 So as Vice Chancellor Wilhelm mentioned, we've done the faculty slam now. This will be the third time as part of research days. For me, it's become a highlight, a signature event of research days. So for those of you online who don't know me, my name is Nathan Meyer. I'm Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research and I love the faculty slam because it really has become an excellent way to showcase just the incredible faculty work that goes on in terms of research, scholarship, creative activity here at Nebraska. I'm also really privileged this year to have a co-MC for the event in my colleague, Jocelyn Bosley. Jocelyn is the Assistant Director for Education and Outreach with the Nebraska Mursec. That's the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. And she's also UNL's resident slam Sherpa. And so Jocelyn has the most experience with slams of anyone on our campus. So I just wanted to help welcome Jocelyn and then offer her the floor for a bit to give a sort of short history and overview about science slams and how they've been introduced here at UNL. So Jocelyn, over to you. Thank you so much, Nathan. And thanks to you all for joining us for this third annual faculty slam. The genesis of science slams on this campus and in this country actually goes back to 2016. And my then boss, Axel Enders, really brought this concept over from Germany. So the very first science slam was held in Germany in 2006 and they became really popular in Europe and Axel was familiar with them as a native of Germany. But there had been no such event, no event of that kind in the United States before. And so the 2016 UNL science slam was the first science slam in the United States and I am not gonna lie to you people, this was kind of a big deal. So we got a lot of good publicity. We got an article in popular science was written about our slam saying, this could be the future of communicating science research. And why is a science slam such a big deal? What is distinguishing about a science slam from something like an elevator pitch competition that you may be familiar with? There are a few things, but the biggest thing, something you already know if you've been reading the promotional materials about this slam is that the audience decides the winner. And so we don't have specialized judges. It really is up to the slammers to convince you the audience that they gave the most compelling slam talk. And the beauty of this is that I can't tell you what to base your vote on. You will have your own criteria for what you think makes an effective science slam and it's up to the slammers to figure out what they need to do to reach you. I love the title of slam sherpa, by the way. I'm definitely going to add that to my email signature line. But so then Nathan asked me, I think it was maybe in 2017, after maybe the second annual science slam which is open to graduate students, undergraduate students and postdocs, hey, do you think this would work with faculty? And I said, yes, I think it would definitely work with faculty because if anything, grad students tend to be a little bit more trepidatious about doing anything that might seem outside of the path of this professionalizing course that they're on or might make them look less than a professional scientist. And so I think the grad students who participated tend to be ones of a very supportive faculty. But by the time you're a tenured faculty, what do you all have to lose, right? So thank you for proving me right by all turning out to compete and share your work with us at this third annual faculty slam. Thanks, Jocelyn. I appreciate that overview. And what I've been excited about is we've taken this concept of a science slam and extended it across the disciplines. And I think you'll see that reflected in just the variety of speakers that we'll hear from today. So to sort of set today's lineup, the Office of Research and Economic Development issued a broad call a few weeks ago for 60-second video proposals. We asked faculty to submit proposals to participate in the slam. And we ended up receiving 15 applications from faculty across 13 different academic units at UNL, which was really exciting to me. We were really pleased by that. Yeah, and so at that point, we had a judging committee and I told you a minute ago, I can't tell you what to base your vote on, but I can tell you what criteria we use to assess the applications. And we ranked them based on narrative ability, quality of content and the attention to the prompt. So one of the ways that we encourage slammers to do something a little bit different than they would do in a traditional talk is by providing them a prompt to respond to and encouraging them to frame their content in a more narrative form rather than a sort of classic research talk form. And so in keeping with the theme, we are in Nebraska Research of Nebraska Research Days this year. The prompt that we set to the faculty applicants this year is what is the one thing you would want a Nebraska to know about your research, scholarship or creative activity? And so we evaluated the applicants based on how well they answered that prompt as well as how interesting their content was and how good a job they did of telling the story of their research in response to this prompt. And based on those reviews, eight faculty were chosen to participate in the SLAM. Yeah, we had such a great range of submissions that we made the decision to expand the pool of speakers this year. So historically, we were just talking before we came online. We've in the past had five slammers. This year we went to eight and the order in which they'll present this afternoon was based on random draw. And so first up, we'll hear from Sergio Walls in political science and ethnic studies. He'll be followed by Dr. Rochelle Dalla from Child Youth and Family Studies. Then we'll hear from Matt Andrews who's both in the School of Natural Resources here at UNL and director of our state EPSCOR program, Nebraska EPSCOR. If you're not familiar with EPSCOR, that's the NSF established program to stimulate competitive research. Matt will be followed by Charles Nwazoo from Food Science and Technology. Then we'll hear from Andre Masiel in marketing. Andre will be followed by Dr. Bonita Sharif from Computer Science and Engineering. Then we'll hear from Ted Dawson in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. And Dr. Wayne Rikoff will be the last slammer and Wayne is in the School of Biological Sciences. Yes, and so one of the main rule of science SLAMs or in this case, research and creative activity SLAMs is that there aren't any rules governing the presentation format or