Meeting of the Minds: Carnegie Mellon Undergraduate Research Symposium

The annual celebration of undergraduate research, Meeting of the Minds - Undergraduate Research Symposium, is one of the most exciting events on our campus; it is a day when undergraduate students come together and present their research to their peers and faculty. We encourage everyone to attend - play with a new robot, hear a concerto, listen to a poem, consider the effects of poverty on primary education achievement in third world countries, find out about emerging technologies....and more.

Each year, student projects are recognized for their innovation, creativity, and contribution to the discipline.

May 2011

Undergraduate Economics Program (UEP) Competition (A goal of the Undergraduate Economics Program is to encourage students to think creatively and bring together their formal training with their passions. Eligibility:  Open to any undergraduate student pursuing a degree in Economics or team of undergraduate students enrolled in an UEP course. Eligible prospects include students writing a senior thesis in Economics and projects developed in UEP courses (including independent study Students meeting the eligibility requirements must participate in the "Oral Presentations" category during Meeting of the Minds in order to be considered for the award. Participating in the "Poster Sessions" is not sufficient. Judging is based on the following factors: a) the quality of the abstract; b) intellectual process and results described in the presentation; and c) presentation skills (including Q&A) during the Meeting of the Minds.)

First Place: Dina Megretskaia (Economics), "Investigating the Effect of Payment Medium on Consumer Spending"

Abstract: Much interest has been directed towards the credit card industry in the past several years, in part because of households’ increasing debt levels. I am interested in whether credit cards inspire higher spending, not for liquidity reasons but merely due to lack of salience of the amount being spent. It is my hypothesis that method of payment affects how much consumers spend, specifically that paying with credit card leads to higher spending than paying with cash. By conducting a field experiment with random assignment of payment medium, I intend to study whether there is a causal relationship between payment medium and spending amount.

Second Place: Sebastian Wai (Economics), "Tracking Semiconductor Inventors in Silicon Valley and Beyond"

Abstract: This project is a methodical, in-depth study on the origins of inventors in the semiconductor  industry. Inventors are identified through patent data, then tracked using both patents and  biographical sources. Data collected on inventors is then used to profile the hiring patterns of a  variety of semiconductor firms across the country and across the history of the industry. The  analysis focuses on geography, education, and employment history, as well as a defining feature of  the industry: interplay between parent and spinoff firms.

Third Place: Shweta Suresh (Economics), "Impact of Social Risk Aversion and Audience Effects on Generosity to the Poor"

Abstract: This paper is focused on understanding the impact of social risk aversion and audience effects on  generosity from the relatively well-off to the poor. By conducting dictator games, I have collected  data that measures how much people decide to donate to a disabled person or a drug or alcohol  user under different situations. My experiment modifies Christina Fong and Felix Oberholzer-Gee’s prior experimental design in order to better identify how the two separate phenomena of social risk  aversion and audience effects work to alter donors’ decisions, especially when they are given the  option to purchase information about the welfare recipient. Understanding these motivations behind people’s decision to donate is important because this information allows governments and NGOs to  better structure transfer programs.

Fourth Place: Akshay Upadhyay (Economics), "Increading Reliability: Attracting More Clients to Microfinance Institutions"

Abstract: Dr. Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his efforts to break large  population groups out of poverty, through the formation of Grameen Bank. Grameen Bank provided  small loans to the poorest of the rural population in Bangladesh. Its goal was to spur economic  development from the bottom of the income chart. Dr. Yunus felt that making this credit available  to the poor would serve as a catalyst for improving their socio-economic conditions. Economists say  that, “Bottom-up initiatives like microcredit allow rural-based development,” which will help halt the  cycle of poverty that the poor are forced to deal with. October 2, 1983 marked the formation of the Grameen Bank, the first official bank for the rural poor. Since then, the industry has grown to  approximately 10,000 microfinance institutions serving over 113 million clients worldwide. Approximately 32.6% of the world population, or 2.2 billion people, are below the poverty line. The availability of microfinance institutions is known by close to 750 million of these people. But only  approximately 15% of these people are actually clients of microfinance institutions despite the  arising of financial needs. This presentation provides an analysis of existing policies on  microfinance loans. Also, behavioral economic anomalies will be used to propose a new policy on  microfinance loans in the hope of attracting more clients to microfinance institutions

Statistics Department Competition (This competition is sponsored by the Department of Statistics. Its purpose is to encourage undergraduate projects and research in statistics, and to inform faculty and students about these projects. The competition is open to any student or team of students who have completed a project under supervision of a Statistics faculty member. At least half the members of the team must be enrolled in an undergraduate program in the spring semester of 2010, not necessarily at Carnegie Mellon University. A panel of judges will rate the projects according to the following criteria: quality of abstract; clarity of objective; organization of thoughts; general quality of work; significance of work; oral presentation skills; visual presentation quality; appropriate use of statistical methods; and responses to questions.)

