About Grad Expo

The Grad Expo is an all day event where A&S graduate students from a variety of disciplines present papers and posters to their fellow students, faculty, and other members of the Pitt community. This event provides the opportunity for graduate students to gain experience in presenting their research as well as fostering interdisciplinary communication amongst the departments and programs within the School of Arts and Sciences. It is an opportunity for students from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines to be exposed to practices and concepts which, while possibly foreign to their field, might nevertheless enrich their work and certainly theiracademic experience at The University of Pittsburgh.

Grad Expo 2009

2009 Winners

Outstanding Papers

• From a Black “Ellipsis” to a Blue “Reprise:” Representations of Memory and Imagination in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue.

  Usha Iyer, English

• Beyond Binaries: Performance Impressions and National Mythmaking in Jacques Milet’s Destruction de Troie le Grant

  Lofty Durham, Theatre Arts

• Representations of Falconry in Eastern Han China (25-220 CE)

  Leslie Wallace, History of Art and Architecture

• Arriving at the Proper Moral Choice: Pittsburgh Catholics for Obama and the Question of Abortion

  Alexandra Seitz, Religious Studies

• Nanomaterials for Chemical Sensor Applications

  Douglas Kauffman, Chemistry

• Baklava, Books, and Boundaries: Religious Identity and Education for Eastern Orthodox Children in America

  Andrew Cole, Religious Studies

• A History of Aristoxenian Harmonic Science

  Julia Bursten, History and Philosophy of Science

• The Suture Biology of the Aleutian Inhabitants: A Test of Population Affinity and Cranial Shape and Form

  James Cray Jr., Anthropology

• The Effect of the Internet on Music Sales

  Sunita Mondal, Economics

• Mod Cosmopolitanism: An Anglo-American Youth Phenomenon in Germany and Japan

  Christine Feldman, Communication

• In a ‘Sorry’ State: The Ethics of Institutional Apologies in Response to Medical Errors

  Autumn Boyer, Bioethics

• A Manufactured Dream: The “New Woman” in Weimar Germany and its Representation in Literary Texts—Irmgard Keun’s “Gilgi – One of Us” and Marie Luiese Fleisser’s “A Decoration for the Club”

  Katrin Mascha, Germanic Languages and Literatures

• Cai Guo-Qiang’s Explosion Events as Performances of Planetarity

  Brianne Cohen, History of Art and Architecture

• Opinion is Not Only Word-Deep: Discourse Level Relations for Opinion Analysis

  Swapna Somasundaran, Computer Science

• Childhood Abuse and Neglect are Associated with Body Fat Distribution in Adulthood

  Aimee Midei, Psychology

• Nutrient Input and Dynamics during Baseflow and a Storm Event in Nine Mile Run, a Restored Urban Stream

  Marion Sikora, Geology and Planetary Sciences

• Untangling /t/: Variation in Suburban Sydney English

  Christina Schoux Casey, Jie Cui, Fawn Draucker, and Kristopher Geda, Linguistics

• Bearing the ‘Golden Burden’: Art and Nationalism in the Netherlands

  Saskia Beranek, History of Art and Architecture

• Communication in Bargaining over Decision Rights

  Wooyoung Lim, Economics

• How Pirates Enlightened Europe: The Atlantic Origins of Modern Thought

  Isaac Curtis, History

• Do Mexican Workers Return Home? Performance and Duration of Mexican Immigrants in the United States

  Sandra L. Orozco Aleman, Economics

Outstanding Posters

• Transfer Rule Learning for Biomarker Discovery From Proteomic Mass Spectra

  Philip Ganchev, Intelligent Systems

• Determining Zeta Potential in Tissue Cultures

  Yifat Guy, Chemistry

• Testing the Stability of Obligate Mutualism in the Face of Environmental Change

  Allison Hale, Stephen Tonsor, and Susan Kalisz, Biological Sciences

• User-Centric Annotation Management for Biological Data

  Qinglan Li, Computer Science

• A Stress Management Intervention Improves Lung Function, Perceived Stress, and Mood in Children with Asthma

  Kristin Long, Psychology