Three minutes or less. In the time it takes for your favorite song to play, University of Illinois graduate students recently showcased their remarkable research to a panel of judges at the fourth annual Research Live! competition at Illinois.
This year, five graduate students in LAS participated in the competition — Hope Holland (psychology), Belinda Pacheco Johnson (chemistry), Collin Kaufman (neuroscience), Junghwan Kim (geography and geographic information science), and Whitney Sinclair (chemical and biomolecular engineering).
Their presentations gave insight into some of the most interesting projects occurring on campus. Here is what the LAS students are working on:
Hope Holland
Hope Holland’s research surrounds everyday gender-based violence that impacts people both mentally and physically.
Holland presented a project she is working on with psychology professor Nicole Allen to examine street harassment—cat-calling in particular. Holland’s research also describes these experiences through an intersectional framework by analyzing the ways that race, class, gender, ability status, and sexual orientation impact gender-based violence.
“One of the most striking things to come out of data analysis is that 100 percent of the over 400 women in the sample experienced some form of public gender harassment in their life,” Holland said.
Holland uses the metaphor of a paper cut to describe cat-calling. At the time, a single paper cut might hurt but seems like no big deal; however, multiple paper cuts day after day becomes much more significant.
“I wanted to participate (in Research Live!) as a challenge to describe my research in a succinct, linear way. I also wanted to get more experience presenting research to a lay audience, as I’m interested in making sure that research doesn’t stay siloed in one isolated discipline,” Holland said.