On Monday, November 3, the Do Good Institute partnered with the Gemstone Honors Program to host the 9th annual Gemstone Do Good Showcase at Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center. The Gemstone Honors Program at the University of Maryland is a unique, multidisciplinary four-year research program for selected undergraduate honors students of all majors. Teams of students design, direct and conduct significant research under the guidance of faculty mentors and Gemstone staff. Students tackle complex problems, from affordable disaster relief to the quality and accessibility of donated organs.
We were very proud of the presentations of the Gemstone junior teams at the Do Good Showcase, particularly in how they framed their work to date from the perspective of how they are contributing to the benefit of society at large. We were also very pleased that most of the audience questions came from the freshman Gemstone class, and they were very good questions. Peer mentorship is a significant component of the Gemstone experience, and it was nice to see it on full display.David J. Lovell, Director of Gemstone Honors Program
Twelve impressive Gemstone student teams presented their research and participated in a Q&A session with a panel of faculty judges and peers. The panel included Thomas Bennett, Research Assistant, Do Good Institute, Allison Lansverk, Associate Director, Gemstone Honors Program, Leslie Lizama, Operations Specialist, Gemstone Honors Program, Christina Hnatov, Learning Experience Catalyst, Academy for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Gemstone alum ‘19), and Lili Bao, Coordinator of Undergraduate Programs and Advising, Aerospace Engineering (Gemstone alum ‘25).
After a competitive showcase, judges deliberated and selected three student teams in no particular order: VALVE, GABA, anad VISTA as the 2025 award recipients. Each team will receive $500 to support their research endeavors after this semester. In addition, FSH and VALVE received $150 as the Audience Choice Award recipient, a Gemstone awarded honor.
Learn more about the talented teams and their winning research:
- GABA: Investigating the relationships between adverse childhood experiences, gastrointestinal issues, and college stress to better UMD’s mental health resources.
- VISTA: Develop virtual labs that allow students to access lab equipment and perform labs in real time from a remote location with camera and sensor feedback.
- VALVE (Audience Choice Award): Discovering the mechanism behind calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) in diabetic patients to design a novel therapeutic.
- FSH (Audience Choice Award): Investigating color vision’s role in African Cichild social behaviours using few-shot action recognition.
The Do Good Institute is grateful to all Gemstone students for their hard work, dedication and passion this semester. Learn more about the Gemstone program at gemstone.umd.edu.