Jason Goebel (Biochemistry, '14) received funding from an anonymous donor to the Fellows Program to work in Dr. Andy Lampkins's lab. Building upon previous Samford research, the student team took amino acid derived scaffolds and demonstrated that three different groups can be synthetically conjugated selectively to the scaffold. This ongoing research project focuses on creating "smart therapeutics" to be used in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

Adrienne Darby (Pharm.D., '15) studied the effects of alternative medicines on chemotherapeutic prodrugs. Her research mentor, Dr. Greg Gorman, serves as Director of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Institute at McWhorter School of Pharmacy. The research team presented preliminary findings to students and faculty of Meijo University School of Pharmacy.

Aaron Carr (Religion and Classics, '12) joined Dr. James Strange and the University of South Florida excavations at Sepphoris, Israel. They continued excavations of a Roman basilica structure, focusing on an area in the southern portion of the building believed to be reused as an industrial area in the Byzantine period. During their excavations, they disclosed two walls, major evidence of a secondary Byzantine construction, and a handful of artifacts.

Chris Walling (Mathematics and Computer Science, '12) worked with Dr. Steve Donaldson and Samford student Claire Richie on a computational model explaining their views on mental imagery systems. Their study addressed a central point of contention in the philosophical debate about mental imagery systems - are images stored as pictures or propositional information? Their model won first place at the southeastern conference of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). 

Walter Turner (Chemistry, '12), Dr. Denise Gregory, and Dr. Lisa Nagy investigated the use of mushrooms to degrade pharmaceutical remnants found in wastewater. They proposed that the fungal enzymes that can degrade the phenol and ether linkages in lignin (a polymer found in wood) should also be able to degrade pharmaceuticals with similar ether and phenol linkages. The purpose of the study was to examine alternative treatments to detoxify waste streams.