A group of four select students will represent N.C. State at the Atlantic Coast Conference Undergraduate Research Symposium in Charlottesville, Va., today and Saturday at the University of Virginia.

At the symposium, each student will give an oral presentation based on his or her different research to an audience of students and faculty from ACC universities and colleges.

The four students who will present at the symposium are Andrew Coughlin, a senior in biomedical and textile engineering; Devki Gharpure, a junior in architecture; Jonathan Lucking, a senior in microbiology; and Jennifer Ricks, a junior in biochemistry and chemistry.

“[They] are going to present oral presentations of their work, which is truly remarkable work,” George Barthalmus, director of undergraduate research, said.

Barthalmus said he received faculty recommendations for students who have been conducting research, interviewed them and chose the four students based on the recommendations and interviews.

Through the Undergraduate Research Program, the students have had the opportunity to do research on and off campus with the guidance of nationally and internationally recognized faculty and researchers.

“We want students to learn how to create knowledge within their discipline, Barthalmus said. “That’s what a research institution like N.C. State should be doing.”

Coughlin’s presentation entitled, “electrospinning of chitosan for biomedical applications,” is based on his research of the polymer chitosan.

He said he is trying to spin fibers specifically for biomedical applications, such as scaffolds for tissue engineering, wound-healing applications and drug delivery.

“It’s cool to go and learn about what other schools are doing and what other undergraduates are doing at the other schools,” Coughlin said.

Gharpure’s presentation entitled, “The changing human infrastructure of Florence’s San Lorenzo Market and its implications,” is based upon her research findings from last summer in Florence, Italy.

She said her anthropological research project focuses on the San Lorenzo Market human infrastructure — the social and economic relationships among local and immigrant vendors.

“This is an understanding of globalization and how it is related to commerce and how it’s constantly changing,” Gharpure said.

Lucking, who has been researching his topic for about four months, is presenting “possible estrogen response element of the breast cancer resistance protein.”

He said through his research he was trying to determine what controls the amount of certain protein in a cell and that estrogen might play a role in that.

“The goal is just to show that there is a lot of different factors that come to play in not only causing cancer, but in the treatment of cancer,” Lucking said. “One of the big things is mostly to demonstrate that State is capable of doing research that has relevance to treating human disease.”

Ricks, who is presenting “modified RCNNV as a method for delivering doxorubicin to cancer cells,” said she has been researching since last semester.

She and her mentors checked a plant virus and put cancer drugs into it and used that to deliver the drugs to cancer cells.

“I hope to communicate my research to other people who are interested in it and find inspiration from my own project,” she said. “And [I hope I] just become inspired about research in general … for other people and me.”

Barthalmus said each of the student’s work is important to present because the research affects everyone.

“All of their work is very different,” Barthalmus said. “The work they do affects all of us.”

Barthalmus accepted 12 other students who will not attend the ACC symposium to present to the state legislatures April 17.

“We want the legislatures to see that the work that they’re doing is important to the economy and the future of North Carolina, and it isn’t just some wild, blind unapplied kind of work,” he said. “Students are doing neat things that are integral to the economy of North Carolina.”

NCSU is one of the two research intensive universities in the UNC system. UNC-Chapel Hill is the other.

“We want [undergraduate researchers] to be lifelong learners and how to do that,” Barthalmus said. “It’s the difference between a strong research institution and one that isn’t.”