style, but there is one very important rule that our presenters must adhere to and that's that they only have five minutes. So we will give the presenters two minute and 30 second warnings. And if anyone is still speaking at the five minute mark, we will mute their mic. So this Zoom platform gives us the power to do that. Although I will tell you, I don't know about last year, but when I co-emceed the first SLAM, having your mic muted is fairly soft compared to the punishment that awaited those who ran over at the first faculty SLAM, they had to wear the sloth of shame on their head and have their picture taken and it was tweeted out. So it was a pretty effective deterrent, I have to say, only one person went over. And so this is a pretty soft punishment by comparison, but if someone is still talking at the five minute mark, we will mute you. Yeah, and then once all eight faculty are done slamming, everyone who's online today will have the opportunity to cast their vote for their favorite slammer and we'll be facilitating the voting using Zoom's poll function. And the winner of today's SLAM will receive $1,000, a $1,000 prize that they may use to advance their research, scholarship or creative activity. So I don't know about you, Jocelyn, but I'm getting excited and ready to hear these talks. Yes, I have a feeling that people are ready for us to stop talking and for the slammers to start slamming. And so I am delighted to introduce our first slamer who will kick off this third annual faculty slam. And that is Sergio Walls. He is an associate professor of political science and ethnic studies. And his presentation is entitled, Building Bridges Toward Immigration Reform in the United States. Hi, I'm a public opinion and a political behavior scholar. And what I would like Nebraska's to know about my research agenda is that I believe it has the potential to help get rid of the current congressional gridlock surrounding the issue of immigration reform. Politicians haven't been able to agree on immigration reform for a while now. The last time we saw something important done was under the Reagan administration. As complex as this issue is, a stalemate itself is based on two basic yet fundamentally flawed premises. One, that national security concerns cannot be met while still achieving a humane solution. And second, that providing a legal path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants now will open the door for more illegal immigration in the future. And therefore more demands for citizenship will keep overwhelming our immigration system. So politicians claim that they are only doing this on behalf of their constituents. One side of our political arena says that Americans want to have security on the border with Mexico. You've heard all about it. A much taller and beautiful wall. And some of those voices are also reluctant to open a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants. The other side argues that security has been enhanced considerably over the past couple of decades that a wall is not necessary and that a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is a must. But that's what politicians have argued. What does the American public want? At the end of the day, we're still living a representative democracy. Well, at least last time I checked. So the will of the people should mean something. The data from the real research center show that a vast majority of Americans that increase border security with Mexico is either somewhat or very important. Also, a vast majority of Americans, 67%, think that establishing a way for undocumented immigrants already here to stay illegally is either somewhat or very important. Wait, what? Two-thirds of Americans favor both measures and politicians have no fun a way to compromise? Talk about misrepresentation. Of course, there are partisan differences in the priority and intensity of these measures among the American public. But there is sufficient overlap that should allow for politicians to compromise and deliver. Furthermore, research shows that divided elites and the rhetoric leads to divided publics. So let's face it, politicians are playing a game of self-fulfill promises here, a game in which they help activate and deepen social divisions. And then they claim to simply be responsive to their constituents. So to all political actors involved, I say you want to continue building walls, go ahead. But let's also think about building bridges. It's time to put country first. Now, let's turn to the second point of contention. The idea that grinding a path to citizenship to all undocumented immigrants is the most to move forward with immigration reform. And here's where my research agenda can come really handy again. So please hear me out in Nebraska. I've been able to collect survey data at different points in time, since 2007, measuring likelihood of migration from Mexico to the United States. Not surprisingly, the ovenflow of those migratory intentions have fluctuated mostly with economic ups and downs. But to most Americans surprised, a vast majority of Mexicans would not want to migrate to the United States permanently. Romantic views of the immigration process aside, leaving everything behind, even under the best of circumstances. And even when you're seeking a better future for yourself and your loved ones, it's a highly traumatic process. According to my most recent data collection, about 4.5 of Mexican adults consider it very likely to migrate to the United States in the next two or three years. But only 22% of them would like to do it on a permanent basis. On this note, first generation Mexican immigrants in the United States are remarkably the group with the lowest rates of citizenship acquisition. So politicians here on both sides of the aisle have spent a decade and a half arguing about a path to citizenship that does not seem to be a must. What we really need is a strong and efficient guest worker program and a legal path to those here legally that want to be a part of that program if they choose. If only politicians invested themselves in understanding the costs of immigration. Rather than spending their time painting polarizing pictures of forced immigrants in the American hearts and minds, we all would be better served. I'm counting on you, my fellow Nebraskans. Let's make this a common sense issue. But let's not get ahead of ourselves because common sense in politics is the least common of all senses. I'm Sergio Walsh, and I approve this message. Way to go, Sergio. You came in under time. Very well done, very impressive. So next up, I'm pleased to introduce Dr. Rochelle Dalla. Rochelle is professor of child youth and