This year Augsburg College will be represented by two McNair program scholars:

Building an Infrastructure to Recognize an Image’s Evoked Emotion

Chue Xue Lee, computer science, with Prof. Shana Watters

Facial emotion recognition is a subfield of computer vision. A facial emotion recognition system is a computer application for identifying or verifying a person’s emotion from a digital image or a video frame. This research focuses on building a facial emotion recognition infrastructure. A facial emotion recognition algorithm is implemented and used to analyze images to determine whether a given facial image is classified as “happy” or “not happy.” This type of research is important to the development of robotic systems that interact with humans and is also being used for advertisement studies.

Mesoscale Nanopatterning Using Lipid Surfactant Templating

Nana Owusu, physics, with Prof. Kevin Landmark

Contemporary research in the field of nanotechnology has demonstrated the self-assembly of nanoparticles. They spontaneously form patterns guided only by interactions among themselves and with their environment. There are various methods being investigated by researchers to template nanoparticles and transfer the patterns onto a solid substrate. This project explores the use of lipids on a Langmuir trough to organize nanoparticles at the air-water interface as well as the Langmuir-Blodgett technique to deposit the resulting monolayer. The model system that was created employed the lipid dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) as a templating agent for dye-loaded polystyrene nanoparticles with a negatively charged surface. Both fluorescence microscopy and atomic force microscopy analyses of the deposited monolayers show evidence of nanoparticle patterning by DPPC. The results of this study

warrant further investigation of the technique by extending the system to different lipids, nanoparticle compositions and nanoparticle surface chemistries.

Scholars at the Capitol

Wednesday, Feb. 22, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.

State Capitol Rotunda

Find more information on the Minnesota Private College Council .

The post Augsburg sends scholars to the Capitol appeared first on News and Media.

“You learn what a career would be like,” she says. “You can’t sleep until noon because you have to be at work, and it helps you realize what you want to do.”

Darden was one of more than 60 students who conducted research this summer through several different programs. Her project, which was conducted with mathematics professor John Zobitz, was funded through the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, or LSAMP. The program provides research opportunities through the Northstar STEM Alliance for first-year students of color who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the STEM disciplines.

Darden and five other Northstar STEM researchers worked this summer and also met regularly to discuss their projects and learn about other aspects of the graduate school application process. “What did my friends at the U do?” she says. “Worked at Target. There are so many more opportunities here.”

She adds that Rebekah Dupont’s leadership and support was a very important part of her summer project. Dupont is the LSAMP site coordinator working with the STEM program. “She really took us under her wing and helped us find a bunch of opportunities,” Darden says.

In addition to helping her explore a career in mathematics, Darden says conducting research allowed her to apply principles she learned from the classroom to the real world.

“In Calculus class, you do a bunch of math problems and say, ‘When am I ever going to use this?’ And we were using it,” she says.

In August, Darden and three other students attended a national mathematics conference with Zobitz to present their research. Pictured above [left to right] are Darden, Nana Owusu (LSAMP), John Zobitz, Nghiep Huynh (McNair), and Jeremy Anthony (URGO).

“I was proud of our group’s presentations because we worked hard to make them eye-catching and interesting,” Darden says. “Overall the conference was a great experience and I would recommend it to next year’s researchers.”

When asked about her plans after graduation, Darden confidently answers that she will be going to graduate school for engineering. Not only will she be the first college graduate in her family and the first to earn an advanced degree, she is the first to attend college.

“I don’t know where, but I just know I am going to go,” she says. “I have two older sisters who didn’t go to college, so I feel like they are living the college experience through me. And I know my nieces and nephew are looking up to me, too.”

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