Second Poster: Brittanie Boone (Economics & Statistics), Erica Choi (Chemistry), Thomas Todd (Statistics), "Investigation of the results from the Content Focusing Coaching study and evaluating the alternative Hierarchical Models"

Third Poster: Emily Boncek (Science and Humanities Scholar), Yinglu Yao (Statistics), Xiaoya Zhu (Economics & Statistics), "Exploring Learning Rates: Do Students Learn at Different Rates?"

 

May 2010

Richard Schoenwald Phi Beta Kappa Undergraduate Research Prize (Open only to members of Phi Beta Kappa, this award is sponsored by CMU's Phi Beta Kappa chapter and named after Dr. Richard Schoenwald, late professor of History. Dr, Schoenwald was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a proponent of undergraduate involvement in research).

First Place: Richard M. Katzwer (Economics, Class of 2010). "Finding Nash Equilibria in Asymmetric Auctions with Resale: Numerical and Analytical Developments.

Abstract: This paper discusses new methods for solving for Nash equilibria bid-functions in several different types of related auctions: first-price auctions, first-price auctions with resale, first-price auctions with reserve prices, first-price auctions with reserve prices and resale and second-price auctions. Particular emphasis is placed on the new methods for solving auctions with a post-bidding resale stage. The first sections details the game theory underlying the Nash equilbria in each auction type discussed. The next section compares and contrasts the author's auction solving software, AuctionSolver, with previous contributions. Specifically, discussion is given to the numerical methods employed in solving auctions with resale. The penultimate section discusses several numerical examples and results in support of several conjectures made by the author as well as Isa Hafalir and Vijay Krishna. Special attention is paid to revenue comparisons between differing auction mechanisms. The last section discusses future avenues of improvement for AuctionSolver. The theoretical motivation for the work here is primarily given by prior research on resale auctions by Drs. Hafalir and Krishna.

Undergraduate Economics Program (UEP) Competition (A goal of the Undergraduate Economics Program is to encourage students to think creatively and bring together their formal training with their passions. Eligibility:  Open to any undergraduate student pursuing a degree in Economics or team of undergraduate students enrolled in an UEP course. Eligible prospects include students writing a senior thesis in Economics and projects developed in UEP courses (including independent study Students meeting the eligibility requirements must participate in the "Oral Presentations" category during Meeting of the Minds in order to be considered for the award. Participating in the "Poster Sessions" is not sufficient. Judging is based on the following factors: a) the quality of the abstract; b) intellectual process and results described in the presentation; and c) presentation skills (including Q&A) during the Meeting of the Minds.)

First Place: Engin Levent Altinoglu (Economics, Class of 2010). "Do Zoning Ordinances Affect the Distribution of Housing?"

Abstract: In his 1975 paper in Urban Affairs, Bruce Hamilton wrote about how his extension of the Tiebout model of housing predicts the institution of zoning ordinances effect the distribution of housing. However, not much is known about how well Hamilton’s predictions explain real world data. It is often assumed that the implementation zoning ordinances has the desired effect of producing individual communities characterized by a range of lot sizes, but few empirical studies have been conducted examining if this is true, or if an effect of their implementation on the distribution of housing really exists. This study examines data collected from Arizona’s Maricopa County to see if the implementation of minimum lot size zoning in ten of its largest municipalities has an effect on the distribution of housing, and if so, the nature of the effect. Using the Hamilton’s paper as a guide, the researcher’s hypothesis is that the zoning restrictions have a significant effect on the distribution of housing, resulting in bunching of housing near the minimum lot sizes within each municipality and a high ratio of variance across municipalities to variance within municipalities. The data included information about all lots in each municipality including lot size, property type, municipality to which it belongs, and property value. The results were somewhat mixed, but overall, the analysis suggests that the zoning restrictions have little, if any, effect on the distribution of housing. To summarize the important results, we do not see bunching of housing near the minimum lot size values in each municipality. The method of decomposition of variance indicated that, for certain regressions, the variance across municipalities is much smaller than that within municipalities. In conclusion, there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the implementation of minimum lot size zoning has any effect on the distribution of housing in Maricopa County.

