Spotlight on Graduate Research

Kinesiology student goes from researching Olympics to attending them

Katrina Krawec went from conducting Olympic-related research in Germany this summer to actually attending the Games in London.

A master’s student in kinesiology, Krawec spent several months at the University of Tübingen, just south of Stuttgart, where she participated in a large multi-year study to analyze the health and nutrition behaviours in adolescent Olympic-level elite athletes.

Ornithology researchers win three top prizes at international conference

Placing three UWindsor graduate students among the top award recipients at the North American Ornithological Congress confirms the university as a centre of excellence for bird biology in North America, says professor Oliver Love.

Fourteen researchers represented the University of Windsor, including Dr. Love and students from his laboratory and the laboratories of Dan Mennill and Stephanie Doucet.

The Windsor delegation took three of the 12 awards for the best student talks and posters among the hundreds of student presenters:

Tables turned on students promoting healthy eating

Ashley Kirby and Jillian Ciccone were pretty stoked about having a meal in the home of a celebrity chef – until they found out they were the ones doing the cooking.

Both masters’ students working under the direction of kinesiology professor Sarah Woodruff, the pair travelled earlier this summer to the St. Catharines home of Sandi Richard, a Food Network host and their academic supervisor’s collaborator.

Lamprey discovery earns PhD student top conference award

Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, the sea lamprey is not among the most attractive, or the most pleasant. Referred to by some as “nature’s vampires,” it’s a long and parasitic eel-like fish that attaches itself to the side of larger fish, essentially sucking the innards out of its host.

Now an award-winning PhD student in Biological Sciences has made an important discovery about how the lamprey processes olfactory information, which he says may help aid efforts to eradicate the invasive species from the Great Lakes.

Students use technology to help authenticate priceless art works

Editor's note: this is one of a series of articles about students who were involved in cool research, scholarly or creative activity this summer.

One of the most troubling dilemmas for collectors of fine art comes in discerning between genuine paintings and forgeries, but modern science is taking some of the guesswork out of the process. A pair of students recently spent two weeks at Cambridge University in England using state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging techniques to analyze rare pieces by some of the world’s best-known painters.

Student mixes love of history with passion for muscle cars

Evan Suntres is astute enough to see the irony in the research path he’s chosen.

A master’s student in history, he is studying a phenomenon which he suggests saw conservative males turn to muscle cars as a way of expressing their masculinity in reaction to such social upheavals of the 1960s as the anti-war and women’s liberation movements.

A self-described political moderate, he’s also in the process of restoring his own 1973 Ford Mustang fastback.

Biology student spends summer trapping gobies

Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles about students involved in cool research, scholarly and creative activities during their summer break from classes.

Lisa Isabella-Valenzi has plenty of fond childhood memories of fishing with her father, so she is pleased to spend most of her summer studying ways to get rid of invasive species that are robbing many area anglers of their favourite pastime.