family studies. And today she's going to present on a topic that I know is very near and dear to her heart that she's been working on quite a bit the last few years, family-based sex trafficking and injury, what Rochelle wants all of Nebraska to know. So Rochelle, take it away. 25 years ago, when collecting my dissertation data with adolescent mothers on the Navajo Reservation, I realized that the real mission behind my work was to give voice to marginalized women. My mission hasn't changed, but my research focuses exclusively now on the contextual dynamics and family relationships of women and girls trafficked into the commercial sex industry. Now, India, as you may know, is considered a global hotspot for human trafficking, and especially the trafficking of women and children into the sex trade. So that's where my research is situated. My first trip there was a solo journey in 2012 to collect life course data from women living and working in Mumbai's infamous brothel districts. I learned several important things on that trip. First, all of my participants were exceedingly poor and from very poor families and all were members of the lowest caste in India, the Dalits, those formerly referred to as untouchable. I learned too that the majority had been tricked, coerced, forced, or outright sold to a brothel, yet by family members, yet many remained remarkably resilient. I also discovered that these women were incredibly protective and proud of their own children. They sacrificed greatly so that their kids could have a better life than they had. And finally, I learned that casts exist throughout India who are known for family-based sex work. In these cast, sex work is passed intergenerationally from grandmother to mother to daughter as a means of survival. By the end of my trip, I was exhausted emotionally and physically. I honestly couldn't get out of the country fast enough. I was at the airport eight hours before my flight left. I kid you not, I was there so early, the guards wouldn't even let me in the building and I swore I would never go back to India. I've been back about nine times since then. As a family scientist focused on marginalized women, I was determined to learn more about families and indeed entire communities engaged in intergenerational sex trafficking and there was virtually nothing in the literature. In 2018, I went back and interviewed Bedia women. The Bedia are one of many casts known for their participation in the sex trade. Now Bedia females either marry or enter the sex trade and these paths are mutually exclusive and selected for young girls by their adult caregivers. Bedia girls enter the sex trade at about 15 years of age and they're tasked with supporting entire families. Once in, she stays in for decades until she can no longer earn money and usually exits only after grooming or replacement, typically a niece or a daughter. Now context is important here. Bedia are extremely core. They live in very remote rural areas without indoor plumbing, electricity or access to industry or education. If Bedia leave their communities in search of work, they endure significant discrimination because not only are they delit but because they are members of a delit cast known for sex work. It's a vicious cycle because Bedia women can earn 10 to 12 times more in the sex trade than a delit of the same education and skill set. Family commitment is an important part of the context as well. When asked about her forced entry into the sex trade, a 16 year old girl told me, well, I had thought that if by ruining my life, I can make my family's life better then what's the problem in ruining one life? The bottom line comes down to choice and options and the Bedia and other cast like them have very few. What I want Nebraska to know about my work is this. Rather than focusing on the perpetrators, the mothers, the fathers, the grandmothers to push their daughters into the sex trade is vitally important to focus instead on the political, economic and social systems like gender and caste discrimination that limit life options for entire populations in which lay the foundation for the creation and maintenance of intergenerational sex trafficking. Second, we, meaning you and I are not that different from the women who have participated in my research. We share with them strength and resilience and willingness to sacrifice for our families. And we especially share the desire for our children to have better lives than we have had and do what is necessary within our means to make that happen. Thank you. Thank you so much, Rachelle. Wow, what a harrowing, fascinating, deeply affecting story. And thank you for sharing it with us. I wanna let you all know, if you've been to one of the UNL science slams before where we feature graduate students, lobbying imaginary virtual teddy bears that you all, just got to notice that my internet connection is unstable. I hope you all continue to be able to hear me. And so know that I'm lobbing those teddy bears that you in my heart. And I'm sure our other audience members are too. Our next slammer is Matt Andrews. He is the director of Nebraska EPSCORE and a professor in the School of Natural Resources. And he is going to be talking to us about medical innovations based on hibernation in Nebraska ground squirrels. Yeah, thank you so much. Hi everyone, my name is Matt and I am in the School of Natural Resources. And today I wanna talk to you, give you a brief story about biodiversity. And I think a lot of us, when we think of biodiversity, we think of the tropical rainforests and plants and animals that are so numerous. We can't even name them. They're so abundant and so beautiful. But I really wanna talk about biodiversity in this place right here. So I think a lot of times we don't necessarily think of biodiversity like a tropical rainforest. When we think of this place, we call home. But actually there's more there than meets the eye. And what I wanna talk to you about is how if you look close enough at the plants and animals that are all around us, there are these little biochemical secrets that actually can make tremendous contributions to medicine, tremendous contributions to society. And so what I wanna talk to you about today is the 13 line ground squirrel. Now this is a pesky critter that a lot of people don't care for. It makes holes in gardens and cemeteries and golf courses. Some of you might remember an old Bill Murray movie called Caddyshack where there were some gophers that were making holes in a golf course. Well, listen, that's what I study. And this is what they look like. You may have seen them around Nebraska, if I'll hold them up to the camera