First Place: D. Scott Taylor, (Economics and Statistics, Class of 2010). "Modeling the Price Dynamics of Catastrophe Bonds."

Abstract: This work modifies the assumptions of Burnecki, Kukla, and Taylor's paper "Pricing of Catastrophe Bonds" to build a pricing model for indemnity-based catastrophe bonds, allowing for the possibility of partial default.

Statistics Competition (This competition is sponsored by the Department of Statistics. Its purpose is to encourage undergraduate projects and research in statistics, and to inform faculty and students about these projects. The competition is open to any student or team of students who have completed a project under supervision of a Statistics faculty member. At least half the members of the team must be enrolled in an undergraduate program in the spring semester of 2010, not necessarily at Carnegie Mellon University. A panel of judges will rate the projects according to the following criteria: quality of abstract; clarity of objective; organization of thoughts; general quality of work; significance of work; oral presentation skills; visual presentation quality; appropriate use of statistical methods; and responses to questions.)

Third Place: Joseph Burgess (Information Systems), Alexandra Lecompte (Economics), John Lee (Economics), and Benjamin McGrath (Economics) "CMU Students' Perceptions of Distribution of the Mandatory Fees Across Non-Academic Resources."

Abstract: Carnegie Mellon University has compulsory activities fees as part of its tuition. However, the student's participation in deciding how to spend the funds is limited by institutional constraints. This research study will analyze CMU student's awareness and perceptions of how funds are distributed for non-academic resources. Moreover, the survey will evaluate to what degree CMU students might want to participate in the decision-making process. In order to make inferences about our target population most accurately, we will use the complete list of names of undergraduate students form the most recent copy of the student directory (C-Book) as our sampling frame. We will draw an SRS without replacement from this frame to form our sample.

Fourth Place: Da Jeong Ha (Mathematics), Hyemin Lee (Economics and Statistics), and Kunho Lee (Mathematics) "Correcting Aperture Bias for Star Formation History Estimates."

Abstract: The method of using spectra to estimate various star formation history ("SFH) parameters for distant galaxies is often insufficient for usage in astronomical research. For some galaxies, the spectral aperture is smaller than the angular extent of the galaxy, meaning that the spectrum will fail to capture some of the galaxies' light. In this case, the SFH parameters measured using such spectra will often be inaccurate, and such discrepancy between the true SFH parameters and their spectral estimates is called aperture bias in SFH estimates. In this project, we present a method that corrects aperture bias in three SFH estimates: the current star formation rate of each galaxy, the average ages and the average metallicities of the stars within the galaxy. Specifically, we model each SFH parametwe that was estimated from the spectrum as a function of the four photometric colors measured in the regions seen by the spectrum. Using this model, along with the photometric colors of the light missed by the spectrum, we correct the SFH estimates for their aperture bias. We use the spectral SFH estimate and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey photometry from a sample of 50,000 galaxies.

May 2009

Statistics Competition (This competition is sponsored by the Department of Statistics. Its purpose is to encourage undergraduate projects and research in statistics, and to inform faculty and students about these projects. The competition is open to any student or team of students who have completed a project under supervision of a Statistics faculty member. At least half the members of the team must be enrolled in an undergraduate program in the spring semester of 2010, not necessarily at Carnegie Mellon University. A panel of judges will rate the projects according to the following criteria: quality of abstract; clarity of objective; organization of thoughts; general quality of work; significance of work; oral presentation skills; visual presentation quality; appropriate use of statistical methods; and responses to questions.)

First Place: Michael Albrecht (Statistics, Class of 2009), Vinith Annam (Economics and Statistics, Class of 2010), and Nicole Mattison (Economics and Statistics, Class of 2009). "Brain Activity of a Sedated Cat."

Abstract: We are interested in determining the neural effects of an external visual stimulus on a sedated domestic cat. In this study, researchers make a cat look at a television screen with bars moving across the display, while filming the cat's brain to look for changes. However, the largest changes in the video are not caused by neural activity, but rather by the direct effects of respiration and circulation, which interfere with the cat's brain activity. Our objective is to remove these extraneous effects from selected parts of the original data, so that others can study the relationship between the external visual stimulus and the "corrected" data. Our approach uses Fourier analysis to isolate and filter out the periodic effects of respiration and circulation.