April 6, 2017 ALL

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JCU Neuroscience Students Dominate at ECSC

For the 30th consecutive year, neuroscience students of Helen Murphy, Ph.D., and Cyrilla Wideman, Ph.D., have won top awards at the annual Eastern Colleges Science Conference (ECSC). The conference was held at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on April 1, 2017. There were over 350 participants from approximately 25 colleges or universities at the conference.

Parker Cavendish received an Award of Excellence for a research paper in physiology. Ethan Ekstrand received an Award of Excellence for a research paper in psychology. Celia Melillo received an Award of Excellence for a research paper in health sciences. Kyle Patterson received an Award of Excellence for a research paper in genetics/molecular biology. Ellen Piccillo received an Award of Excellence for a research paper in biochemistry. For judging purposes of the manuscripts, student and institutional names were deleted (“blind review”), so evaluators would not be prejudiced by the gender of the author or by the institution in which the research was conducted.

In addition, Ethan Ekstrand received an award for the Outstanding Poster Presentation in psychology. Kyle Patterson received an award for the Outstanding Poster Presentation in genetics/cell biology. Ellen Piccillo received an award for the Outstanding Poster Presentation in biochemistry.

The manuscript and posters were a culmination of an independent research project, which is a component of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Concentration at John Carroll University. Faculty judges from various universities and research institutions in the eastern section of the country evaluated all research.