TU students nab top honors at regional STEM competitions

Student presenters win seven awards at Undergraduate Research Symposium; student developer garners grand prize at hackathon

By Megan Bradshaw on December 13, 2018

Kameron Langford
Physics major Kameron Langford won first place in a poster competition held at UMBC.

Towson University STEM majors shone during two regional competitions held at neighboring UMBC.  

Physics major Kameron Langford; chemistry majors Justin Kim, Marella Schammel and Tyler Swanson; and biological science majors Jennifer Suon, Amanda Evans and Yishak Woldetsadik each won first place in competitions held during the 21st annual Undergraduate Research Symposium on Oct. 20.

Marella Schammel
Chemistry major Marella Schammel also won first place at the Undergraduate Research Symposium poster competition.

The symposium exclusively features undergraduate research and consists of two poster sessions judged by panels of mentors and qualified volunteer judges.

Biological science major Christopher Burkhardt, along with co-presenter Michelle Darkwa, and chemistry major Hadi Kelani each took second prize. These 10 students were among 30 members of the TU community who presented 20 posters at the symposium.

Santhosh Ramachandran
Santhosh Ramachandran won the grand prize for his app Seizure Helper at a hackathon hosted by UMBC.

Sophomore computer science major Santhosh Ramachandran took home the grand prize at the 2018 HackUMBC competition the same weekend.

His second entry into a HackUMBC competition was an app called Seizure Helper that uses motion detected by an armband to automatically send an emergency message or call 911.

Inspired by his own 10-year experience with epilepsy, Ramachandran beat out 49 other projects to win the grand prize, an Oculus Rift VR set.

“Winning this prize was important to me,” he said. “I am proud I made something that solves a real problem for millions of people living with epilepsy. Being an intermediate coder, I got stuck in a lot of places. One of the valuable lessons that I learned from the hackathon is that being passionate, persistent and hardworking will help you achieve anything.”