March / April, 2003

The Office of the Provost and the Honors College have again organized the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF). The annual forum is a venue in which students have the opportunity to showcase their research or creative efforts. UURAF, held on April 4, 2003 is an excellent example of our student's high quality scholarly and creative work.

Since 2000, Our Biosystems Engineering students have consistently garnered top awards in this annual event and 2003 was no exception. This year Dr. Kirk Dolan's student, Senior Maureen Beck and Dr. Alocilja's Professorial Assistant, Freshman Shannon McGraw, presented their reflective posters at the forum.

Maureen's poster presentation Estimation of Kinetic Parameters for Bean Texture, deals with the conversion of a small-scale to a large-scale commercial process for sugar beans. Sugar beans are a popular snack item in Asia, similar to honey-coated peanuts in the United States. Maureen's work can help Michigan dry-bean industry expand their market by providing critical data to process the value-added beans here, and then export them to Asia. Based on the poster, Maureen was invited to present her poster at the IVth International Conference on Plant Biomechanics, July 20-25, 2003. She will present during a session called Applied Biomechanics I: Whole Plants and Products. There will be experts in plant biomechanics from around the world. Frank Ewers, Professor of Plant Biology, stated that Maureen's subject area is of great relevance to the conference.

Shannon McGraw received the Merit Award for her poster entitled "Conductometric Biosensor for Detecting Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus". The biosensor device can be used to detect bovine viral diarrhea virus, which is an economically devastating viral pathogen in cattle. At present, there is no cure for the disease, hence early detection is necessary to allow for the implementation of control measures. Current methods require 5-7 days to get results; the biosensor will yield results in 6 minutes. Receiving such an award as a freshman is quite a feat.

CONGRATULATIONS Maureen and Shannon, we're proud of you!

Agricultural Engineering
Michigan State University
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East Lansing, MI 48824-1323
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April 11, 2003