wanted to look into what was fueling this interest and how the appeal of yuefenpai relates to the question of Shanghai's search for cultural identity.

The posters, produced for both domestic and foreign companies, typically featured a depiction of a "modern" Chinese woman wearing a qipao, a body-hugging dress with a high cut. Distributed as premiums with the purchase of products, the posters contained the company's name, sometimes a calendar and often images of that company's goods, such as toiletries and cigarettes. Shanghai at the time was the metropolis of all Asia and a melting pot of Western influences, a reality borne out in the images.

Brown says the posters had a sort of pin-up quality, as they invariably featured images of attractive young women, including popular actresses and other celebrities. He says the intention was to represent an ideal rather than the typical woman of the period. For example, some posters featured women posed in luxurious apartments or playing golf.

"Few women back then could actually achieve this level of wealth and glamour. Life for the average citizen wasn't really like it was depicted in the posters," he says. "[The images] were something you could put on the wall and dream about."

Production of yuefenpai slowed in 1937 at the onset of the second Sino-Japanese War, when Japan invaded China. When communists took over China in 1949, many of the posters were destroyed as they represented capitalism and Western decadence.

Today, the posters are a favorite of collectors, and originals can fetch $5,000 or more at auctions.

Brown began his research journey at the library for the Freer and Sackler galleries in Washington, D.C., and last summer spent eight weeks in Shanghai, where he spoke with collectors, historians and city residents. Brown's interest in the Chinese city is rooted in the opening scene, set in a Shanghai nightclub, of the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a childhood favorite.

Shanghai in the past 15 years has witnessed a cultural and economic rebirth, Brown says, and citizens have by and large embraced its cosmopolitan past. Several of the restaurants Brown visited in Shanghai prominently displayed the posters, in addition to other period artifacts. "The posters are not single-handedly driving nostalgia, but they are a very big part of it," he says.

Brown says that the posters provided an insightful lens through which to view the period in which they were made, and concurrently why people want to identify with that past.

He will present his findings at the Association for Asian Studies' annual meeting, to held next month in San Francisco. Tobie Meyer-Fong, an assistant professor of history and Brown's faculty sponsor, says it is exceedingly rare for an undergraduate to be given such an honor.

"Warner has had the inspired idea of considering Shanghai commercial art from the 1920s and '30s as part of the formation of a new, cosmopolitan urban identity," Meyer-Fong says. "Others have mined these images for what they can tell us about gender during this period — or the production of a visual culture of modernity or consumerism — but to my knowledge only Warner has considered them for what they can tell us about both the past, when they were created, and the present."
— Greg Rienzi

 

AIDS prevention in South Africa

Claire Edington spent last summer in sub-Saharan South Africa looking at measures to prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS among women in the region. PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

Claire Edington, a senior from Wayland, Mass., traveled to sub-Saharan South Africa to participate in a three-month clinical study on measures to prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS among women in that region.

Last summer, she worked at the African Centre for Health and Population Studies, which is located in the remote township of Mtubatuba, in the Northeast Province of KwaZulu Natal. Funded by the UK Department for International Development, the site is one of six aimed at developing safe and effective vaginal gels that would allow women to protect themselves from the HIV virus in a social, political and economic system that makes it difficult to ask men to wear condoms, according to Edington.

"It's a very complex situation in which women feel that they are at high risk for HIV, but they also feel that they don't have much control in demanding that their partners use condoms," she says. "Prevention strategies aimed exclusively at condom use just can't work when women are not in the position to refuse risky sex. That's why it's crucial that we develop a strategy that takes into account the reality of these women's lives."

During her summer research, Edington asked Zulu women to keep "coital diaries": accounts, often pictorial, of sexual activity, including data about frequency and types of sexual intercourse (vaginal or anal), condom use and type of partner (regular or casual). She ended up reviewing more than 200 of these diaries and linking that information with data about the women's HIV knowledge, awareness and perception of risk.

