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Grad Slam Finalists 2015

The Division of Graduate Studies congratulates the finalists in the 2015 Grad Slam!

Finalists presented their research on Friday, March 6, 2015, to an enthusiastic audience.

First Place was awarded to Justine Smith, who represented UC Santa Cruz at the Univeristy of California system-wide finals in May in Oakland.

Below, we present videos of the First Place Winner Justine Smith, Second Place Winner Susanna Honig, and People’s Choice Awardee Annalisa Cadonna. 


All 2015 UCSC Grad Slam presentations are viewable on the Division of Graduate Studies YouTube site.
First Place: Justine Smith, Environmental Studies: Humans As Top Dog: Ecological Effects of Carnivore Fear
2015 UCSC Grad Slam Champion Justine Smith

Runner-Up: Susanna Honig, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology: Seabirds to Reefs: A Messy Connection
People's Choice: Annalisa Cadonna, Statistics & Applied Math: Flexible Spectral Modeling for the Analysis of Complex Brain Signals

The finalists for the 2015 UCSC Grad Slam contest were:

Alicia Michael, Chemistry
  • Silencing the Molecular Timekeeper
Gabriel Byrne, Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics
  • Beyond an Abstract Hope: Developing an HIV Vaccine
Susanna Honig, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
  • Seabirds to Reefs: A Messy Connection
Erica Smeltzer, Literature
  • Urban Space and National Memory: The Narratives of Prague, Gdańsk, and Berlin
Tim Miller, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
  • Floral Display and Clarkia concinna: A Little Plant Solves a Big Dilemma
Jennifer Burt, Astronomy & Astrophysics
  • Our Strange Place in the Galaxy
Annalisa Cadonna, Statistics & Applied Math
  • Flexible Spectral Modeling for the Analysis of Complex Brain Signals
Emma Storm, Physics
  • Non-Thermal Emission from Galaxy Clusters
Justine Smith, Environmental Studies
  • Humans As Top Dog: Ecological Effects of Carnivore Fear
Rachel Doran, Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology
  • HIV Glycans: A Sweet Solution to Challenges in HIV Vaccine Design