OUR WORK

Does Ego-Resilience Impact Friendship Outcomes?

 

By Elizabeth B. Lozano

 

I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, as well as a Master’s degree in Research Psychology from UMass Dartmouth. Currently, I’m a first-year doctoral student studying Social Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The story of my research began in 2009 as a freshman at UMass Dartmouth. Having always wanted to be a “doctor”, I felt completely unsure of my future and where I was headed. Luckily, Dr. Trina Kershaw’s PSYCH 101 class (in particular, her weekly book club) got me really excited about Psychology! This interest quickly developed into my active involvement as an undergraduate research assistant.

As the next few years passed, the passion for serving as an RA blossomed into my undergraduate thesis as a Commonwealth Honors Program Scholar and consequently, my desire to attend graduate school. I was extremely fortunate to have a faculty member whose research was closely aligned with my own. Dr. Mahzad Hojjat had a keen interest in Positive Psychology which led to my idea of studying resilience and positive emotions in the context of friendship. As daunting as the project was at times, I knew it was going to help me further my goals.

Looking back, the person who truly inspired me was, indeed, my advisor, Dr. Hojjat. Despite every challenge, she encouraged me to keep going. Every week I looked forward to our talks about research and academia. As we bonded throughout the years, Dr. Hojjat became the role model that I wished to emulate.

 

 

Elizabeth B. Lozano and Dr. Mahzad Hojjat at the International Association for Relationship Research (IARR) conference, 2015.

 

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By the time application deadlines for graduate programs approached, I was certain that my dream was taking hold. Not only had I established fruitful contact with potential lab directors (i.e., PIs), but I possessed summa cum laude standing, approximately four years of research experience, and leadership in extracurricular activities. In an effort to present myself even better, I chose to pursue a terminal Master’s degree in Research Psychology and accept a teaching assistant-ship for my tenure of graduate school. It is through these opportunities that I obtained valuable experiences, such as supervising an undergraduate honors student on her thesis and co-teaching the lab component of a graduate-level statistics class. Above all, I published the results of my OUR funded honors thesis research. The research examined the connection between resilience and beneficial outcomes in young adult friendships. It was found that resilience and positive emotions were associated with desirable friendship outcomes such as closeness, maintenance behaviors, and received social support. Most importantly, we are among the first to discover that positive emotions mediate (or explain) this relationship. Our results have important implications for interpersonal functioning, most notably that positive emotions may lead to positive behaviors (i.e., friendship maintenance) and higher quality friendships.

 

Left: The cover page of the Journal of Individual Differences, where Lozano’s OUR funded research was published; right: Snapshot from Lozano’s article, written in conjunction with Mahzad Hojjat and Judith Sims-Knight.

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Two years later, and with considerably more experience, I applied to PhD programs. I had two options. The first option was to work as an IRB Analyst at Tufts University in Boston, close to home, while the second prospect involved moving my life to Illinois to work in a research lab at U of I. Rather than focusing on the short-term sacrifices (e.g., location, time, and money), I recognized that the research position would give me more opportunities to network, all the while allowing me to do what I love. Later that year, I was accepted to the PhD program in Social Psychology at the University of Illinois In Urbana-Champaign.

Fast forward to October 2016 and I’m about a month into my long-awaited journey as a doctoral student. My new advisor and I are working on a series of experiments investigating whether blame and praise are socially contagious. We’re particularly interested in the ways that individuals quantify these judgements.

The six years at UMass Dartmouth were some of the best years of my life — every experience helped cultivate my strong work ethic and desire to excel in research, thanks to the passion and support of faculty and staff. I can safely say that my scholarly experience as a Corsair effectively prepared me for the challenges of today, where I am a student at one of the best Social Psychology programs in the country. It is my hope that sharing my research journey will encourage readers to pursue their passion despite the many challenges and roadblocks that may lie ahead.

 

Reference
*Elizabeth B. Lozano, Mahzad Hojjat and Judith Sims-Knight, Journal of Individual Differences (2016), 37, pp. 128-134. DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000197. © 2016 Hogrefe Publishing.

