Undergraduate Presentation
Colorimetric Dressing for Detection of Wound Infection
Sumiran Sharma & Onyinyechukwu Okoli (Biomedical Engineering)

The cur­rent stan­dard of care relies first on clin­i­cal assess­ment of a patient’s symp­toms, and often empir­i­cal antibi­otics are used indis­crim­i­nate­ly, even with­out con­fir­ma­tion of infec­tion, which con­tributes to the devel­op­ment of antimi­cro­bial-resis­tant strains of microor­gan­isms. Infec­tion detec­tion involves cul­tur­ing tis­sue sam­ples, which is a time-con­sum­ing process. Patients man­ag­ing their care at home often have reduced access to med­ical care and may delay seek­ing treat­ment, leav­ing the infec­tion to spread rapid­ly.

Master’s Presentation
Induced Travel: An Illusion in Traffic Demand Management
Jayanta Biswas (Earth Science)

Traf­fic con­ges­tion remains a key glob­al chal­lenge in trans­porta­tion plan­ning. Tra­di­tion­al solu­tions focus on expand­ing road­way capac­i­ty, but traf­fic behaves like a gas—filling any avail­able space. This “induced trav­el” effect means that adding lanes increas­es traf­fic vol­umes. Using Ten­nessee data (2000–2019), this study ana­lyzed the link between lane-miles and Vehi­cle Miles Trav­eled (VMT) via OLS and 2SLS mod­els. The 2SLS mod­el cor­rect­ed endo­gene­ity, show­ing high­er VMT elas­tic­i­ties (~1.86–1.88) than OLS (~1.13), indi­cat­ing that OLS under­es­ti­mates induced trav­el. Over­all, expand­ing roads to reduce con­ges­tion is counterproductive—it ulti­mate­ly gen­er­ates more traf­fic.


PhD Presentation
Exposing Physical Spoofing Vulnerabilities in Electric Vehicle Charging Interfaces
Ernest Fiko Morgan (Electrical Engineering)

As Elec­tric Vehi­cle Charg­ing Sta­tions (EVCS) inte­grate with smart grids, they intro­duce new phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. In the IEC 61851 stan­dard, the Con­trol Pilot (CP) and Pro­tec­tive Earth (PE) lines man­age con­nec­tion sta­tus and safe­ty ground­ing. This study expos­es a phys­i­cal-lay­er spoof­ing threat where attack­ers manip­u­late CP and PE sig­nals with sim­ple cir­cuit­ry to mim­ic a con­nect­ed vehi­cle, enabling unau­tho­rized pow­er flow with­out net­work intru­sion. A lab-test­ed hard­ware pro­to­type con­firmed that spoofed volt­age pro­files close­ly match gen­uine ones, show­ing that sig­nal-lev­el authen­ti­ca­tion alone can­not ensure safe charg­ing. The find­ings reveal a crit­i­cal weak­ness with impli­ca­tions for both user safe­ty and grid reli­a­bil­i­ty.

PhD Presentation
The impact of second-generation antipsychotic and psychotomimetic drugs on risky decision-making
Zach Mikkelson (Psychology)

Schiz­o­phre­nia impairs cog­ni­tion and deci­sion-mak­ing, but stud­ies on risky behav­ior show mixed results, like­ly due to med­ica­tion effects. Using a rat risky deci­sion-mak­ing task (RDT), we test­ed how the antipsy­chot­ic risperi­done and the psy­chotomimet­ic drugs MK-801 and DOI affect risk-tak­ing. Low-to-medi­um dos­es of risperi­done reduced risk-tak­ing in females only, while very high dos­es affect­ed males. MK-801 increased and DOI decreased risk-tak­ing in males. Pre­lim­i­nary co-admin­is­tra­tion results show reduced risk-tak­ing with­out alter­ing pun­ish­ment sen­si­tiv­i­ty, high­light­ing sex-spe­cif­ic and drug-depen­dent effects on deci­sion-mak­ing.


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