Her research revealed that 96 percent of women knew that HIV could be acquired through sex with a person infected with that virus, and that 94 percent of women worried that they were at risk for contracting HIV.

"Women felt at risk for two major reasons: 82.42 percent because they do not use condoms, and 82.32 percent because of an unfaithful partner," she explains. "Yet only 53 percent of women reported ever having used a condom, and 78 percent said that they don't use condoms because their partner did not want to use them. My findings indicate that women feel that they are at high risk for HIV but don't have much control in terms of trying to prevent it by demanding their partners use condoms."

Edington believes that her research findings support the importance of developing a microbicidal gel that women could use to protect themselves from HIV in a setting where the power structure does not allow them to refuse to engage in risky sexual encounters. Furthermore, the fact that HIV/AIDS is highly stigmatized within this community means that there is little to no discussion on how women might protect themselves.

"With one of three people in the area estimated to be HIV-positive, microbicides have become an increasingly promising alternative to prevention strategies, such as ABC [Abstain, Be Faithful, Use Condoms], by giving women control over their own bodies," Edington says. "Women have demonstrated a clear interest in using methods, like microbicides, that protect them from the consequences of high-risk sexual behavior that they often are unable to control."

Goodyear praises Edington and her work.

"Ms. Edington's PURA proposal was a focused outgrowth of her public health studies major," he says. "The major is currently the second largest in Arts and Sciences. One of the great things about the major is [that] the diversity of courses attracts the intellectually curious like Claire. As an incoming freshman, Claire had no idea that she would major in public health studies, but her commitment to social justice, and the opportunity to take courses at the School of Public Health, drew her in. She has truly made the major work for her, and the world of public health has engaged a rising star."
— Lisa De Nike

 

Painful echoes of abuse

Nursing student Corrie Ann McKeen, here with sponsor Nancy Woods, wanted to understand why abused women can suffer long-term pain, fatigue and depression. PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

Corrie Ann McKeen holds more than a theoretical interest in her studies at the School of Nursing. As a survivor of abuse and subsequent fibromyalgia, a disorder characterized by muscle pain and fatigue, McKeen was fascinated to learn that victims of intimate partner violence often experience the long-term symptoms of pain, fatigue and depression.

"I had to learn more," McKeen says. "Of course my personal history sparked intellectual curiosity, but my volunteer work at the Family StressLine, a Baltimore-based crisis hotline, also showed me the importance of helping victims of violence."

Under the guidance of faculty member Nancy Woods, and in collaboration with Professor Gayle Page, McKeen built upon the work of previous nurse researchers who investigated the relationship between abuse and the multiple, vague physical and mental health symptoms often presented by abused women. McKeen's research focused on understanding the biological mechanism that causes the "sickness behavior symptoms" of pain, fatigue and depression.

A previous study by Woods had shown that abused women have higher levels of inflammatory cytokines, the "messengers" used by white blood cells to communicate with one another that can induce profound psychological and behavioral changes. Funded by PURA, McKeen set out to discover whether the symptoms of pain, fatigue and depression could be attributed to the increased number of inflammatory cytokines in abused women.

McKeen used detailed interview data and blood samples that had been collected from more than 100 women at a primary care clinic for the uninsured in Baltimore. About half the sample had a history of intimate partner violence. After analyzing blood samples for inflammatory cytokines, McKeen was able to test her hypothesis.

She determined that women with a history of intimate partner violence reported a greater prevalence of the "sickness behavior symptoms" of pain, fatigue and depression, and that the women with these symptoms did indeed have higher levels of inflammatory cytokines, specifically tumor necrosis factor. Says McKeen, "Ours was the first study to uncover this biological mechanism through which violence affects physical and mental health."

In June, McKeen and Woods will present their findings at the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses 2006 Convention. And over the remainder of the spring semester, the two will be working on a manuscript to submit for publication.

According to McKeen, the PURA-funded project "helped bring research out of the pages of my textbooks and into real life." The high level of quality expected of a Johns Hopkins nurse researcher made an impression on McKeen, who says her admiration for Woods and the other faculty at the School of Nursing "has grown leaps and bounds" during the course of the project.

