ACURA (Abington College Undergraduate Research Activities) is an opportunity for undergraduate students to collaborate with faculty. I had a chance to work with two great teams for two ACURA projects collaboratively with two colleagues.

The first project was developing a Cube-Sat and launching into lower orbit using a weather balloon. Penn State Abington Engineering students Kevin Burns, Spencer Yeingst, Harry Sykes, and Andrew Fnu successfully launched and retrieved the Cube-Sat. Masataka Okutsu from Engineering and I have co-advised these students. They were awarded with blue ribbon (first place) in ACURA fair in Spring 2018 as well as being first place in Eastern Regional Undergraduate Research Symposium.

The second project was co-advised with Dr. Oren Gur from Criminal Justice. He and I worked with a few students on a opioid overdose database. We digitize these records using data from Montgomery County Coroner’s office. This research was awarded with honorable mention in ACURA fair. Also we have received multiple internal grants for this project.