秘密研究所

'Do Research and You Can't Go Wrong'

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Posted on August 11, 2016

Bob Lowry

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For Kelly Welsh, her entire life changed last summer, just two-and-a-half weeks before school started. She was in her hometown of Jonesboro, Ark., preparing to start college at her local state university, when she realized she couldn鈥檛 ignore her heart any longer.

Welsh had represented her state in the national scholarship event held in Mobile that June. When she went back to Arkansas afterward, she kept thinking about the 秘密研究所.

鈥淪o I finally told my mom I wanted to go to South Alabama,鈥� she said. 鈥淢om said, 鈥業t鈥檒l be up to you to make it happen.鈥欌�� So she called her DYW host family to see if she could stay with them again (they said yes) and she called Kristin Odom, USA鈥檚 assistant director of enrollment services, to see if it was too late to enroll for the 2015 fall semester (it wasn鈥檛). Odom got her a class schedule and she was off and running. But to where?

鈥淢ath and science were my favorite subjects in high school, so I started as a math/stats major,鈥� Welsh said. And while she enjoyed it, it was exposure to other options at South that opened her eyes to other possibilities, especially mechanical engineering.

鈥淏oni Yraguen (DYW alumna from Oregon and recently graduated mechanical engineering student at South), who was in the Honors Program, convinced me to give mechanical a try,鈥� Welsh said. Yraguen arranged a meeting for Welsh with department chair Dr. David Nelson. Emails and more meetings between Nelson and Welsh followed. She also went to a University Committee on Undergraduate Research symposium, and realized, 鈥淭his is what I want to do.鈥�

What followed really surprised her. 

鈥淒r. Doran (Michael Doran, director of the University Honors Program) always says, 鈥楧o research and you can鈥檛 go wrong,鈥欌�� Welsh said. So she asked Nelson about research and found out that she could start. Immediately.

鈥淢y friends back in college in Arkansas were like, 鈥淗ow can you be in a research lab? You just started college!鈥� But Welsh found out that research at South is for everyone.

鈥淭en years ago, there were no undergraduate students doing mechanical engineering research at USA,鈥� Nelson said. 鈥淣ow, we have 25 to 30 each year.鈥� 

Welsh鈥檚 career interest is biomedical engineering (鈥淚 want to make machines for peoples鈥� bodies鈥�). So this summer, in her freshman year at South, she spent every day in one of the Shelby Hall engineering labs, developing the hardware and software to read and record skin surface temperature measurements. In her research, she uses a small device that uses radio waves to heat special tissue-equivalent material that has properties similar to human skin. 

Her work is part of the effort to develop a device that measures blood flow in the skin. This can be very important to patients with diabetes, according to Nelson, who is supervising Welsh鈥檚 research. Other USA faculty involved in the project include Dr. James Downey in physiology and cell biology, Dr. Saeed Latif in electrical and computer engineering, and Dr. Silas Leavesley in chemical and biomolecular engineering.

鈥淜elly works on the interfacing,鈥� Nelson said. 鈥淭ake the signal, amplify it, convert it to digital, test the accuracy, and figure out where and how to hold it on the skin.鈥�

鈥淚 found something I really like, and the research has confirmed that,鈥� Welsh said. And what if she didn鈥檛 like it? 鈥淭hat鈥檚 one reason why it鈥檚 important to start your research early. If you like it, great. If you don鈥檛, you have time to try something else. I didn鈥檛 want to start late and find out I didn鈥檛 like it.鈥�

Regardless of where her research leads, Nelson says it鈥檚 the starting of it that will give Welsh and other student researchers at South an advantage down the road. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a tremendous advantage for students who apply for graduate school or fellowships,鈥� Nelson said. 鈥淏y the time Kelly鈥檚 a senior, she will have accomplished a lot. She will have published her work in a scientific journal and have presented it at one or more conferences.鈥�

鈥淎nd it鈥檚 also great for me,鈥� Nelson laughed. 鈥淭hese students who start their research as freshmen will be teaching me before they graduate! Student research is a natural outgrowth of our research mission at South. It鈥檚 important for our reputation, and it鈥檚 also fun and rewarding for our faculty.鈥�

Welsh added, 鈥淩esearch is something you just don鈥檛 learn in the classroom. It鈥檚 cool that we can do it as freshmen.鈥� 

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