University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Five University of Arkansas at Little Rock students have won awards highlighting their skills in representing Arab countries in international politics. The student diplomats received awards during the Bilateral Chamber Regional Model Arab League held Feb. 12-13 in Houston.

Eight student journalists at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have won 11 awards in the 93rd annual Arkansas College Media Association (ACMA) conference for their work in The Forum, UA Little Rock's student newspaper.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Council 750 has awarded a special $750 book scholarship to University of Arkansas at Little Rock freshman Luis Martinez.

Researchers at UA Little Rock's Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) won the Best Paper Award for their paper studying the dynamics of COVID-19 misinformation themes using topic streams.

UA Little Rock Student receives Best Paper Award with COSMOS Researchers for the paper, "Developing Situational Awareness from Blogosphere: An Australian Case Study," from the 11th International Conference on Social Media Technologies, Communication, and Informatics.

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock student has placed second in a national legal writing competition for her paper that explores the increasing complications of taxing professional athletes during the pandemic.

UA Little Rock student-athletes posted another superb semester in the classroom, posting a departmental 3.28 GPA during the fall 2021 semester. The cumulative department GPA for the Trojans is 3.39, setting another impressive record for Little Rock student-athletes. The performance extends the department's impressive streak of semesters above a 3.00 to 17-straight, continuing to showcase Little Rock's commitment to success in the classroom.

UA Little Rock's William H. Bowen School of Law chapter of the Black Law Students Association will be sending two trial teams to the national Constance Baker Motley Mock Trial Competition in early 2022. This is thanks to Rose Law Firm, who generously sponsored the entry fee for both teams.

Ibraheem Abbood, a senior at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was awarded third place in the Biological Sciences and Engineering category during the Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium at Mississippi State University.

UA Little Rock wrestling team member Paul Bianchi has been selected as a 2020-21 second team Academic All-America Division I At-Large selection by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).

UA Little Rock's efforts in the classroom have paid off once again as the Trojans have been named to the 2020-21 Women's Golf Coaches Association All-Scholar Team, consisting of the top-25 teams with the highest cumulative team GPA. UA Little Rock's team GPA of 3.917 ranks fifth nationally as the Trojans are one of two Sun Belt teams among the nation's top five.

The Top Paper award recognizes the highest class grade for the semester at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law.

Three University of Arkansas at Little Rock students have been selected as nationwide winners of Acxiom's Diversity Scholarship Program. The UA Little Rock student winners include Adeola Adesoba, a graduate student in information science from Nigeria, Grace Crossette-Thambiah, a doctoral student in computer and information science specializing in data quality from Los Angeles, and Gabrielle Wilber, a junior business information systems major from Little Rock. The Acxiom initiative offers $5,000 scholarships to U.S.-based students from diverse backgrounds who are enrolled in a full-time post-secondary technology degree program. The program encourages women, veterans, minorities and individuals with a disability to apply for scholarships to support the next generation of technology talent.

Jordon Woodson, a mass communication major and political science minor, is one of five college journalists selected for a summer internship by the Arkansas Newspaper Foundation.

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock team won $10,000 and third place in the Walton Family Foundation Graduate Division of the Arkansas Governor's Cup for their business plan pitch for a technology that creates Avatar-based chatbots. The awards were announced during a virtual awards ceremony on April 9.

Three students from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have won a $4,000 prize in the e-Fest Business Plan Competition for their pitch for CloudCare, a smart baby monitoring app designed by a UA Little Rock professor.

Joseph Kready, a senior computer science major at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has been selected for the 2020 Social Networks and Health Fellowship program at Duke University.

More than 20 coders from central and southeast Arkansas took part in Google's 2020 Hash Code competition Feb. 20 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have developed a new and inexpensive method to fabricate thin film electrode materials for supercapacitors that produce higher power at a lower cost.

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock robotics team won the Design Award in the VEXU Robotics Competition held Dec. 7 at UA Little Rock.

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock's women's golf team continues to show their commitment in the classroom as a program-record six Trojans were named Women's Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) All-America Scholars for the 2018-19 season. Senior Emelie Blennow, junior Thea Wakeford-Wesmann and freshmen Malena Austerslaatt, Tilde Bocker, Kellie Gachaga and Sydney Scraba were each recognized for their efforts, named to the team that has some of the most stringent academic requirements in college athletics. To be eligible, a player must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.5.

