Environmental Consulting Organization - ECO-UM

Mentor: Justin Joque

The Environmental Consulting Organization at the University of Michigan (ECO-UM) is a student-run club committed to the discovery and implementation of sustainable initiatives for businesses in Ann Arbor. Through our pro-bono consulting services, we provide businesses with clear steps toward reaching their sustainability goals. In this process, we give students experience in sustainable business practices and create a tighter-knit community between U of M and businesses around Ann Arbor.

Activist Theater to Film, Domestic Workers in Madrid, Spain

Mentor: Barbara Alvarez

Anna is a first year RLL Spanish PhD student. She received her BA from the University of Virginia (2020) in Global Studies and Spanish, with a concentration in Cinematography. Her proposed PhD research is situated within transatlantic feminist movements and focuses on the role of performance in activism. Anna's research deals with issues relating to migration, politics of care, domestic labor, and experimental filmmaking. In this research, she plans to continue collaborating with a group of activists and domestic workers in Madrid, Spain to make films at the intersections of these topics.

Unidos Podemos: Promoting Latinx Culture, Belonging and Academic Success

Mentor: Edras Rodriguez-Torres

The mission of Puentes is to create an equitable space that centers the intersectional identities of incoming and current Latinx graduate students across schools, departments, and disciplines at U-M. We strive to foster a space of community, healing, and empowerment, where students feel supported and equipped to advocate for their needs and the needs of their community during and beyond their academic tenure at U-M.

Tuition-Free Community College and Rural Iowan College-Going

Mentor: Karen Downing

Kristen Cummings is a doctoral candidate at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education in the School of Education and an . Her research interests include college access for rural students, state higher education policy, and financial aid. Prior to beginning her PhD program, Kristen worked as a research analyst at Abt Associates.

Radical Planning: Advancing Radical Climate Justice

Mentor: Rebecca Price

Kathryn Economou is a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Kathryn is pursuing a Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) degree and will be graduating in the spring of 2023. Before starting her Master’s track, Kathryn received a dual Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Policy and International Relations from the University of Delaware in the spring of 2021. During the first year of her MURP program, Kathryn worked for the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA) at the Jacob France Institute. In this role, she communicated data findings through Story Mapping so that the data is digestible to a lay audience. Prior to joining the BNIA team, Kathryn worked for the New Castle County (NCC) Department of Land Use Planning. Kathryn assisted in the development of the NCC Youth Planning Board initiative to boost youth participation in the planning process. Through this experience, she gained a host of skills in stakeholder collaboration, strategic land use planning tactics, and community engagement. During the summer of 2022, Kathryn worked as a Catalyst Leadership Circle Fellow through the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan. Her responsibility as a fellow was to conduct research and create innovative resources for local governments and communities across Michigan to promote and implement greater sustainability practices. In addition to the fellowship, Kathryn is working as a Graduate Student Researcher to aid in the development of a participatory designed radical planning course at Taubman College. Kathryn’s work as Graduate Researcher and her work at Graham Sustainability Institute will continue throughout the 2022–2023 U-M academic year. Kathryn is a strong advocate for equitable community-based planning and sustainable development practice.

Reading and Joy for Children in Bantwal, India

Mentor: Angie Oehrli

Deepika specializes in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and is curious about informal education spaces and their role in contextualized learning environments. She has designed MOOCs on Sustainable Development for students and educators of Business at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. She also studies the impact of critical place pedagogy in Lavender Hill, South Africa through a hiking project for children growing up at risk of violence. Before that, she did her master's at the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar. For her master's thesis, she studied the impact of ecotourism on livelihoods in a fragile migratory bird ecosystem in the Indian state of Odisha. She was also a global scholar in the Mentoring Program for Education for Sustainable Development by Engagement Global, Germany in 2019.

