Gavin Brown, '26
Mathematics & Statistics
Ann Cannon and James Freeman
This paper will discuss the development of quaternions by William R. Hamilton, as presented by him in an 1843 letter to John T. Graves. To better understand the mathematical environment which probably influenced Hamilton's development of the quaternions, I will discuss how complex numbers and space based on cartesian coordinates were understood in the 1840s. With this background, I will explain Hamilton's constructions of the quaternions and properties and applications discussed by Hamilton in later papers. Additionally, two acquaintances of Hamilton -- James Sylvester and Arthur Cayley -- developed their theory of matrices and linear algebra starting in the 1850s. Because linear algebra can be easily generalized, linear algebra and matrices have replaced quaternions in most applications. I will present some ideas for further research that will hopefully improve our understanding of the history of quaternions.
Mark Liberko, '26
Mathematics & Statistics
Fabián Candelaria, Ann Cannon, and Tyler George
Automatic genre classification is an important step in organizing massive collections of music as well as how streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music provide music recommendations. This paper explores the effectiveness of commonly used audio features in predicting genre. Modeling results show that Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) and spectral features reliably perform the best at music genre classifications, outperforming other commonly used features such as chroma, zero crossing rate, and tonnetz. We also show that different methods for gathering chroma features (short time Fourier transform, constant Q-transform, and energy normalized chroma) are not meaningfully different from each other.
Zack Orrick, '26
Data Science
Tyler George
Linear regression is a well known and a widely utilized modeling method used to model the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables. Lack of fit (LOF) tests are a means to assess whether a linear regression model fits a dataset. LOF tests can inform whether particular assumptions made while fitting a linear regression model are sufficiently satisfied. Dr. Tyler George created a LOF package that contained four different LOF methods that do not require replicates (Burns and Ryan, Utts, XLOF, and Extrema Partition) which allows for a form of LOF testing to be applied to more datasets that can not use the classic LOF method. This presentation describes the classic LOF test, the LOF methods present in Dr. George's R package, and the LOF method this project contributes to the R package. This presentation will also look to compare and contrast the LOF methods addressed in this presentation. The common listener can benefit from this presentation since it builds an understanding of how any collection of information can be interpreted, and by understanding LOF ideologies, they can think more critically when presented with plots of data trying to influence their decision.
Mahmoud (Moodi) W. Elawady, '26, Al-Sharqia, Egypt
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Computer Science
Lauren Jepsen and Catherine Volle
Background:
This project is based on my senior honors thesis for one of my majors, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, where I am bringing together different disciplines that I pursued throughout my undergraduate journey, including my two and a half years at Mayo Clinic experience, and my second major in Computer Science. The project is centered around REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD), a disorder I have been studying during my internships at Mayo Clinic.
Quick Brief:
REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) is a parasomnia that is characterized by dream enactment behaviors and REM sleep without atonia (RSWA). Isolated RBD (iRBD) is most often a prodromal α-synucleinopathy in older adults, with high lifetime risk for developing Parkinson's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, or multiple system atrophy.
Outline:
My thesis is split into four chapters as follows:
● The first chapter goes through the literature review/background information about the disorder being studied in the thesis, which is REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD).
● The second chapter includes my 2025 summer internship project at Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine, investigating the removal of arousal-related artifact and its implications on the diagnostic criteria for RBD through the main diagnostic tool used at Mayo Clinic, REM Atonia Index (RAI).
● The third chapter expands to include the hallmark of RBD, which is REM Sleep Without Atonia (RSWA). In this chapter, I am running a multi-center analysis in a cohort with isolated/idiopathic REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (iRBD) patients to investigate the multi-center RSWA differences and propose highly probable causes for that difference. Another goal was to inspect whether RSWA by itself can be an independent predictor of phenoconversion (to neurodegenerative diseases) in iRBD.
● The fourth chapter includes a machine learning model that I will build as part of my computer science senior capstone project. As a supervised model, it will be used to predict phenoconversion to the neurodegenerative diseases associated with RBD using clinical data collected at Mayo Clinic.
Riley Edwards, '26, Plainfield, IL
Art History
Christina Penn-Goetsch
Bartholomeus van der Helst was a celebrated seventeenth century Dutch artist best known for his portraits of the civic guards and Dutch elite. His large-scale genre painting Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam, done in 1666, departs from his typical oeuvre. Because of the popularity of his portraits among scholars, this painting is often overlooked and rarely discussed at length. Yet this particular painting deserves more attention. The depiction of a bustling market in which a flayed pig and produce is prominently displayed in front of the Waag building, a place historically associated with Amsterdam’s Surgeons’ Guild, is an ideal illustration of the beginnings of early modern science in the Netherlands.