University of Arkansas at Little Rock students competed at the American Society of Civil Engineers Deep South Student Conference. The American Society of Civil Engineers sponsors 18 regional conferences across North America. The Deep South Student Conference includes 14 civil engineering programs in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock's George W. Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology recently held its annual awards ceremony on May 3, where college students were recognized for their achievements over the 2018-19 academic year.

A team of UA Little Rock students is trying to promote a safer work environment with the introduction of "Leap into Safety," an affordable virtual reality safety simulator designed to make the operators more adept at operating powered equipment safely. The team includes Trenton Burroughs, information science major, and Denver Ellis, computer science major, as well as web design students Ryan Hood and Sunny Singh. For their efforts, the students won first place in the Best Hardware Hack category at theCrimsonHacks competition March 23-24 at the University of Alabama. Each team member won an Elegoo Super Starter Kit, which includes Arduinos, sensors, motors, and other fun programmable hardware.

A team of University of Arkansas at Little Rock students brought home first place in the Sustainability Competition at the American Society of Civil Engineers Deep South Student Conference for their design and build of a sustainable doghouse. The winning team consisted of Kassandra Castrillo, an environmental engineering major, Parker Little, architectural and construction engineering major, and civil and construction engineering students William Littlejohn, Isaac Martinez, and Garrett Wallace. "The design team from UA Little Rock chose bamboo as the primary material for the doghouse because it is fast-growing, strong, lightweight, resistant to bacteria, and water-repellent," said Dr. Nick Jovanovic, faculty advisor to UA Little Rock's team. "They also designed and built prefabricated panels that fit together with built-in pegs and slots to minimize the number of bolted connections and reduce construction time without sacrificing structural strength and stability."

A team of students from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock College of Business have placed third in the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Research Challenge on Feb. 23 at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. The students include Noah Asher, senior finance and economics major; Rita Chowdhury, Master of Business Administration student; and Alex Howell, senior finance major. Dr. Ashvin Vibhakar, Joe T. Ford Chair of Finance, served as the team's faculty advisor while Ben Bienvenu of Stephens, Inc. was their mentor. "The competition is sponsored by the CFA Institute with the goal of teaching students the practical side of equity research as well as understanding ethical principles," Vibhakar said. "The students learn institutional equities research. In the challenge, the students do exactly what a research analyst at Stephens would do."

Three University of Arkansas at Little Rock students took second place at the annual Beta Alpha Psi regional meeting in Dallas on Feb. 23. Senior accounting major James Hubbard from Wabbaseka, junior business major Shibani Lal from Little Rock, and senior accounting major Joseph Griffith from Benton competed in the conference's "Best Practices" competition, during which they presented about UA Little Rock's "Reality Fair" financial literacy workshop.

A team of business students from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have won second place and a $3,000 prize at the international Ivey Business Plan Competition held Jan. 25-27 in Ontario, Canada, for their business plan for a device designed to help interventional cardiologists perform minimally invasive heart surgery with greater safety and efficiency. The team is comprised of UA Little Rock students Noah Asher, senior finance and economics major, Abigail Resendiz, senior international business and management major, and Zach Cochran, senior economics major. The group collaborated with Arkansas Cardiology Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Dwight Chrisman and Baptist Health Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit Nurse Anna Helm to commercialize a medical device invented by Chrisman. The device, the "Speed-Torque," is a medical torque device used by surgeons in minimally invasive heart surgery, also known as interventional cardiology procedures.

University of Arkansas at Little Rock students competed in 3MT on Nov. 7. The competition for doctoral students, which is branded by the University of Queensland in Australia, challenges students to summarize and present their doctoral research in a short, three-minute "elevator speech." Competitions have been held at colleges and universities around the world. Winners receive scholarship awards, with cash values of $400 for first place, $300 for runner-up, and $200 for the people's choice award, awarded by audience vote. This year's competition was won by Ali Abdulhussein, with Diamond McGehee as the runner-up and Brian Keltch being awarded the people's choice award. Other students who participated were Sudha Shanmugam, Evan Xiaowei Liu, Wei Dai, Ujwani Nukala, and Dileen Abdulqader.

Three University of Arkansas at Little Rock student journalists were recognized for their outstanding work with Diamond Journalism Awards, a regional competition sponsored by the Arkansas Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The awards, which were presented Oct. 25 at Little Rock's Flying Saucer, recognize outstanding journalism by professionals and students from Arkansas and bordering media markets in Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. The awards honor work published or broadcast between July 1, 2017, and June 30, 2018.