KINGSVILLE (April 25, 2025) — Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) students, faculty and staff were able to celebrate student research and learn about commercialization and resource opportunities during the first ever Research and Innovation Day on Thursday, April 24 at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Center Building.
The event, which was led by the TAMUK Office of Research and Innovation, saw more than 45 students present their research project boards as they dove into a wide variety of subjects, reflecting the depth and breadth of student and faculty research across TAMUK.
“We are celebrating research and innovation because this is a pillar for our university,” vice president for TAMUK Research and Innovation Dr. Jose Espiritu said. “So, research and innovation are conducted across all departments across our institution. This is a good time to celebrate a research and innovation day. Students are eager to showcase the research that they are conducting with their faculty members.”
“So, it is very important to have a venue where the students can present because not all of them have the opportunity to travel to conferences, to give presentations and talk about the wonderful things they are doing in their labs with the faculty members,” Espiritu added.
Students’ presentation topics included DNA, biomedical investigations, stormwater, biofiltration, greenhouse gas trends, poetic expression, mental health, wildlife conservation and more.
Presentations were judged as the field of researchers competed for three prizes in both the undergraduate and graduate categories.
In the undergraduate division, Edith Willingham took home the $1,000 top prize for her project entitled Comparative Study of Anticoagulant and Procoagulant Properties of Nine Venoms from the Elapidae and Viperidae Families.
In the graduate division, Marie Wingert, a PhD student, grabbed top honors for her project titled: Energy Insights: Exploring Public Perception of Renewable Energy through AI Models.
Wingert has two degrees to her name but still found the experience gratifying as she was able to further delve into new areas related to her usual topics.
“I’m a Ph.D. student, but it’s still very nice to have this opportunity, especially whenever you win first or second place,” said Wingert. “It was a nice experience. It was nice to see all the work I have done in the past couple of years. In my case, my dissertation is about wind energy, so I tried to explore the applications of AI — something related to my main topic. I still wanted to explore other AI applications in renewable energy, so that’s why I tried to focus on what is known as Natural Language Processing models to understand public perception.”
The program featured keynote speaker Dr. Apurba Bhattacharya: Bridging Research and Real-World Impact and presentations from the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS) National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps Program, TAMUS Innovation and the University of Texas at El Paso Office of Strategic Partnerships.
Speakers focused on commercialization, intellectual property, customer-centered innovation and more, giving students a look at what to potentially expect as their research begins to have real-world impact.
Research Poster Presentation Winners:
Undergraduates
First Place - Edith Willingham, Comparative Study of Anticoagulant and Procoagulant Properties of Nine Venoms from the Elapidae and Viperidae Families
Second Place – Lindsay Spindel, Isolation & Characterization of Snake Venoms Serine Proteases from the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake
Third Place – Melanie Munoz, Evaluating the Medical potential of Cilantro (Coriandrum Sativum) Quantification of Bioactive Compounds
Graduates
First Place – Marie Wingert, Energy Insights: Exploring Public Perception of Renewable Energy through AI Models
Second Place -Gupta Shubham, Hydrological Modeling and Nutrient + Sediment Analysis using SWAT model for Nueces Watershed
Third Place – Caleb McKinney, Exploring Temporal variability in the scale of Effect for Declining ground-nesting bird in and Anthropogenically Altered Landscape
-TAMUK-