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Going into the Cloud to Study Renewable Energy Extraction from Ocean Waves

 

By Cole Freniere

 

I joined the Computational Multiphase Flow Research Group in the summer after my sophomore year. Led by Dr. Mehdi Raessi, the research group is primarily focused on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of two immiscible fluids interacting with moving or stationary solid bodies. Specifically, I was assigned to a project funded by the National Science Foundation (CBET Grant No. 1236462), which involved simulations of Ocean Wave Energy Converters interacting with ocean waves. These Wave Energy Converters are complex to simulate, and require a large supercomputer to run for an extended period of time. How quickly the supercomputer solves the problem mainly depends on its hardware – processors, network cables, etc. There are several supercomputers available to us as university researchers, but we wanted to explore a new option – Cloud Computing. Amazon, whom we all know for its large online store, also offers computing resources in the Cloud, which customers can essentially “rent.” It is possible to build a supercomputer in the cloud, for a cost that depends on how powerful the hardware is, and how long we use the resources. The grant I received from the OUR provided the funds we needed to “benchmark” Amazon’s Cloud to see if it would be an economically feasible option for us. The outcome of the study was that Amazon’s Cloud offers a high amount of flexibility, and short term benefits, but over the long term, it is not an economically feasible alternative to university supercomputers. This is mainly because we need access to these resources continuously for long periods of time, which is not the Cloud’s strong-suit at this point. However, it seems more appealing for smaller, short term projects, for example: engineering consulting work. The cloud is also compelling because it offers so many different sets of hardware, which all are a low price to test, and enables exploration of the many different flavors of hardware available.

 

Left: The cover page of the CiSE journal; right: the front page of Freniere’s undergraduate research publication, which was partially supported by the OUR.

 

In this OUR supported project, I worked with Prof. Mehdi Raessi and his PhD student Ashish Pathak (both from the Mechanical Engineering Dept.) as well as Dr. Gaurav Khanna, Professor at the Physics Department and the Associate Director of the Center for Scientific Computing & Visualization Research. Dr. Khanna is well known for his Playstation supercomputer that is used for Black hole simulations. It was a pleasure collaborating with the experts in computational physics, and a great learning experience.

I presented the results from this OUR funded project at the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics conference, which had more than 2,000 attendees; this was during my senior year, which is rare for an undergraduate student. In addition, I gave presentations at three other local research conferences. I was also able to publish my work* in the journal of Computing in Science and Engineering, co-published by the IEEE Computer Society and the American Institute of Physics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freniere watching the clock count down before he begins his timed presentation at the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics conference, 2016.

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My OUR funded project was very fruitful for many reasons. It provided insight into an unexplored alternative to meet my research group’s supercomputing needs, and the Journal publication contributes to a specialized area of research. Also, the project enabled me to experience presenting at a research conference, and publishing a paper. Finally, it was a valuable experience because I learned something about a growing field of interest – High Performance Computing (HPC). This changed the way I view science and made me reflect on the capability of computer models. Additionally, it made me wonder: to what extent can we really simulate physical phenomena? Nowadays, the scope of simulations that scientists and engineers are implementing is incredible, and new advancements are being made all the time. I find scientific computing a compelling subject, and it is the main reason I decided to pursue a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering.

This project was related to my research on Ocean Wave Energy Converters, because it introduced me to the field of High Performance Computing, and gave me an idea about how the simulation model performs on different types of supercomputers. Supercomputers come in many different flavors, and it is not always apparent which flavor is the best, because different algorithms require specialized hardware to run efficiently. For instance, data analytics and molecular dynamics models would require a completely different structure of supercomputer for optimal efficiency. When we get access to better hardware, we can do larger simulations which solve higher levels of complexity of the ocean wave motion as it interacts with the Wave Energy Converter. This can significantly increase insight into the physical problem. I am very excited to present the Wave Energy research at the 2016 American Physical Society conference in Portland, Oregon.

 

 

Computer simulation of an ocean wave energy converter. The device is a buoyant flap which pivots around a shaft on the ocean floor. Courtesy of Ashish Pathak.

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As a mechanical engineering student, I was compelled by the subject material, and I was eager to get involved with undergraduate research. I also enrolled in the 5 year BSMS program, which enabled me to take graduate courses my senior year, which count towards both a bachelor’s and master’s degree. In my view, undergraduate research can be an excellent way to accelerate a graduate degree. Research is also interesting because during the course of conducting a research project, one always learns something new; it never really gets old and, above all, it is intellectually challenging. Another noteworthy issue is that everybody’s research trajectory is different. So, I can’t really tell you what it’s like to do research–you will need to see for yourself!

 

Reference

*Cole Freniere, Ashish Pathak, Mehdi Raessi, Gaurav Khanna, “The Feasibility of Amazon’s Cloud Computing Platform for Parallel, GPU-Accelerated, Multiphase-Flow Simulations,”Computing in Science & Engineering, vol. 18, no. , pp. 68-77, Sept.-Oct. 2016, doi:10.1109/MCSE.2016.94.