Joe O'Shea serves as the Director of Florida State University's Office of Undergraduate Research and is an adjunct faculty member in the college of education. He received a BA in philosophy and social science from Florida State University, where he served as the student body president and a university trustee. A Truman and Rhodes Scholar, he has a master’s degree in comparative social policy and a Ph.D. in education from the University of Oxford. Dr. O'Shea has been involved with developing education and health-care initiatives in communities in the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. His research and publications are primarily focused on the civic and moral development of people, and he serves as a contributing editor for the Journal of College and Character. His recent book, Gap Year: How Delaying College Can Change People in Ways the World Needs, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2013.

Latika Young is the Assistant Director of Florida State University's Office of Undergraduate Research. She received a BA in Dance and Environmental Studies from Swarthmore College, an MA in American Dance Studies from FSU, and an EdM in International Educational Development from Columbia University’s Teachers College. After completing a Fulbright in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2008-2009, she received a Foreign Language Acquisition Scholarship to study Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian at Columbia University and a Critical Language Scholarship to study Turkish in Bursa, Turkey in 2011. Her research is primarily focused on Southeast Europe and Turkey, peace/post-conflict education, and artistic practices for social change, and her master’s thesis examined how museums function in the reconciliation process within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Prabesh Kanel serves as the Web Administrator for the Office of Undergraduate Research, the FSU Honors Program, and the Office of National Fellowships. He is currently a PhD student in Computer Science at FSU, conducting research on computational models for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. Before coming to Florida State, he earned a bachelors degree in computer engineering from Tribhuvan University in Nepal, and a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Prabesh also currently serves as the President of the Nepalese Student Association at FSU.

Jacob Gibbons is the Assistant to Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research and helps coordinates the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP). He is a student in the Department of English, where he is completing an Honors in the Major thesis and finishing his final year at Florida State before beginning graduate study. His research interests are primarily in the History of the Book, particularly concerning the early development of the printing press and the book history of the Low Countries. Jacob aided in the development and implementation of the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program at FSU, and is now teaching a UROP Colloquium as the Humanities UROP Leader for the Fall 2012 – Spring 2013 academic year, while also conducting an ongoing evaluation of the program’s introductory year.

Abráham (Abe) Peña-Talamantes is an Assistant to the Director in the Office of Undergraduate Research and a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. His primarily roles include conducting assessment and evaluation of the OUR programming, as well as, assisting with the development of effective strategies to capture undergraduate research and creative activity across FSU. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Learning and Development from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s degree in Sociology from Florida State University. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology where he also serves as an instructor of upper-division coursework and the graduate student mentorship coordinator for the 2012-13 academic year. His research interests include race/ethnicity, gender & sexuality, identity & emotion, and mixed methods research. He is primarily interested in the experiences and identity work processes of Latina/o sexual minorities in higher education.