right there, that's a 13 line ground squirrel. But the reason we study these guys is not necessarily because they're cute or because they're pesky, but because they do this, they hibernate. In hibernation, when that happens, there's all sorts of biochemical and physiological changes that occur that would not be survivable by most mammals, including you and I. We cannot live in these extremes. And let me tell you what some of these extremes are. A body temperature that goes from our normal 98.6 Fahrenheit to about freezing, what would be about 40, 41 degrees Fahrenheit. A heart rate that goes from 300 or 400 beats per minute. And by the way, that rapid heart rate is really common in small mammals. To one that's about five or six beats per minute. Oxygen consumption, that's about 2% of normal. Now, any one of those things, the low body temperature, which would be hypothermia, the slow heart rate, which would be terrible bradycardia and a heart attack, the oxygen consumption, which would instantly give us a stroke, those would all be certain death for you and I. But these animals survive it fine. And because they do, to understand the biochemical secrets, primarily the genes that they express, the proteins that they make, and then how they remodel their entire physiology actually can give clues to human medicine. So I have one right here just to show you. So this is a 13 line ground school I have right here. And as you can see, we're fortunate because usually the animal facility doesn't let us take these live animals out. But what they do is they curl up into a little ball like this, this one is particularly cooperative. He's allowing me to curl them up into this little ball as you can see right here. And that's how they hibernate. Now, in terms of those major physiological changes I was mentioning, those can give rise to things that can be potential therapies, like a therapy for hemorrhagic shock that we've developed in my laboratory. Hemorrhagic shock is profound bleeding. And so the Department of Defense was very interested in the ability for ground schools to survive with low oxygen. So they funded us to study this particular phenomena and develop a therapy, a portable injectable, for soldiers that would be hit by a bullet and would lose a lot of blood. Because it was portable, they could take it on their body wherever they go, whether that could be like a remote mountain top in Afghanistan, a village in Iraq, they would have this particular tool with them. But it's all based on hibernation physiology. One of the things that's really attractive about Nebraska is that there's certain things that we can do, but one of the things that we can do is get these guys right out in the field, like this particular one was found near a golf course in Wahoo, but then also cemeteries and mead. These are the sorts of places where we get these guys. Another technology that we're hoping to pursue is one of organ preservation. When you think of organs and transplantation, organs can only be stored for a small amount of time before they have to go into the recipient. So that time from donor to recipient usually is only one day. Imagine if you can make it two days, you could establish organ banks. And so that's the kind of thing that I want Nebraskans to know about one of their own little critters. Thank you. Great job, Matt. Well under time, very impressive. Appreciate the prop too. So next up, we have Dr. Charles Dwezu. Charles, if you wanna come on the camera, this is a great time to turn your camera on. Charles is an assistant professor of practice in the department of food science and technology. And today Charles is going to be presenting on speaking one language in food making. Charles, welcome. Yeah, hi everybody. So I just have two questions today. Just two questions. The first one is, have you ever seen someone searching for information frantically from a document as big as this? You will see the person frantically searching for the information. What about someone that does not even understand the language in the document? You will see the person lost in thought. Have you ever been in that situation before? Okay, let's leave this question when we get back to it later on. My second question is, and the answer is either yes or no. Have you ever been in a situation when you contemplate of firing a worker walking directly under you? Maybe for you, it is yes, it is no. But for me, it is yes. Many yes. Having worked in the food industry in North America for eight years, food safety program documentation is a profound complex document. And the successful implementation of this document, it depends on a lot of factors. One of the factors is the workforce. However, in North America, Nebraska, in Closet, this workforce is changing very rapidly and they are becoming very diversified. Most of these workers are non-native speakers of English. Also, most of these workers are not proficient in the use of English language. Yes, and this has resulted in various food safety deviation in food processing. And keeping a worker like that is not only disadvantageous to the complaint, but is also danger for the public health. Just this year, 169 people got sick. 41 of these 169 were critically admitted in the hospital. According to investigation by FDA, the 169 that got sick was not as a result of coronavirus, but as a result of the food they consume. And this food was contaminated with bacteria. Yes, bacteria. And the name of this bacteria is listeria. For that investigation, indicated that this plant that produced the food was a local plant in Florida. Outbreak like this, or this particular outbreak, has been traced to employing lack of comprehension of the plant food safety protocol. This has always been a familiar problem in the food industry. To me, this is a very important issue in the food industry. To make you understand this, or to put this in more perspective, let's go back to my first question. The first problem is, most time the food safety program document is very complex and complicated, filled with a lot of sign jaguars and government regulation. The second problem is, most of these employees do not understand the language in this document. So the success implementation of this document is in jeopardy. So what always happen is that when you try to implement this document and the employees, the workers on the floor do not understand the science and the complexity of the document, it becomes a great problem. However, we found the solution. Currently, I am working with my students and collaborating with the professor in Graphic and Design to develop the first ever universal food safety language in food industry across