A Letter from the UROP Student Editorial Board

Journal Advisors

Sharon V. Salinger Dean, Division of Undergraduate Education	Said M. Shokair Director, UROP
UROP Faculty Advisory Board Professor Sally S. Dickerson Professor Samuel L. Gilmore Professor Diana N. Krause Professor John C. LaRue Professor Richard H. Lathrop Professor Hartmut Luecke Professor Lisa Naugle Professor Jane O. Newman Professor James S. Nowick	UROP Student Editorial Board Usama Ehsan Robert Gramer Brandon Haghverdian Whitney Hua Noor Ketana Francis Lee Dhivya Sridhar
UROP Journal Assistant Jerry McMillan, Journal & Symposium Student Advisor

~ A Letter from the UROP Student Editorial Board ~

The 2011 UCI Undergraduate Research Journal is truly multidisciplinary in its inspiration, content and scope. Papers were submitted for the Journal from every school at UC Irvine. The disciplines represented in the papers selected for publication cover a wide range of topics as well, providing a reminder that research is not confined to science labs, but can be found throughout the campus. The authors of these papers and their mentors have demonstrated their personal discipline as well: maintaining the effort and dedication required to achieve excellence in their work. As members of the UROP Student Editorial Board, we were excited by the Journal’s multidisciplinary representation and audience. Representing a number of majors and fields ourselves, we kept that diversity in mind as we evaluated each of the papers that we reviewed, asking whether they—no matter how difficult or technical—had something to offer to all of our readers. We further evaluated each paper for superb project design, significant results, superior analysis and excellent writing, and we feel that the five papers presented here have succeeded on all counts. It has been our great honor and pleasure to play a role in this year’s Journal, and we hope that you find the fruits of our efforts interesting and inspiring.