To pursue her interest in pediatrics, women's health and global health, McKeen is applying to Johns Hopkins' MSN/MPH program, run jointly by the schools of Nursing and Public Health. She hopes for a career in nursing administration and plans to pursue further research on fibromyalgia.

"When I first began this project, I was a little intimidated by Dr. Woods' knowledge and expertise. She was conducting such excellent and thorough research, while I had to ask questions like 'What's a cytokine again?'" jokes McKeen. "But I did learn that people can accomplish a lot more than they ever thought possible, especially if they have a wonderful mentor like Dr. Woods."
— Kelly Brooks-Staub

 

Wireless long-term soil monitoring

Josh Cogan PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

A 19-year-old sophomore physics major, Joshua Cogan is playing an important role in helping to develop a wireless monitoring system that may eventually assist earth scientists in developing a more detailed understanding of various ecosystems.

His PURA research focused on whether an inexpensive, commercially available sensor called the Watermark is suitable for long-term soil monitoring use.

Cogan, who is from Wayne, Pa., got involved in this earth science-centered research after taking an ecology course with Katalin Szlavecz, a senior lecturer in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, during his freshman year. Impressed with Cogan's intelligence and acumen, Szlavecz recruited him to work with her.

"It was almost immediately apparent to me that Josh would be an asset in my lab," says Szlavecz, who served as Cogan's PURA adviser. "He is very smart, and I knew that his background in physics and electronics would be an asset in our research and problem solving."

Cogan joined an interdisciplinary team working on wireless sensor networks. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a wireless soil monitoring system that can be installed in various city sites, such as Leakin Park or Cub Hill, as part of the Baltimore Ecosystem Project, a long-term ecological research project focusing on urban environments. In addition to Szlavecz, the team includes Andreas Terzis, an assistant professor of computer science in the Whiting School of Engineering; computer science students Razvan Musaloiu-E and Sam Small, from the Whiting School; and Alex Szalay, a professor in the Krieger School's Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy.

"Soil monitoring systems collect data about the physical, chemical and biological attributes of soil in situ and almost constantly," Cogan says. "Our goal is to develop a system at a scale that currently does not exist. Remote sensing networks allow us to collect data with minimal human intrusion, which is very important because whenever humans go to the field to collect data, they inadvertently change the ecosystem they are measuring."

Cogan's role in the research involved assembling the sensors, which consist of electrodes embedded in a granular quartz material surrounded by a membrane and metal mesh, with a wire sticking out of the end. Cogan then soldered the wire to a sensor board that held other sensors to measure air temperature, soil temperature and light intensity. He then attached those boards to a remote with a small antenna, which transmitted data about each sample to the lab's computer.

Over the course of the project, the team learned that the Watermarks sensors were not adequately precise in measuring the data collected. They found that in order to get the level of precision they wanted, they would need to calibrate each sensor individually — a very time-intensive process.

"One of the lessons we learned here is that the Watermark sensor, though inexpensive, is not ideal for this kind of long-term monitoring," Szlavecz says. "But what we learned will also help us to improve our approach next time, both in hardware and in software."

And Cogan learned valuable lessons not just about earth science but also about interdisciplinary teamwork.

"You hear about interdisciplinary research all the time, but no one tells you how hard it is to simply communicate with all the different parties involved," he reflects. "Our computer science members speak about sampling and transmission. The physicists — including me — talk about voltages and dielectric constants. The soil ecologists had other concerns, such as how soil invertebrate heterogeneity relates to physical factors in the soil. Believe me: Communication was no trivial concern!"
— Lisa De Nike

 

Finding a catalyst for cartilage creation

Thanissara 'Noon' Chansakul, foreground, is working with Jennifer Elisseeff to find the right cells and proper medium to grow new cartilage to repair injuries. PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

Using adult and embryonic stem cells from mice, Thanissara Chansakul is conducting important experiments in a project aimed at growing new cartilage to repair injured knees and other body parts. Chansakul, a junior chemical and biomolecular engineering major, is helping a research team led by Jennifer Elisseeff find out whether mixing the two types of stem cells with a particular growth medium will cause the cells to thrive, multiply and turn into the building blocks for cartilage.

