On Friday, April 11, the 27th annual University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum was held at the Jack Breslin Student Events Center. UURAF provides hundreds of Michigan State University students the opportunity to present their completed or in-progress research to faculty, staff and external audiences.

In a collaboration between arts and sciences at Michigan State University, the Department of Theatre presented six immersive outdoor theatrical performances of “The Grown-Ups,” set around a campfire at the Corey Marsh Ecological Research Center.

Veona Cutinho is a senior majoring in genomics and molecular genetics with a minor in mathematics at Michigan State University. She works in the Cellular Reprogramming Lab under Dr. Jose Cibelliand is the founder and editor-in-chief of SPARC, MSU’s first undergraduate-led academic journal.

Five Michigan State University students have earned the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, a university record for a single cohort of the award. This places MSU at 60 Goldwater Scholars since the award’s inception.

The Goldwater Foundation seeks sophomores and juniors committed to a research career in STEM fields with the potential for significant future contribution in their chosen field. The award provides $7,500 per year in funding for undergraduate tuition and living expenses.

Nicole Koyuki Golden, Ph.D. student in Writing and Rhetoric and Graduate Assistant Director of The Writing Center at Michigan State University, was awarded the International Writing Centers Association Future Leaders Scholarship in recognition of her significant contributions to the writing center community and her potential as a leader in the field of writing studies.

Yihua Zhang, a Ph.D. student at Michigan State University will pursue research in preventing unintended consequences of artificial intelligence, thanks to an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award. Yihua Zhang is one of 24 scholars around the world to receive the 2024 Fellowship prize. Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Optimization and Trustworthy Machine Learning Group in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Zhang’s Ph.D. advisor is CSE Assistant Professor Sijia Liu.

Michigan State University students have developed an innovative game inspired by the Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition “Knowing Nature: Stories of the Boreal Forest.” This interactive game, now available for download on iOS and Android devices, provides users with a unique way to engage with the exhibition, blending technology, storytelling, and environmental science for an educational and immersive experience.

Ten Michigan State University students and alumni were offered Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants for the 2024-25 academic year. In total, nine Spartans accepted the awards offered and will be traveling to seven different countries to conduct research or teach English during the 2024-25 academic year.

Aspiring law student Amaya Aten is a major in James Madison’s Comparative Cultures and Politics, and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities with a focus in Language and Culture, as well as part of the Arts Living-Learning Community. She uses her complimentary majors to study how language affects the way people interact, and how that applies to policy theory and how laws are written.

Microbiology, Genetics and Immunology graduate student Jasper Gomez was recently awarded a three-year Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (Diversity) for Individual Predoctoral Fellows (F31) which supports promising doctoral candidates who are conducting their dissertation research in a scientific health-related field.

In June 2024, the National Academy of Education and Spencer Research Foundation recognized two alums and one doctoral student from Michigan State University College of Education for their innovative education research.

Second year Ph.D. student Maxwell Harman has been accepted to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, or GRFP.