By Sarah Sell, University Communications and Marketing
Whether discovering antimicrobial compounds in fish or exploring the impact of prescription drug abuse on college students, undergraduates at USF St. Petersburg are making significant impacts in research and innovation.
Students presented these and other research projects at the 2025 Florida Undergraduate Research Conference held on the USF Tampa campus February 14-15.
Among the 800 student researchers who came from across Florida, nearly 200 USF students presented their work in marine biology, psychology and other fields.
ANTIBIOTICS FROM FISH SLIME
Jose Masso Maldonado and Pragati Adesh presented their research on the antimicrobial compounds found in fish slime.
USF Tampa students Pragati Adesh and Jose Masso Maldonado led a groundbreaking research project that started on the St. Petersburg campus in 2020. The ongoing project, "Antimicrobial Activity of Marine Bacteria Isolated from Gulf Toadfish," looks at the beneficial health effects of bacteria taken from the mucus of toadfish. Marine organisms are known to produce antimicrobial compounds that can target pathogens in humans and fish.
Preliminary tests identified a bacterium exhibiting significant antimicrobial activity against Mycobacterium smegmatis, a bacterium linked to pneumonia, and Staphylococcus aureus, known to cause skin infections. It also demonstrated moderate activity against Bacillus cereus and Escherichia coli, both of which can cause foodborne illnesses.
"It's showing a lot of potential for becoming a future broad-spectrum antibiotic," said Adesh, who received a degree in biomedical sciences in 2020. "We're finishing up pre-clinical trials, and once we complete this portion of the project and figure out what the structure of the killer is, we're going to send it off to pharmaceutical companies for clinical testing."
Adesh and Maldonado, who were seeking research experiences, are currently taking Microbiological Research with their mentor, Michael Shamblott, an adjunct professor in the Department of Integrative Biology on the St. Petersburg campus.
"His class provided an open environment where students can engage in real research," said Maldonado, a senior majoring in Biomedical Sciences. "Each of us had our own project and the freedom to explore any direction we wanted. The success or failure of our projects didn't affect our grades, which created a space where we could all experiment without the fear of failure. I'm grateful for this opportunity."
HOW STIMULANT DRUG ABUSE AFFECTS COLLEGE STUDENTS
Renee Korkoske presented her research on stimulant drug abuse and how it affects academic performance.
USF St. Petersburg student Renee Korkoske is working on the project "Impact of Prescription Stimulant Misuse on Cognitive Function and Academic Performance Among College Students."
So far in her research, Korkoske has surveyed hundreds of people aged 18-30. She found that the students who engaged in stimulant misuse, those that didn't have a prescription or were prescribed a stimulant and took double the recommended dosage, tended to have lower GPAs and lower cognitive function then students who did not engage in misuse.
The stimulants in the survey were drugs taken to increase alertness, such as Adderall, Ritalin, Daytrana and Vyvanse.
Korkoske is conducting the project as independent research with guidence from her mentor Kimberly Badanich, a psychology professor of instruction at USF Sarasota-Manatee.
"As a psychology student, it's so easy to read numbers and data values and not see the values as actual people," said Korkoske, a senior majoring in psychology. "Now that I'm behind the research, I realize that these are real people taking time out of their day to help me do my research and help me meet my goals and advance the research."
The Florida Undergraduate Research Conference is one of the largest multidisciplinary research conferences in the country and will return to the USF Tampa campus in 2026.