Las Poderosas 

Mentor: Jason Imbesi

Mary Elizabeth Garza is an activist, musician and music educator in Ann Arbor, Michigan, currently completing her DMA at the University of Michigan. She was recently selected as a fellow for the inaugural Cleveland Institute of Music’s Future of Music Faculty Fellowship in 2021/2022. Prior to Michigan, Mary studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and Die Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig, Germany. She has performed extensively throughout Europe, China, South Korea, and the Midwest, performing with members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Mozarteum Salzburg Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and she has been a regular guest with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. Mary has also been invited for solo performances and presentations at international conferences, sharing her work in activism and wellness. As an international award winning soloist, Mary has won first prize at competitions such as the International Women’s Brass Competition in New Jersey, and the International Horn Society’s Premier Soloist Competition in Australia. Mary has a deep interest in using the arts to support communities and create a platform for marginalized voices. She has been a recipient of many grants including the Sphinx MPower Artist grant, EXCEL Enterprise grants, the U-M Diversity and Inclusion Grant and most recently, the U-M Library Student Mini Grant to support her work. She has commissioned several works to expand the modern horn repertoire and create a more representative canon. In addition to her private studio, Mary is a teaching artist for the Michigan Artist Citizens program, organized by the U-M SMTD Office of Engagement and Community Outreach. She is also passionate about the Vienna Horn and enjoys incorporating it into her double horn playing. In addition to her studies in performance and pedagogy, Mary holds a PAMA Essentials for Performing Arts Medicine Certificate.

Project Alivio 

Mentor: Erica Ervin

Pressure ulcers, also known as bedsores, are injuries to the skin and underlying tissue that form due to prolonged pressure. Bedridden patients are the most susceptible, so hospital nurses need to turn them every few hours to alleviate the built-up pressure. However, in hospitals like San Juan de Dios in Guatemala City, there is a high incidence of these wounds due to understaffing and the high physical demand required to turn a patient. Additionally, it is difficult for nurses to keep track of and communicate to each other about who needs to be turned through paper and pencil. Project Alivio is focused on addressing this need by building socially-engaged technologies. First, a mechanical device that lowers the physical demand of turning patients. Second, a progressive web app that optimizes nurse workflow by visualizing which patients have the highest turning priority based on a variety of patient data.

Designing Interactions Between People Who Stutter and Community Resources

Mentor: Becky Welzenbach

Jeremy is am a graduate student at the School of Information. He conducts qualitative and technical Human-Computer Interaction research with the applications on accessibility and disability culture.

Female International Graduate Students' Professional and Personal Development in the US 

Mentor: Meredith Kahn

Coming from Taiwan, Yi-Chia is interested in gender inequality and women's empowerment through the lens of policy. She’s dedicated to diversity and inclusion in education and workplace as well. She's the Co-Chair of Global Fordies, an organization that advocates for international students' right and facilitate conversations between students, faculty and administration. Yi-Chia loves trying new things out and thus is a big fan of learning new languages and traveling.

M-HEAL The Initiative

Mentor: Preet Rana

The Initiative: Hybrid Infant Warmer is a University of Michigan student group developing a socially-engaged design solution to this global healthcare issue through the development of a low-cost hybrid infant warmer. Our team contains 4 different subteams: KC (kangaroo care) Carrier, Bassinet, Heating, and Business Development. The thermoregulation system we are developing consists of a clothing carrier supporting Kangaroo Care between the neonate and the caretaker as well as a heated bassinet regulating neonatal body temperature for extended time periods.

Blossoming Together: Imagining New Relationships between Racially/Ethnically Minoritized Students and Postsecondary Institutions through Digital Storytelling

Mentor: Karen Downing

Kati Lebioda (she/her) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, where her research interests include examining how postsecondary policies and practices structure and perpetuate inequity, particularly for racially/ethnically minoritized students. Her dissertation is a participatory action research study that uses digital storytelling to facilitate a conversation with racially minoritized students about their experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus.

Black Horror Podcasting and Content Curation

Mentor: Justin Schell

Kristen Leer is a graduate student in the Communication and Media doctoral program at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Her research focuses on the intersectionality of trauma, culture/identity, and media. Specifically, how communities of color engage with traumatic media content and horror narratives.

AR Application Design for Optimizing the Experience in the Library Recommendation: Mayor’s Fund of Funds

Mentor: Denise Leyton

They are a team doing AR application design for optimizing the experience in a library. Their team is made of 4 people with interdisciplinary backgrounds in architecture, information, and computer science, which brings them mind-changing communication. They all believe they can design to make things better with our Humanistic proposals, reasonable design approach, and technical Implementation.