North America. The objective of our project is in two folk. One is to simplify the complex nature of food safety program into one-point lessons, just one-page lessons. Then convert the one-point lesson into images, icons, virtualizations and color, a language that everybody can understand. This is our journey towards speaking one particular language in the food industry. Thank you very much. Thank you for that spectacular slam talk, Charles. I appreciate your passion and it was an emotional roller coaster of a journey you took us on, but you laid out the problem and then set up the solution beautifully. Also, I think we're kindred spirits with the talking with the hands too. Thank you so much, Charles. Our next slammer is going to be Andre Masiel and he is an assistant professor of marketing. He will be presenting his slam talk, Marketplace Stories of David versus Goliath. Welcome, Andre. All right, thank you. First of all, just can you hear me well and see me well? Yes. All right, okay. So let me get started. And I think that now we can start counting time. Okay, here we go. So I'm Andre from the College of Business. And before we get to this picture, I think the best way to start is with this last part, the College of Business. Because a couple of times when I participate in those UNL faculty happy hours, someone, maybe you, made the typical question, where do you work? Then after replying College of Business, I would get this puzzle look followed by the question, do business college do research? Yes, and business research is quite varied. We use multiple methods, drawing on economics, psychology and sociology, just to name a few disciplines. And while some scholars study how large firms can sell more, others study the problems of consumer debt, huge variance in topics and methods. Having sat or reset some of your expectations about business scholarship, what do I research? I research inequality that happens in the marketplace. What do you mean by that? This happy hour fellow would ask. On the producer side, consider, for example, the different access to capital that small and medium firms have as compared to large firms, big inequality there. On the consumer side, consider when racial minorities are treated as potential criminals in stores. Starbucks was involved in one such case recently. Or consider the wedding cake case, which made all the way to the Supreme Court in 2018 when a baker denies service to a gay couple because of his religious views. Within this landscape of inequality, I researched the little guy, the challenger, the marginalized, and how this actor tried to contest inequality. In other words, I studied David versus Goliath kind of situation as they happen in the marketplace. Let me now share with you two projects that I have in this area. Project One essentially asks, how can the small and medium firms that David's compete against large companies, the Goliaths? To find an answer for that, I studied the rise of craft brewers in the US, a phenomenon driven by small and medium firms. Yeah, as you heard that right, I did research on beer and I got paid for that. Tax payer dollars well aside, I use this case to show how small and medium firms can thrive by creating collaborative networks among themselves with consumers and journalists. But once these networks are formed, this business should not act as self-focused firms. Instead, they need to act as leaders of a social movement, creating a cause that inspires people and bring them together and becoming a single voice before the media and before legislatures. What is the importance of this research? Small and medium firms account for 99% of employers in the US and they are an economic pillar of Nebraska. Therefore, directly addressing the concerns of such companies can increase the impact of research that we do at the College of Business and at UNL more broadly. Project two essentially asks, what is like to be a member of a minority group in commercial establishments? Here minority consumers are the David's and discrimination is this formidable Goliath. This consumers face discrimination on a wide range of establishments, clothing stores, gyms and healthcare providers. And this consumers value place that set out to be safe space. Those that try to offer an inclusive environment, they actively look for those stickers that say safe space, all are welcome or the rainbow. But this project also shows that minority consumers often do not experience this space is actually safe. For this to happen, business owners need to go well beyond the stickers. A key initiative is to hire people who are from those marginalized groups. This cues to consumers that the firm is not only interested in making money from marginalized consumers, it's also committed to giving them real job opportunities. What is the importance of steady marketplace discrimination? Well, what a week to answer that. Look at the current social division in the US, which by the way is unfolding as votes are counted and we pull our hair. This project can form this kind of existential debate that is happening in US society, including here in Nebraska. Summing up, what is the one thing that I want a Nebraska to know about my research that explores the origins and implications of marketplace inequality? Thank you so much for your attention and just for the record, all presenters here are wonderful and now we'll accept the results of today's election. Thank you. Thanks so much, Andre. Great job, great job reminding us that research scholarship creative activity happens across all corners of campus and even at Hawks Hall in the College of Business. So appreciate that messaging. Next up, we have Dr. Bonita Sharif. Bonita is associate professor of computer science and engineering and Bonita is gonna be speaking on empowering empirical software engineering with gaze tracking. So Bonita, please turn your cam on and give us your slam. Thank you, Nathan. I am an empirical software engineering researcher studying the human aspect involved in how software and programming languages are engineered. That means I study via experiments how software developers work in both academic and industry settings using both conventional methods such as questionnaires and surveys but also unique objective methods like eye trackers such as this one and this one. They sit under your monitor and unobstructively track your eyes. Tracking developers' eyes gives us unique insights into how they work. It is important to understand how developers work for several reasons. First, the last time I checked software developers were humans too. So it only makes sense to study their behavior and cognitive aspects such