Presacco, Heffner, Smith to represent Maryland at Universitas 21

This summer Ph.D. students Alessandro “Alex” Presacco (NACS), Christopher Heffner (NACS) and Theresa Smith (Kinesiology) will be representing the University of Maryland at Universitas 21 Graduate Research Conference 2014: Celebrating Ageing Research, in Auckland, New Zealand.

Presacco is co-advised by Associate Professor Jonathan Simon (ECE/Biology/ISR) and Assistant Professor Samira Anderson (Hearing & Speech Sciences). He will report on the preliminary findings from Anderson and Simon’s ADVANCE seed grant, “Effects of Aging on Speech in Noise Processing in the Auditory Cortex and Midbrain.”

A travel fellowship from the University of Maryland Graduate School is making possible the trio’s appearance at the conference.

Maryland is a new member of Universitas 21 (U21), a global network of 27 research-intensive universities that work together to foster global citizenship and institutional innovation through research-inspired teaching and learning, student mobility, connecting our students and staff, and wider advocacy for internationalization. All Universitas 21 member institutions are research-led, comprehensive universities providing a strong quality assurance framework to the network's activities.

U21's graduate research conference is a forum for graduate students to present research in an international context and to meet student peers in their fields from around the globe. Presacco, Heffner and Smith will be the first UMD representatives to attend the conference.

Published May 30, 2014