Panel Discussion with the 2017 McNair Scholars

A discussion with the 2017 McNair Scholars took place on November 23, 2017 at the Turkeyen Campus. This was in fact the Inaugural undergraduate Research in Focus session and it involved five of six McNair Scholars so referred to because they presented their final year undergraduate research at the 2017 McNair Conference at the Florida International University. That conference took place in the period October 19 – 20, 2017. The students involved in the discussion were, from left to right in the photograph, Joenitta Arthur-McKenzie (Biology Major), Puja A. Jaichand (Biology Major), Rajiv Indarjeet (Chemistry Major), Lisa Dublin (Chemistry Major) and Alicia Layne (Computer Science Major). The McNair Scholar who was unable to participate in the discussion is Owen Grant (Computer Science Major).

The discussion was moderated by Dr. Troy Thomas (Director of Undergraduate Research) and it centred around the backgrounds of the students, and their experience engaging in undergraduate research at the University of Guyana and travelling overseas and participating in the conference.

The students presented the following research at the McNair Conference:

• Joenitta Arthur-McKenzie – The prevalence of intestinal parasitic Helminths in children of Silvercity, Linden, Guyana. Mentors: Prof. Abdullah Adil Ansari and Diana Seecharran (Dept. of Biology).
• Puja A. Jaichand – Consumption patterns and the economic impact of wildmeat on the Essequibo Coast. Mentors: Diana Seecharran, Tameka King and Elford Liverpool (Dept. of Biology).
• Rajiv Indarjeet – Characterization of the physicochemical properties of various casareep available on the local market for the purpose of preparing a grading standard for local casareep. Mentors: Gary Mendonca (Dept. of Chemistry) and Raymond Ramsaroop (Beharry Group of Companies).
• Lisa Dublin – Toward highly mesoporous activated carbon from coconut shells for water treatment. Mentor: Dr. Dawn Fox (Dept. of Chemistry).
• Alicia Layne – Integrated health information systems for improved diabetic outcomes in Guyana. Mentors: Malcolm Williams and Roland Daynauth (Dept. of Computer Science).
• Owen Grant – Distributed Object Computing – complexity reduction and interoperability. Mentors: Roland Daynauth, Roger Nurse and Malcolm Williams (Dept. of Computer Science)