undergraduate research abstract examples

Sample abstracts

Reprocessing used nuclear fuel (UNF) is crucial to the completion of a closed fuel cycle and would reduce the volume of waste produced during nuclear power production. Pyroprocessing is a promising reprocessing technique as it offers pure forms of product recovery. A limiting issue with pyroprocessing, however, is the inability to monitor concentrations of chemical species inside the electrorefiner. As with many nuclear processes, safe guards and monitoring become increasingly important; therefore, development of real - time monitoring techniques for various chemical species may allow for commercialization of this recycling process [1 - 5]. The focus of the proposed research is to develop accurate diffusion coefficients for Yttrium, a fission product found in UNF, in molten salt conditions through Cyclic Voltammetry (CV). Quantification of the diffusion coefficient will allow current measurements from inside the melt to be directly related to species concentration. With the diffusion coefficients, in - situ CV would then facilitate real - time monitoring of chemical concentrations.

This project aims to analyze the social and cultural effects of the Iranian Revolution through primary source material and interviews with those directly affected by the revolution. Iran’s political seclusion and its animosity toward the West has limited the voices and perspectives available to an American audience. Moreover, the attitude of the West towards Iran since the revolution has been myopic and often marred by political perspectives. The objective of this project will be to bring those voices and stories to light, putting a greater focus on the experiences of individuals who lived through the Revolution. These stories will be presented in a digital medium (film and web) in order to bring these voices and perspectives to an American audience.

Undergraduate Research Center

The following instructions are for the Undergraduate Research Center's Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference, however the general concepts will apply to abstracts for similar conferences.  In the video to the right, Kendon Kurzer, PhD presents guidance from the University Writing Program.  To see abstracts from previous URC Conferences, visit our Abstract Books Page .

What is an abstract?  Why write one? 

An abstract is a summary of a research project.  Publications: Abstracts precede papers in research journals and appear in programs of scholarly conferences. In journals, the abstract allows readers to quickly grasp the purpose and major ideas of a research paper and know whether reading the entire paper will be worthwhile.  Conferences:  Conference organizers use abstracts to decide if your project fits the conference criteria.  It is also the advertisement that the presentation deserves the audience's attention.  Conference attendees may review abstracts in a conference program to decide which presentations they want to hear.  

How does an abstract appeal to such a broad audience?  

Some conferences are for specific fields and some have broadly general audiences.  One should keep the audience in mind when writing their abstract. 

The audience for the abstract for the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference (URSCA) covers the broadest possible scope--from expert to lay person. You need to find a comfortable balance between writing an abstract that both shows your knowledge and yet is still comprehensible--with some effort--by lay members of the audience. Limit the amount of technical language you use and explain it where possible. Always use the full term before you refer to it by acronym Example:  DNA double-stranded breaks (DSBs). Remember that you are yourself an expert in the field that you are writing about--don't take for granted that the reader will share your insider knowledge.

What should the abstract include?

Think of your abstract as a condensed version of your whole project. By reading it, the reader should understand the nature of your research question.

Like abstracts that researchers prepare for scholarly conferences, the abstract you submit for the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creativities Conference (URSCA) will most likely reflect work still in progress at the time you write it. Although the content will vary according to field and specific project, all abstracts, whether in the sciences or the humanities, convey the following information:

• The purpose of the project identifying the area of study to which it belongs.
• The research problem that motivates the project.
• The methods used to address this research problem, documents or evidence analyzed.
• The conclusions reached or, if the research is in progress, what the preliminary results of the investigation suggest, or what the research methods demonstrate.
• The significance of the research project. Why are the results useful? What is new to our understanding as the result of your inquiry?

Whatever kind of research you are doing, your abstract should provide the reader with answers to the following questions: What are you asking? Why is it important? How will you study it? What will you use to demonstrate your conclusions? What are those conclusions? What do they mean?

SUGGESTED CONTENT STRUCTURE:  

Brief Background/Introduction/Research Context:       What do we know about the topic? Why is the topic important?   Present Research Question/Purpose:       What is the study about? Methods/Materials/Subjects/Materials:       How was the study done? Results/Findings:         What was discovered?    Discussion/Conclusion/Implications/Recommendations       What does it mean?

What if the research is in progress and I don't have results yet? 

For the URSCA Conference you can write a "Promissory Abstract"  which will still describe the background, purpose and how you will accomplish your study's purpose and why it is important.  Phrases like  "to show whether"  or "to determine if"  can be helpful to avoid sharing a "hoped for" result. 

Stylistic considerations

The abstract should be one paragraph for the URSCA Conference and should not exceed the word limit (150-200 words). Edit it closely to be sure it meets the Four C's of abstract writing:

• Complete — it covers the major parts of the project.
• Concise — it contains no excess wordiness or unnecessary information.
• Clear — it is readable, well organized, and not too jargon-laden.
• Cohesive — it flows smoothly between the parts.

