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When Laura Ensign entered Ohio State, she thought medical school might be in her future.

Then she fell in love with the chemical engineering research she began as an undergraduate.

"It was important for me because it actually changed my entire future," says Ensign, a senior whose next step is Johns Hopkins University for grad school. "With research, I uncovered this inquisitive sort of side of myself that I didn't know was there. I actually enjoy sitting in the lab for five hours a day."

Ensign is working to create insulin particles that can be inhaled rather than injected. If it works, diabetics could forgo insulin shots in lieu of inhalers. The remedy, she says, would be cheaper, safer, and less painful than the shots now used.

"To think about the possible implications of what you're doing--how you're affecting people positively--I think that's the great thing about research," she says.

“I uncovered this inquisitive sort of side of myself that I didn't know was there. I actually enjoy sitting in the lab for five hours a day.”
—Laura Ensign, undergraduate researcher

Ensign discussed her work at the recent Denman Forum for Undergraduate Research, a 12-year-old annual showcase for student work.

"We have more students getting involved in research than we have in the past, and wanting to do research, and this is just a wonderful way for them to show what they've accomplished," says Allison Snow, director of the year-old Undergraduate Research Office, which connects students with research funding and opportunities.

Researchers at the forum represented all fields, creating an eclectic mix of projects. Researchers included Nafisa Akbar, who will spend next year in Bangladesh, trying to establish a secondary school for young women; Vincent Burgess, whose study of the similarities between Hinduism and Rastafarianism took him to Jamaica; and Noel Voltz, who went to New Orleans to look into the little-known antebellum courting rituals of white men wooing free black women. Other research subjects included cancer, green energy, wine, religion, fiction writing, costume design, and bird songs, among many others.

"Here at Ohio State, all of the faculty are doing research that gets published, that gets noticed around the world, so the students can get involved in that--if they’re in history, if they’re in linguistics, if they’re in engineering," Snow says. "Every faculty member, just about, in the whole university is doing some type of research, so these are the areas that students can get involved in."

(text/video: University Marketing Communications)

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