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

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
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