Early test results have been encouraging. "This is a key step that moves our lab a little closer to its goal of growing new cartilage through tissue engineering," says Chansakul, who is known on campus by her nickname, Noon.

Chansakul, with doctoral student H. Janice Lee, presented preliminary findings last fall during a poster session at the annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society. Continuing to work with Lee and supported by a PURA, Chansakul is now seeking to replicate the results for a paper that she and Lee will submit to a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

This is not the first time her strong science skills have put the 21-year-old from Bangkok, Thailand, in the spotlight. As a high school student in 2001, Chansakul received the highest score and a golden medal in the International Biology Olympiad, held in Brussels, Belgium, where she competed against 150 students from 38 nations.

That achievement led to a college scholarship from the government of Thailand. "I applied to a lot of schools," Chansakul says. "I came to visit Johns Hopkins, and I really liked the biomedical engineering program and research opportunities here."

After completing her freshman year at Johns Hopkins, she secured a summer job working alongside other undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in Elisseeff's lab. "I was really interested in tissue engineering," Chansakul says, "and I always wondered what we could do with stem cells. I was interested in their medical applications."

In her Homewood campus lab, Elisseeff, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is pioneering a method of repairing cartilage, the material found in knees, noses and other body parts, without major surgery. The idea is to place cells in a hydrogel, inject the liquid into the body and then harden it with ultraviolet light. Ideally, the gel will hold the cells in place while they multiply and replace damaged cartilage.

To attain this goal, Elisseeff's team needs to find the right cells and the proper medium to build new cartilage. One strategy is to coax stem cells to turn themselves into chondrocytes, the cells that make up cartilage. But stem cells do not always cooperate with this plan. Embryonic stem cells, derived from early embryos, have the ability to replicate indefinitely and differentiate into many cell types. Yet they do not always survive in the lab's hydrogels, and when they do survive, the researchers need to find the right biochemical medium to get them to form cartilage. In contrast, mesenchymal stem cells — adult stem cells that are more inclined to turn into cartilage — are not plentiful enough to complete the injury repair project on their own.

To overcome these drawbacks, Elisseeff's lab — believed to be the only one in the country to do so — is testing a mix of adult and embryonic stem cells, in an effort to generate new cartilage. Chansakul is conducting some of these experiments. "We're trying to find the best biological conditions to increase the survival rate of these cells and to get them to turn into the cells that make up cartilage," she says.

Elisseeff cautions that the mice cells in Chansakul's tests do not always behave exactly the way human cells do. Nevertheless, Elisseeff says, the experiments do yield useful information about the way embryonic and adult stem cells influence one another and how well they survive in the hydrogels.

The undergraduate research grants are helpful, Elisseeff says, because they allow students like Chansakul to gain important hands-on lab experience. "They're invaluable," the faculty member says. "My students who have gotten these awards are usually the real academic superstars."
— Phil Sneiderman

 

Proteins as disease markers

Anthony Chyou is studying the role that a certain group of proteins have in regulating salt concentration, trafficking and acid-base balance within cells. PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

Anthony Chyou, a molecular and cell biology major from Taipei, Taiwan, used his PURA grant to better understand the role that a certain group of proteins known as sodium hydrogen exchangers have in regulating salt concentration, trafficking and acid-base balance within cells. The research could eventually shed light on the root causes of various diseases and conditions.

"My research is important because many diseases result from trafficking or PH defects and affect all parts of the human body," Chyou explains. "For example, Batten disease affects neuronal cells, and cardiac tissue can be damaged during recovery from ischemia."