The importance of understandable language

Because all researchers hope their work will be useful to others, and because good scholarship is increasingly used across disciplines, it is crucial to make the language of your abstracts accessible to a non-specialist. Simplify your language. Friends in another major will spot instantly what needs to be more understandable. Some problem areas to look for:

• Eliminate jargon. Showing off your technical vocabulary will not demonstrate that your research is valuable. If using a technical term is unavoidable, add a non-technical synonym to help a non-specialist infer the term's meaning.
• Omit needless words—redundant modifiers, pompous diction, excessive detail.
• Avoid stringing nouns together (make the relationship clear with prepositions).
• Eliminate "narration," expressions such as "It is my opinion that," "I have concluded," "the main point supporting my view/concerns," or "certainly there is little doubt as to. . . ." Focus attention solely on what the reader needs to know.

Before submitting your abstract to the URSCA Conference:

• Make sure it is within the word limit.  You can start with a large draft and then edit it down to make sure your abstract is complete but also concise.  (Over-writing is all too easy, so reserve time for cutting your abstract down to the essential information.) 
• Make sure the language is understandable by a non-specialist. (Avoid writing for an audience that includes only you and your professor.)
• Have your sponsoring professor work with you and approve the abstract before you submit it online.
• Only one abstract per person is allowed for the URSCA Conference.  

Multimedia Risk Assessment of Biodiesel - Tier II Antfarm Project

Significant knowledge gaps exist in the fate, transport, biodegradation, and toxicity properties of biodiesel when it is leaked into the environment. In order to fill these gaps, a combination of experiments has been developed in a Multimedia Risk Assessment of Biodiesel for the State of California. Currently, in the Tier II experimental phase of this assessment, I am investigating underground plume mobility of 20% and 100% additized and unadditized Soy and Animal Fat based biodiesel blends and comparing them to Ultra Low-Sulfer Diesel #2 (USLD) by filming these fuels as they seep through unsaturated sand, encounter a simulated underground water table, and form a floating lens on top of the water. Thus far, initial findings in analyzing the digital images created during the filming process have indicated that all fuels tested have similar travel times. SoyB20 behaves most like USLD in that they both have a similar lateral dispersion lens on top of the water table. In contrast, Animal Fat B100 appears to be most different from ULSD in that it has a narrower residual plume in the unsaturated sand, as well as a narrower and deeper lens formation on top of the water table.

Narrative Representation of Grief

In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go how can grief, an incomprehensible and incommunicable emotion, be represented in fiction? Is it paradoxical, or futile, to do so? I look at two novels that struggle with representing intense combinations of individual and communal grief: William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go . At first glance, the novels appear to have nothing in common: Faulkner's is a notoriously bleak odyssey told in emotionally heavy stream-of-consciousness narrative, while Ishiguro's is a near-kitschy blend of a coming-of-age tale and a sci-fi dystopia. But they share a rare common thread. They do not try to convey a story, a character, an argument, or a realization, so much as they try to convey an emotion. The novels' common struggle is visible through their formal elements, down to the most basic technical aspects of how the stories are told. Each text, in its own way, enacts the trauma felt by its characters because of their grief, and also the frustration felt by its narrator (or narrators) because of the complex and guilty task of witnessing for grief and loss.

This webpage was based on articles written by Professor Diana Strazdes, Art History and Dr. Amy Clarke, University Writing Program, UC Davis. Thanks to both for their contributions.

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• Sample Abstracts

Below are some examples of what research abstracts look like in various departments on campus. Don't see your department? Contact us for an example. If you need help writing your abstract for DD, work with your faculty advisor or contact the Office of Undergraduate Research (Hyperlink) for help.

Mathematics

Title: Vortex Solitons Interactions

Author Information: Shan Guruvadoo, and AJAY RAGHAVENDRA

Faculty Mentor Name: Stefan C. Mancas

Utilizing a rotational actuator with different paddle configurations in the Nonlinear Wave Lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the velocity and vorticity fields of vortex solitons are obtained. Using a powerful HD camera for a wide range of paddles and angular velocities, formation of ring vortices that travel in the water tank will be analyzed. The vortex ring propagation is useful for sending information across an optical fiber for long distances without the need for amplification. Since such fibers capable of sending information for very long distances don't exist yet, we will experiment with the propagation of spatiotemporal structures along the water tank. As a partial differential equation (PDE) model we will use the complex cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau Equation (CCQGLE), which for particular parameters can be simplified to a fifth order nonlinear Schrodinger equation.

Human Factors

Title: Simulation Research to Identify the Ideal Crew for Exploration Space Missions

Author Information Victoria C. Barkley, Sarah Glista,; Nishant Karvinkop, Shanggar Ganesh, and Margaret Micinski

Faculty Mentor Name: Jason Kring

The composition of the crew for long-duration exploration space missions can affect how the crew functions and ultimately performs; however evidence on the optimal mixture is limited. To study this relationship, we propose a series of experiments to determine which crew compositions produce the highest level of performance. In three different phases, 4-person teams will conduct simulated missions in an enclosed habitat called the Mobile Extreme Environment Research Station (MEERS). Depending on the phase, teams will spend either 2, 4 or 6 days performing a variety of tasks including research projects and simulated extravehicular activities and also complete a battery of behavioral measures on stress and mood. We will then compare how a crew's specific composition in terms of gender, personality, age, and national culture correlates with measures of performance. Results will show which mixture of these variables is associated with better levels of performance in a simulated space mission.