as working memory and attention span with respect to building software. Second, the more we know about the work process of developers, the better we can support them with evidence-based tools to help them in the process. And third, unless you were living under a rock we all know that the world runs on software. The cost of hiring software developers is over $100,000 per year. It is in the best interest of software companies to train and retain their developers. The happier and more productive our developers are the better it is for the software industry. Now, eye tracking has been around since the 1800s and has been used in reading and marketing for decades. But here's the problem. Current eye tracking software is only able to track limited amounts of information that needs to be present on one screen. This is roughly equivalent to what you see on this piece of paper. This system simply does not scale to studying software developers. Developers work with thousands, if not millions of lines of code, roughly equivalent to this. They switch between files. They have to read through all these files, browse the web for solutions on question and answer sites, like Stack Overflow, a developer's best friend, by the way. Current systems do not scale to this level, period. With my team, I have developed eye tracking infrastructure that is able to collect data on all these different documents at the line level as they move and read in real time while the developer is working in a familiar development environment, all in the presence of scrolling, imagine you're scrolling and context switching between these files. And it does this seamlessly. So you don't really have to worry about having a code that is a few lines long. This infrastructure completely revolutionizes the way we conduct eye tracking studies in software engineering. With this infrastructure in place, specifically I try to figure out if we can use the eye movement patterns to uncover any hidden insights about the developers, the code itself, or the tasks being studied. For example, we are currently working on an expertise prediction model based on the eye movement data of developers working on bug fixing tasks. In another project, we are trying to externalize the mental model of developers solely based on the eye movement patterns. The more data we collect, the better our models will be at predicting these kinds of things in the future. Imagine an interviewing scenario where instead of just scoring the final answer, the interviewer gets to see the interviewer's thought process via the eye movements while they're solving the problem. The final answer might not be correct, but the process the interviewer used to understand and develop her solution was. The list goes on. As humans, we are unaware of what we are looking at while we are doing a task. Nebraska, the one thing I would like you to know about my research is that our eyes tell us a lot more about what we think. And the task being done and the context in which it is being done is super important. Together with my industry partners here in Nebraska, I use developer eye movement data to help build better guidelines and tools to help the software development process in our Silicon Prairie and beyond more productive and inclusive. Thus saving time and money in the long run. I envision a future where everyone will have access to an eye tracker just like we have a mouse. When that day comes and it will, will you be ready to use this technology to the best of your advantage? We are working towards that goal every single day in my lab. These solutions also spill to other disciplines. So I wanna leave you with this. Are you aware of what you are looking at? Ooh, I love it, ending with a challenge and a question, that's fantastic. Thank you so much, Benita. I'm also loving the use of props, by the way, by several of our Slammers. Very effective, very nice. Thank you so much for that, sharing your slam talk with us, Benita. And I'm excited to introduce our next Slammer, who has a very interesting tale to tell. We're gonna be hearing from Ted Dawson, assistant professor of practice of German in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. And his talk is one I think many of you will be interested in as well, German in Nebraska, beer pretzels and anti-racism. Let's hear it, Ted. Thank you. So hello, everybody. I am excited to share my research with you about, hang on, can everybody hear me? For some reason, I'm not getting a big screen like I'm... Yeah, we can hear you, Ted. Oh, okay, I'm sorry, okay. So I'm excited to tell you about my research into the German language in Nebraska and I'm excited to tell you what I think every Nebraskan should know about that research. But first, I want to tell you what I know about Nebraska. I've only lived here for a little over a year, so I'm still learning a lot of things. Before I came to Nebraska to teach German, I taught German in three other states, Maryland, Tennessee and California. And everywhere that I've taught German, I always ask students in the beginning of the first semester, of the first class, why they're learning German. And in those other three states, there were always one or two token stories about something called German American heritage, right? And I always thought this was the sort of bizarre thing. So imagine how shocked I was to come here to Nebraska where suddenly 75, 80% of students are telling me they have this German American heritage. So this was something I learned about Nebraska. German American heritage means something here. And of course we see vestiges of that everywhere, right? We see that in names on signs, we see that in singing clubs, in Tuon Ferreina church histories, right? But when I ask students to tell me what it really means for them, I usually just get sort of vague stories about some letters in the attic or a family recipe for pretzels. And what I want every Nebraska to know about my research is that the answer to this question, what does German American heritage mean for you could be an answer about a story of anti-racism. Now I know when you think about German history and culture, anti-racism may not be the first thing you think of. Indeed, we are currently experiencing a resurgence of white nationalism in the US that claims its inspiration from German history. So where does anti-racism come into that story? Well, to explain that, I need to take you back 100 years to the summer of 1919. This is the summer that James Weldon Johnson would call the red summer, a summer in which white supremacist violence swept across the United States. That red summer came to Omaha on September 28th when a violent mob set fire