Chyou conducted his research under the guidance of faculty mentor Rajini Rao, a professor in the Department of Physiology in the School of Medicine, in whose lab he has worked since fall 2003. Last year, Chyou aided in the identification of an NHX1 inhibitor and relied on this and other related experiences to carry out his PURA project, which was titled "Role of the Endosomal Na+(K+)/H+ Exchanger, NHX1, in K28 Viral Toxin-Induced Cell Death."

"Anthony is a bright, hardworking and sincere student who exemplifies the best of Hopkins undergraduates," Rao says. "He is quick to learn techniques at the bench, and to grasp concepts from our discussions. He showed admirable initiative in putting together this proposal."
— Lisa De Nike

 

Tiny filaments that give bacteria their shape

Working in the lab of Denis Wirtz, Laura Rupprecht tests tiny filaments that give bacteria their shape; the data may help drug makers develop new antibiotics. PHOTO BY HPIS/WILL KIRK

Conducting research that may pave the way for a new type of antibiotic, junior Laura Rupprecht used her PURA to test a newly discovered protein filament that bends a bacterium into a distinctive banana shape.

Using lasers, an electron microscope and other high-tech tools, Rupprecht, a biomedical engineering major from St. Paul, Minn., is studying the properties of crescentin, an intermediate filament discovered in 2003 and thus far found only inside the bacteria called Caulobacter crescentus.

Her work focuses on cytoskeletal proteins such as crescentin. These strands form a web-like network inside a bacterium, giving it shape and helping it move and divide. In some of her experiments, Rupprecht has used a laser to disable part of a cell's crescentin filament network, then has recorded how quickly the network reconstructs itself.

"All bacteria have cytoskeletal structures," she says. "If someone can develop a new type of antibiotic that attacks these proteins, it could disable or kill the bacteria. But first we have to figure out how the cytoskeletal structure works. Our experiments are a first step in doing that."

The work is important because many bacteria are becoming resistant to common antibiotics, which usually work by attacking the cell wall. If vulnerabilities can be found inside a cell, new types of antibiotics might be made. Although crescentin, the focus of Rupprecht's research, has been found in only one type of bacteria, some scientists believe this filament or a similar structure many be present in many other types of bacteria.

In her experiments, Rupprecht has been guided by Osigwe Esue, a doctoral student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Their findings are reported in a paper that has been submitted to a peer-reviewed science journal, with Rupprecht listed as a co-author.

Their research is supervised by Denis Wirtz, a professor in the department. Wirtz also sponsored Rupprecht in her application for a Provost's Undergraduate Research Award, which covered some of her laboratory costs and living expenses while she worked in the lab last summer.

She joined Wirtz's lab just over a year ago after hearing that it offered particularly challenging projects. Wirtz had begun studying the newly discovered crescentin, and Rupprecht gladly accepted the chance to assist. "I wanted to get involved because it's such a new protein," she said. "We need to know how it forms cytoskeletal structures. Then we can figure out how to dismantle it."

Rupprecht, who writes science articles for the collegiate magazine The Triple Helix in her spare time, said the hands-on lab experience has been invaluable. "Some of the stuff I've been doing looks easy in textbooks," she said. "But I've discovered that there's so much more that can go wrong in the lab."
— Phil Sneiderman

 

Check Out Their Results

To recognize the recipients of the 2005 Provost's Undergraduate Research Awards, an event will be held on Thursday, March 16, in Homewood's Glass Pavilion.

A poster session in which students will have an opportunity to display the results of their research begins at 3 p.m.

At the 4:30 p.m. recognition ceremony hosted by Steven Knapp, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, the honorees will be introduced by Theodore Poehler, vice provost for research and chair of the selection committee.

Provost Knapp will present the students' certificates, and PURA recipient Andrew Arceci, a student at Peabody, will give a special presentation. "The Viola da Gamba, Violone and the Modern Double Bass" is based on his own research; "A Consort of Colors: The Double Reed Ensemble" supports the PURA work of fellow Peabody student Simon Zaleski.

A reception will follow at approximately 5:15 p.m.

The entire Johns Hopkins community is invited.

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