Engineering

Title: Development of ERAU Minion Autonomous Surface Vehicle

Author Information: Eric DeMaso and Will Shaler

Faculty Mentor Name: Eric Coyle

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has been selected as one of three schools to represent the United States in the inaugural Maritime RobotX Challenge. This challenge requires teams to develop a fully-autonomous surface vehicle using a 16-foot high-performance Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel. The platform must accomplish multiple complex tasks autonomously, including buoy channel navigation, debris avoidance, docking, target identification and sonar localization. The system architecture consists of software nodes running in parallel to produce the complex behaviors required by the RobotX Challenge. These nodes include state estimation, health monitoring, object classification, map creation and trajectory planning. This method offers a robust and dynamic navigation solution capable of being applied to autonomous systems operating in multiple domains and not just those limited to maritime operations. This presentation discusses the development of the ERAU RobotX platform with a focus on addressing the challenges of autonomy, navigation, and propulsion in a maritime environment.

Title: Investigating UAS Operator Characteristics Influencing Mission Success

Author Information: Kristina Kendrick, and Zane Zeigler

Faculty Mentor Name: Haydee M. Cuevas

Our research objective is to evaluate how the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operators influence mission success. In Phase I, we conducted a critical review of the literature to create a UAS Taxonomy of important KSAs and a metrics taxonomy to assess these KSAs. After discussion with UAS program director Alex Mirot, our team identified a prioritized set of KSAs for further investigation: flight skill in a manned and unmanned flight environment, gaming experience, team experience, and trust in automation. In Phase II, we plan to observe flight crews, recruited from students enrolled in ERAU UAS courses, to evaluate the effect of these KSAs on participants' task performance, situation awareness, and crew resource management during an operational mission. Findings from our study may offer insights into the development of personnel selection tools, operator training programs, and user interface design guidelines to ensure successful UAS operations.

Title: San Diego County Regional Airport Authority: Strategic Analysis and Recommendations

Author Information: Eric Harmatz, Joseph Ancona, Joshua Begin, and Rogelio Soto

Faculty Mentor Name: Dr. Janet Tinoco

This project entails an in-depth analysis and inventory of the current strategic issues facing the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority (SDCRAA), the owner/operator of the nation's 28th largest airport, serving 8.6 million passengers in 2012. Analytical frameworks used include Porter's Five Forces, SWOT/TOWS, as well as an analysis of various standard Airport Benchmarking metrics. As a landlocked facility on 661 acres, the airport faces a disadvantage compared to its peers of comparable size in available space to expand capacity to meet future demand. Due to the site's geographic location – in the middle of the downtown area in the nation's 18th largest metropolitan area, the airport faces various political, economic, social, technological, and environmental issues that need to be addressed for long term sustainability. This analysis provides recommendations based off of identifiable future travel trends to ensure SDCRAA's long term success in meeting the transportation needs of the region.

Title: Journalism and Social Media

Author Information: Erin K. Washington

Faculty Mentor Name: Steve Master

This paper examines the values and dangers of the use of Twitter for modern day journalists in gathering and reporting the news. As my research will suggest, Twitter has been a highly useful tool for journalists in gathering and disseminating the news. As opposed to the traditional news cycles, journalists use Twitter to disseminate stories in real time, often as they are happening. Twitter is an effective news gathering tool as it allows them to communicate instantly with sources, or witnesses to news events. However, this same pull toward expediency has drawbacks, particularly in the area of accuracy, the most vital component of a journalist's credibility. The "rush to Tweet" pressures journalists to the extent that, in some cases, sources are not appropriately vetted, resulting in inaccurate reporting. However, my research suggests that journalists will continue to use Twitter as it serves multiple purposes for both journalists and their audience.

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Sample Abstract - Social Science

Individual differences in memory in relation to emotional stimuli.

Katherine Morabito Under the direction of Dr. Christine Larson, Psychology

Although research has been done showing that dysphoria correlates with an increased amount of mood congruent false memories in both dysphoric participants and negative mood induced participants, no research prior to this study has examined how inducing a negative mood in dysphoric participants affects mood congruent false memories. One hundred undergraduate participants viewed lists of depression-relevant, neutral and positive words that they were asked to recognize later among lure words. Participants were grouped as dysphoric, mid-dysphoric, or non-dysphoric as determined by BDI-II scores. This study hypothesized that dysphoric participants induced into a negative mood would have a greater number of mood congruent false memories than all of the other groups. A 2 x2 x3 x 3 – way mixed-model analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Mood Induction (positive, negative), Gender (male, female), and Group (dysphoric, mid-dysphoric, non-dysphoric control participants) as between-subject variables and Word Type (depression-relevant, neutral, positive) as a within-subject variable and correlation analyses were used to examine the depression relevant false memory results. Correlation analyses revealed that dysphoria is related to an increased amount of mood congruent false memories (r = .22; p< .04). The results of this study add to previous research in the field of depression and memory on a small scale. Further research in the area is needed for a more complete understanding of how memory functions in dysphoric individuals, and may be used to augment or create treatment techniques.

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