to the courthouse and lynched a man named Will Brown. The English language press in Omaha was actually extremely sympathetic to the violence. In fact, they encouraged it, celebrated it even. The German language press, meanwhile, was much more sympathetic to Brown, portraying him as a victim and writing about Omaha's schmach. So the shame of Omaha. There are many reasons that the German language press displayed this sympathy, but among them was the fact that German-Americans had themselves been victim of serious discrimination and ethnic violence for the first time during the First World War. In Papillion, a German Lutheran pastor had been beaten by a mob. Another pastor in Riverdale had been hanged in effigy and run out of town. Events like these led the German-speaking population of Nebraska to develop a meaningful empathy for other victims of ethnic violence. So I wish I could tell you now a story about how German speakers in Nebraska joined ranks with other marginalized groups to combat nativism and white supremacy. But I can't tell that story because the events that could have engendered racial empathy and solidarity with the marginalized also portended the collapse of German-speaking culture in Nebraska. While German-speaking newspaper men editorialized about the shame of Omaha, their writings were being read by fewer and fewer people. Mob violence and war era bans on teaching the German language meant that the cultural memory of this moment of racial empathy would be lost as German speakers stopped using the German language and identified as just Americans. Together with graduate researchers, I'm working on research that asks how teaching German in Nebraska today can be a means of recovering and rekindling this anti-racist tradition. We're looking at historical German-speaking communities in Nebraska to understand how their experience with race can speak to problems of our moment and we're working to develop materials that can be used in German classrooms around the state. German-American history in Nebraska is not just about beer and pretzels. It's about a history of race and ethnicity in our state that is as complicated as the present. Historical sources of empathy can still resonate today and teaching German in Nebraska can be about cultivating that empathy and reinvigorating an anti-racist tradition. I hope that when I ask future students what their German-American heritage means to them, at least some will say, let me tell you about marginalization and racial empathy. Thank you. Thanks so much, Ted, as a Nebraska and with a bit of German heritage, I appreciate your slam talk very much. I'm also happy to introduce our final slammer of the day, Dr. Wayne Riekopf. Wayne is Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences and Wayne is going to be presenting a talk that he's entitled, Hey, you smell nice. Wanna swap nutrients? How microbes communicate with each other to connect, cooperate, and succeed. So Wayne, over to you. Okay, thanks, Nathan. And I'll just say what a great intro or lead into my talk because, hey, you can tell by my last name that I'm a German of German heritage living in Nebraska and I'm gonna talk about language, okay? So the one thing that I want you to know about my research program, so I'm in the School of Biological Sciences, my lab works on a number of different topics. Can you guys hear me okay? We good? Hello? Perfect, Wayne. Okay. What I want you to know is that bacteria and fungi and algae can live together and talk to each other so that they coordinate their activities to do things that none of them could do alone. And we don't really think of microbes as having language, but I'm gonna tell you about the languages that my guys speak. Okay, so for example, I have three petri dishes here. And so the black stuff here is a black yeast that was isolated from a rock. The green stuff here is a green alga and the pink stuff here is a bacterium called methylobacterium. Now we give, we get all of our bugs nicknames. So this guy's crusty. This is pinky and this is greeny, okay? That's how I'm gonna refer to them in the talk. So now why do they all live together? Our best guess is that crusty, pinky and greeny live, they form a partnership that allows them to live in a rather extreme environment like on the surface of a rock or other areas, okay? And so based on what we know about the biology of the individual members of this community, we think greeny is using the power of sunlight to fix carbon dioxide and make sure photosynthesis. Pinky is a nitrogen fixing bacteria. So it can take atmospheric nitrogen converted to a form that can be used for amino acid and nucleic acid biosynthesis. And crusty holds everybody together, adheres them to the surface that they're sticking to and mines that surface for nutrients like iron, phosphate, et cetera, okay? So each of them specializes in making one thing or harvesting one thing. And in fact, they set up a little economic system where they traded with each other. But the big question is, how do they coordinate their activities? How do they come together and know that they're next to someone who has something that they want or needs something that they have? And so I'm gonna introduce the core concept, my one thing, and that's called quorum sense, okay? So this is a well-known phenomenon in microbiology. I told you that these guys are talking to each other to coordinate their economies, but I'm showing you each of these guys growing separately on the Petri dishes, okay? And one of the things that we know about bacteria and fungi is that they can ask themselves the question, am I alone or are there others like me around, okay? Because just like humans and other animals, bacteria and microbes behave differently when there's a big mass of them versus when they're all by themselves. And so how do they gauge that? So the analogy I'll use is just your voice, okay? Most of you are sitting in an office or maybe your home office or with a few other people and it's pretty quiet. So you know, there's not many people around. That's different than being in a room with a bunch of people having conversations or being in a football stadium on game day. You can kind of gauge the size of the population based on the volume of noise from everyone's voice. Now bacteria don't have vocal cords and ears the way we do, but the analogy is that they use small molecules. They can make and secrete and perceive small molecules into their environment. We call those quorum sensing mediators, meaning that they secrete them and they use that as their gauge of population size. And so you can think of this to use a different analogy as their little