Sleep, Emotion Regulation, and Mood across Psychopathologies

Mentor: Merle Rosenzweig

Victoria Murphy is a junior undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, majoring in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience and minoring in Applied Statistics. Victoria joined the EmoTe lab through the competitive Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) at UM and is now an independent studies research assistant and the EmoTe Lab manager. Victoria aims to understand contributing factors of bipolar spectrum disorders and explore how personalized intervention can change illness trajectory. Victoria is interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a concentration in Neuropsychology. In her free time, she enjoys yoga, baking bread, and audiobooks.

Redistribution of Unused Medical Supplies in SE Michigan

Mentor: Paul Grochowski

Blueprints For Pangaea (B4P) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit medical surplus recovery organization (MSRO) that provides sustainable solutions to inefficient health care resource distribution. B4P is a network of university chapters united in addressing global health care inequalities by reallocating excess, unused medical supplies—that would otherwise be discarded—from U.S. hospitals and suppliers to areas of need overseas. B4P then arranges transport of these supplies to foreign hospitals, enabling affordable, higher quality patient care overseas. With fewer medical resources to process, our partner hospitals are able to cut expenses and reduce their environmental footprints while gaining community goodwill.

Transforming Access to Information and Care while Building Equity in Pelvic Health Rehabilitation Care

Mentor: Jackie Freeman

Tara Pai is a midcareer Board Certified Orthopedic Physical Therapy specialist, and has practiced clinically, both, in India, and in the United States. She is currently pursuing her Master of Public Health Semester in the online Population and Health Sciences program and is in her second year at the University of Michigan. has participated in public health activities since her undergraduate days, including participating in the Pulse Polio program to eradicate polio from India, as well as in the promotion of education-based initiatives for underprivileged children in India to improve economic and social opportunities for those with limited resources. She believes that social justice and equity are foundational to help create a world where opportunities are not limited to those who seek them. She hopes to use these to help transform inequitable landscapes in the field of climate change and health; healthcare for underserved populations; workplace policies; and firearm injury prevention.agriculture and the environment-- and to be supported by the U-M Library in my project!

Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program

Mentor: Emily Capellari

The goal of the Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program is to spread awareness of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and general kidney health while also holding health screenings in traditionally underserved areas.

Emotion Regulation, Extreme Appraisals, and Mania Risk

Mentor: Merle Rosenzweig & Carol Shannon

Bronya Sandorffy is a senior at the University of Michigan studying Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience. She is interested in the development of bipolar spectrum disorders and in understanding ways to predict and detect different mood states. After graduating, she hopes to attend medical school.

Autism Awareness: A Comparative Study in the Middle East

Mentor: Diana Perpich

Holly Nicole Semma is a Master’s Candidate at the University of Michigan School of Public Health – Health Behavior & Health Education (HBHE). She is passionate on shifting the conversation from autism awareness to autism acceptance – inspired by her younger brother with autism. For her HBHE Applied Practice Experience (APEx) requirement she has created two children’s books on autism acceptance to facilitate dialogue on neurodiversity. She has interest in examining cultural attitudes within the Middle Eastern population and plans on interning at Dubai Autism Center in Summer 2023.

Citizen Science for Great Lakes Cover Crops

Mentor: Joanna Thielen

As a PhD candidate in UM's School for Environment and Sustainability, she is passionate about food systems research with real world impact. For part of her dissertation research, she is using a citizen science approach to partner with farmers in the Great Lakes region to advance understanding of cover crop performance across different farming conditions, which will help improve the sustainability and resilience of our food system. Upon graduating, she plans to continue this type of community-engaged research, and hope to see others embrace these methods as well.

Neonatal Asphyxia Project

Mentor: Preet Rana

The Neonatal Asphyxia Project (NAP) was founded in 2016 by a group of students with a passion for applying their Michigan educations to combat high infant mortality rates in underserved regions. They chose to focus on hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), more commonly referred to as neonatal asphyxia; a condition that is one of the leading causes of death for newborns in low-income communities. Research identified hypothermia therapy as a promising medical intervention shown to improve infant brain function, and so they set a goal: to design a device that would safely and effectively apply the therapy to mitigate the complications associated with the condition. Since then, NAP has grown into a multidisciplinary team of students who continue to work to achieve this goal. We are currently in the process of designing and building a functioning and cost-effective prototype.

The Medicalization of Tic Disorders in China

Mentor: Carol Shannon

Yanze's primary academic interests lie in the intersection of medical sociology/anthropology, political economy and STS. From 2020 to 2021, he did an independent study concerning the illness experience of Tourette sufferers in China.