Explaining my research to one of the conference attendees

Author: Sarah Khot | Majors: Psychology and Biology | Semester: Spring 2023

My name is Sarah Khot and I am a Junior at the University of Arkansas. I am an honors student in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and am double majoring in Psychology and Biology on the Pre-Medical track. I am a research assistant in Arkansas’s Stress, Cognition, and Affective Neuroscience Lab (A SCAN Lab) in the Psychological Sciences department on campus. I have been working on my research in this lab under the guidance of Dr. Grant Shields.

With the help of an Honors College travel grant, I traveled to Eau-Claire, Wisconsin to present my research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR). I did a poster presentation on the relationship between acute prenatal stress and the onset of autoimmune disorders in adult offspring. Previous research has not been done to look at this relationship and I found a positive correlation between stress in pregnancy and the onset of autoimmune disorders in offspring. These findings can be used to do further research on the subject and elucidate a mechanism for this relationship.

This was my first experience presenting research and it helped me gain more practice on how to present in a professional setting. I believe this will benefit me when it comes to defending my honors thesis next year, and when I have to present research in the future. I was also able to meet many people in my field, both fellow students and professionals. Not only did this facilitate intellectual conversations, but it also allowed me to get valuable feedback on my research. I was also presented with opportunities to network and was even able to exchange contact information with other attendees and share my poster and findings with them.

I was at the conference for two days, so in addition to presenting my research, I was also able to attend other poster sessions, oral talks, and plenary sessions about topics that I found interesting. My personal favorite was a plenary session I attended about the present issues in healthcare and how to combat them. This was a large research conference and I was surprised by the sheer volume and diversity of research being done at different undergraduate institutions, both nationally and internationally. There was research in many different fields, from Biology and Chemistry to Music and Humanities. There were also opportunities to socialize with the other attendees at events in the evening, and I was able to meet several new people through this.

I also enjoyed learning about how my research intersects with other fields. I spoke to a Social Psychologist during my poster session about factors like socioeconomic status and race, and how they impacted my research findings. I also spoke to a Clinical Psychologist about how the findings from my research can potentially be applied to a clinical setting to reduce stress for pregnant mothers. I hope to continue research on autoimmune disorders in the future, especially in medical school. The experiences I had through this conference were an amazing introduction to the academic world of research and I hope to build on them in the future.

Finally, I would have been unable to have this experience without the help of my research mentor and funding from the Honors College. I highly recommend getting involved in research that interests you and taking advantage of all the wonderful resources the University of Arkansas and the Honors College have to offer that allow you to have these experiences.