This thesis argues that Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam participates in the broader rise of scientific curiosity and collecting culture in the seventeenth century Dutch Republic. By placing objects associated with anatomy, botany, and commerce within a public market, van der Helst shows that scientific interest extended beyond medical professionals and bled into public life. I will use art historian Judith van Gent’s research on van der Helst to help analyze this painting in relation to his other works. Additionally, I will examine and draw comparisons between Nieuwmarkt anatomy lesson paintings such as Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp as well as anatomical theatres. Ultimately, Nieuwmarkt stands as evidence that scientific curiosity permeated everyday life in the Dutch Republic.
Cecilia Newman, '26, Bellevue, IA
Art History
Christina Penn-Goetsch
Will Wilson: In Conversation is an exhibition from the collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art that is being shown at the Dubuque Museum of Art (DuMA) in their new temporary space. The space is housing the institution while they wait for their new building and a new vision. This show is meant to usher DuMA into a new age and provide a temporary residency that challenges guests to look more deeply and explore different perspectives and narratives among past, present, and future.
The installation includes a collection of photographs that asks us to think more critically about how Native people have been portrayed in photography over time by presenting two artists from different eras documenting indigenous culture and expressing how important it is to understand how they represented identity with very different approaches. The work showcases contemporary photography done by Diné photographer Will Wilson and photos by Edward S. Curtis from his book The North American Indian (1907-1930) that is a part of DuMA’s permanent collection. Wilson’s photos are from a bigger ongoing project of his called “The Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX).” The project gears towards confronting harmful narratives of exploitation and erasure caused by European colonialism and intervenes with historical representations of Native Americans. Exhibitions like Will Wilson: In Conversation show how important it is to have spaces where indigenous voices speak for themselves. This is a reversal from how DuMA presented their collection of the work of Curtis in the past and even the process of the selection of Will Wilson: In Conversation was collaborative. This choice pushes beyond and launches a new chapter for DuMA, setting a tone for the community of Dubuque as a place that welcomes everyone to have a voice.
Jo Martin, '26, West Liberty, IA
Art History
Christina Penn-Goetsch
Since being rediscovered in the late nineteenth century, Lorenzo Lotto’s Venus and Cupid has been turning heads of viewers and perplexing scholars alike. The painting is one of the most famous works by this Renaissance master in the United States today. Most scholars explain the unusual painting as a polite celebration of a marriage; however, this description of the subject matter is incomplete. This does not mean that early modern advice regarding marriage, fertility and the overall themes of love are not the best way to explain the iconography of this puzzling portrait. A subject this explicit and lascivious would be placed in the private rooms of a Renaissance home instead of being publicly displayed like Lotto’s other, more traditional portraits.
I will argue that this painting was made primarily to arouse the viewer, and the iconography functioned as a form of “sympathetic magic” for the conception of children instead of marriage alone. The subject matter was intended to enhance fertility, much like birthing trays discussed by Jacqueline Marie Musacchio. These deschi da parto often celebrated the birth of boys that were popular in early modern Italian households. A critical example is the urinating toddler found on the tray by Bartolomeo di Fruosino from 1420. This behavior may provide the best explanation for the Cupid’s penetration of the laurel wreath. My interpretation differs from the more typical notion that the work was made to commemorate a wedding alone as is argued by Keith Christiansen, Peter Humfrey, and Jacques Bonnet. This argument addresses the wreath Cupid is holding, along with the crown this goddess wears as part of the argument that the primary focus on the work is not marriage. Together with the examination of the subject matter from birthing trays, these approaches offer an altogether different picture of how the Venus and Cupid should be understood as more than a commentary on marriage.
Hailey Taylor, '26, Cedar Falls, IA
Art History
Christina Penn-Goetsch
In the sixteenth century, Avarice was commonly depicted as an allegorical figure of a “grotesque” older woman holding or interacting with gold coins. This particular approach to the personification of Avarice or Greed emphasizes an old woman’s excessive concern with material possessions and riches. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and other scholars describe Albrecht Dürer’s woman as an allegory of avarice by pointing out her elderly appearance and her possession of the gold coins, but this is where the similarities with the other depictions of Avarice end. Dürer’s Avarice of 1507 does not look exactly like the standard personification of Avarice. I, therefore, believe this subject of this work should not be categorized as Avarice, but it should be seen as a sexual proposition. Her partially toothless smile, her exposed sagging breast and the joyous gleam in her eyes hint at something far more provocative and may represent one half of what Alison Stewart called an “unequal couple” or “ill-matched lovers” common in Northern Renaissance art.