hello, my name is card. So if we were not virtual, if we were all together, we'd have these little name badges, right? And this is Pinky's calling card. This is a molecule called a homocerein lactone. This might be Krusty's hello, my name is card. So this is a molecule called pharnasol, which we know some fungi use to gauge their population sizes. And this is the only one we actually have evidence for so far that we published papers on. This is a molecule called indolacetic acid, which we know that chlorella secretes into its environment to gauge its population size. At least we think that's what it's doing. Okay, so the point is the one thing again is that these microbes all live together. They have to coordinate their metabolic activities to do something that none of them could do individually. And so the overall goal, the long-term goal of this project in the lab is to understand how they do that. And we think these small molecule mediators are part of that. And that's the one thing I wanted you to know. Thank you. Outstanding, thank you so much, Wayne, for that final slam talk. Here's what's gonna happen now, everybody. The power is now in the hands of the audience members. So Lisa is going to launch the poll in Zoom and you will have the opportunity to vote for your favorite slammer. You get one vote, there is no electoral college. The votes will be available pretty much instantaneously. And so we will announce them shortly. And while you are voting, I believe Nathan has a few announcements to make. Yeah, so as we're waiting for the votes to come in, Jocelyn, I just wanted to thank everyone for participating today, the speakers, the slammers, and the folks who are online. Wanted to remind you that research days continues on tomorrow and Friday. Tomorrow is a day set aside largely for the Association for Women in Science. There are some major events tomorrow morning. There's a round table on faculty awards and recognition, featuring just an amazing panel of faculty colleagues who are gonna share their experiences, their insights, and their advice. Tomorrow after, or tomorrow lunchtime, there's gonna be a keynote talk by Alan Ochoa, the first Latina in space and the former director of the NASA Johnson Space Center. And then tomorrow afternoon, there's an incredible networking event. AWIS is hosting a virtual social bingo that's designed to facilitate new connections among faculty, staff, and students in the STEM fields. So I believe Lisa is going to drop the link into our research days website so you can learn more about that. So the AWIS events tomorrow. And then research days concludes on Friday afternoon with a Nebraska lecture by Professor Joy Castro, who's going to give a talk on writing memoir, writing crime, creativity of sociopolitical intervention. So very timely talk on her part. So please check the over at website and social media channels for more detail and we'll get that link. Becky dropped the link actually here into our chat. Thank you for that, Becky. Lisa's busy working on the poll. Yes, it looks like 90% of you have voted. 90% of the ballots have been counted. You have a few more seconds to deliberate and drop your vote. So I say let's count it down, Jocelyn, from 10. Okay, I'm gonna start with just one second. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. And that completes the voting. So it looks to me like we have a tie. Oh my gosh. We need to talk about what to do in the event of a tie. This has never happened before. What do we do? Do we have a re-vote? Can we give them both money? What do we do? Runoff election being suggested in the chat. Can we do that, Lisa? Do you wanna run another poll? Okay, so yeah, so we will have a tie breaking vote for the folks who got the two top votes. Who will have a tie breaking vote? So I'm just looking here. So give Lisa a second to launch a new poll. Okay, okay, very good, very good. So I can tell you that the two top vote getters and it was very evenly split. There were some very narrow margins here, but the tie is between Rochelle Dalla for her talk on family-based sex trafficking in India and Andre Maciel for his story about marketplace David and Goliath. So those are the two that we're going to be choosing between. Okay, so I guess voting uncertainty continues. We're on the razor's edge. Don't go anywhere. Your work is not done yet. $1000 and the eternal glory of the slam title hangs in the balance here. I have to say that I wouldn't mind sharing the money with the other winner. I wouldn't either. No, that's a possible deal. We both share and we both get to claim the winning rights, the bragging rights, how about that? Okay, I'm seeing share. Share, yeah, well, that's good because actually the tie breaking vote is not really breaking the tie. It's just continuing to tie up some more. Okay, so should we call it a tie? We'll call it a tie. We have co-winners. All right, congratulations Rochelle. Congratulations to you as well. So thanks Rochelle and Andre for being so collegial and helping to problem-solve on the fly. I have to share with you. And yeah, it's this feeling that feedback is so helpful and I appreciate it. I have to share with you that before we started the slam, all of the presenters were talking about how nervous they were. And they didn't know why. It's just that, you know, and I think we all have a lot of anxiety, generalized anxiety right now probably, but I do, it's an unfamiliar format for a lot of people, the time limit. And of course, everything being via Zoom adds another layer of complexity, but everybody was really nervous. And I would never have imagined that you all hadn't given a thousand slam talks before. You're such professionals. I learned so much. This was fantastic. And congratulations to everyone, but particularly our two winners, Andre and Rochelle. Yeah, so I'd just say before folks exit the Zoom room, feel free to turn on your cameras, everyone, and let's give these presenters a round of applause. They deserve it, very work. And we solved the potential conflict with a lot of civility. It makes so much sense to me. I'm glad we were able to do that. Thank you for your suggestion. Okay. All right, great to see everyone. Thanks again. Congratulations, Andre and Rochelle. Thanks to all the presenters. Thanks to all of you for hanging out. Like I said, research days, it continues. Hope to see you tomorrow at some of the AWIS events. And just thanks for all you do to advance research, scholarship, and creativity at Nebraska. We're so proud of everything our faculty do. And this was just a great way to shine a light on it today. So thanks so much. We'll see you in a Zoom room soon. Bye, everyone.