Redefining what this work illustrates requires an even closer examination with other works of art besides illustrations of avarice. Some scholars compare the similarity of Giorgione's Col Tempo or With Time to Dürer’s Vienna panel, but this elderly woman still does not represent greed. If anything, Giorgione’s woman looks more like a “memento mori” or “vanitas.” Also, another subject, Dürer’s Portrait of a Young Man, appears on the opposite side of Dürer’s so-called Avarice. Perhaps these two characters, on either side of the painting, were meant to be seen together as a diptych. Even if this is not the case, a new possible title for Dürer’s work becomes even more apparent when examining the crone and young man as compared to other paintings of unequal couples with lascivious old women.
Bridget Anzelc, '26, Mishawaka, IN
English
Katy Stavreva
In 1928, Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov secretly started work on his daring novel, The Master and Margarita, in which he develops two mirroring worlds: in one, the devil and his crew commit absurdities all over Soviet Moscow, while the other depicts an altered tale of Christ and Pontius Pilate. I suggest that in writing the novel Bulgakov takes on the role of the Fool, posing important questions about good and evil, and religion, and leaving them unanswered. To highlight the intellectual and moral challenge of this method of folly, I place Bulgakov in conversation with Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher who develops the character of his mentor Socrates in his Dialogues to the same effect. Through satiric irony and Socrates’ self-proclaimed ignorance, Plato draws characters and readers into conversation and makes them consider philosophical questions for themselves. Bulgakov, in turn, sets two contrasting worlds in conversation with each other, also using satire (in addition to the supernatural) to subvert facile answers to philosophical questions. His novel could be said to be a dialogue of sorts, like Plato’s work, in which no clear stances are taken by the author, and which thus challenges readers to consider philosophical questions for themselves, just like Plato did in his Dialogues. By drawing attention to the role of the Fool assumed by Bulgakov and Plato in regards to the big philosophical questions they pose, I call attention to the limits of human knowledge and highlight the wonder and joy that can be found in intellectual discourse.
Amara Mohn, '28, Mount Prospect, IL
Lewis Fawcett, '26
Music
Christopher Nakielski
The Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) major passed recently and includes a requirement for an audio engineering course. This summer was geared towards creating this course to offer. We created class assignments, presentations, and a class structure that will work for the block plan this past summer. We covered an introduction to audio and sound, studio acoustics and design, history of electronic music, mixing, and recording technology. We delve into the basics of sound, psychoacoustics, characteristics of sound and much more all in unit one. After taking this class, students will be able to record their own electronic music, set up recording spaces and microphones, and design their own home studio space. They also will know how to record on tape and work with analog recording equipment.
This project documents my experience creating instructional videos that demonstrate techniques for recording a grand piano using different microphone placements, and how to navigate a Taskam Model12. The goal of the video was to translate technical audio engineering concepts into a clear and practical format that students could easily follow. Throughout the process, I planned microphone setups, recorded multiple takes of the piano from different positions, and evaluated how placement affected tone, balance, and stereo image. Producing the video also required careful attention to filming, lighting, and editing in order to present the information clearly. One of the main challenges was balancing technical accuracy with accessibility so that the material would remain engaging while still conveying important recording principles. Creating this video deepened my understanding of microphone technique and reinforced the importance of experimentation when recording acoustic instruments. Overall, the project helped me develop both my audio engineering skills and my ability to communicate technical processes through video.
Jordyn Gear, '26, Eldora, IA
Lewis Page, '26, Smithton, MO
Travis Wells, '26, Greeley, CO
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Joshua Otten
Overwintering is a strategy to battle the extreme temperatures of the winter months of the year. Different species exhibit different strategies of hibernation, mainly if they are solitary hibernators or communal hibernators. Both solitary and communal hibernation have both benefits and costs. We analyzed data from a prairie in southeast Iowa on Ornate Box Turtles. We focused on solitary and communal hibernation, based on hot spots and nearest neighbor calculations, as well as looking at how accurate site fidelity is within this population of Ornate Box Turtles. We looked at the difference between males and females as well as adults and juveniles in site fidelity and nearest neighbor. Adults and juveniles had significant differences in both site fidelity and nearest neighbor. While males and females had no significant difference either site fidelity and nearest neighbor. There were many hotspots across our study site, holding up to 84 individuals within a cluster both on the north side and the south side. There were strong signs of communal hibernation for the whole population based on the cluster identification data. These results can contribute to the research of Ornate Box Turtles, site fidelity, and communal hibernation.