Video Presentations 

Honokiol is a natural product that exhibits antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, and anticancer properties. By removing the solvent from the synthesis of Honokiol, we aim to develop a route to a high-value natural product while reducing the environmental impact of the synthesis. The proposed route requires the development of new chemical technologies along the way that not only benefit from solvent-free environments but are truly enhanced by these conditions. Drawing inspiration from Kozlowski and coworkers’ route, we seek to design an oxidative biaryl coupling to begin the route.

Student Major: Chemistry 

Advisor: Dr. Isaiah Speight, Chemistry

This study investigates the representation of the foster care system in the true story film I Am Somebody’s Child and the television series The Fosters, and the effect of these representations on the perception of the life of foster care youth. Although previous studies were conducted on programs and policies for youth aging out of foster care, this study delves into the cultural narratives that are shaping public understanding. The film and television media have a significant influence on beliefs, empathy, and stigma, which often become the public’s primary source of information about foster care. Using a comparative media analysis, the study will identify differences in storytelling, character development, and thematic framing between fictional and true-story portrayals. In highlighting how the media influences public opinion, understanding of systemic accountability, and public support for child welfare services, the study provides media practitioners and policymakers with insights into the social impact of foster care content.

Student major: Sociology

Advisor: Dr. Jackson Sasser, Government

In recent years, Large Language Models (LLMs) have been increasingly embedded in digital platforms where they can access external tools such as web browsers, file systems, and memory storage. These integrations add functionality, but they may also introduce new security risks. This project aims to investigate how susceptible tool-augmented LLMs are to “prompt injection” and “context poisoning” attacks—techniques using malicious content to attempt to override a model’s instructions or extract hidden information. To achieve this, I built an environment in which an LLM can access predefined tools, including a webpage reader, a file reader containing protected data, and a note-writing system. I then used this tool to read information from controlled and self-designed webpages containing differing types of malicious content and measure whether the model violates its security constraints. By systematically comparing different commercial LLM providers within the same architecture, this research aims to clarify how tool integration affects security and to identify common failure patterns in modern AI systems.

Student Major: Computer Science

Advisor: Dr. Yue Xiao, Computer Science

The present study investigated the usage of nonlinear differential equations in mathematical modeling of a time series of influenza data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mathematical modeling is important to find trends within the influenza data for future prevention and vaccine development, as well as to understand the spread of infectious diseases. The time series was analyzed and fit into different models that incorporated ordinary differential equations such as the SIR, SARIMA, and delay embedding. The results showed influenza data held seasonal characteristics with yearly outbreaks that had high peaks in the winter months and low troughs during the summer. My implications were that the data only took into account the individuals who went to get tested, which is only a percentage of individuals. Furthermore, future research calls for other models to be implemented that specify age groups to see what the effect of the flu is on certain age groups.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Human Health & Physiology

Advisor: Dr. Sarah Day, Mathematics

Nuclear proliferation has always been an important area of focus for Western intelligence. Examining reports and analyses written by America and Britain between 1955 and 1985, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was a key clue from its initial signing in 1970 onwards. Ratification of the treaty signaled to American and British intelligence a lack of interest in obtaining nuclear weapons, and failure to ratify was seen as a clue of proliferation intent. Though America and Britain often agreed in their assessments, American reports were usually more detailed and sometimes more confident than their British counterparts. These facts can help contextualize current discussions of and provide insight into ways of thinking about nuclear proliferation.

Student Major: International Relations (Joint Degree Program)

Advisor: Dr. Jeffrey Kaplow, Government

Nuclear fusion has been the technology of the future for over half a century. However, recent breakthroughs and private sector investments signal that it might truly be around the corner. A global race to achieve fusion energy first is underway, and the technology is rapidly spreading around the globe. As such, it is relevant to consider the security implications of fusion and the ways in which it might lead to new countries acquiring nuclear weapons or existing nuclear states upgrading their arsenals. To create a risk profile for fusion, we conducted a systematic review of scholarly articles, government documents, and international treaties, as well as performing independent analysis. Findings revealed that the greatest proliferation risks stemming from fusion are its capacity to produce fissile materials, an increase in nuclear knowledge and technology as a byproduct of its development, and its ability to model nuclear explosions. Although this study is a preliminary analysis, the results suggest that further research into the proliferation implications of fusion is necessary to gain a better understanding of tomorrow’s nuclear landscape.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Government, Economics

Advisor: Dr. Jeffrey Kaplow, Government

The rescindment of the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, which served as the founding determination for vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation, implicates decades of judicial and bureaucratic precedent, scientific findings, and EPA consistency. Thus, it is reasonable to identify challenges that will be brought in response and potential implications for the future of the EPA’s regulation of GHGs. To focus on emerging legal responses, one must first explore the history supporting the first Endangerment Finding and the information sparking its rescission 17 years later. Rescinding a finding as critical as the Endangerment Finding will call five major aspects of climate law into question: federal pre-emption, administrative statutory specifications, scientific basis of legislation, industry reliability, and the major questions doctrine. Impending lawsuits will shift towards public nuisance claims, determine the legality of the EPA’s motive and steps towards rescinding, produce judicial rulings of the role of science in court directives, and clarify the statutory balance of authority over the American economy.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology, Environment & Sustainability (Policy track)

Advisor: Dr. Jackson Sasser, Government

Over the summer, I applied my data analysis and scripting skills to the mission to track the change in vegetation in Northern Siberia around water tracks. The initiative was to document the change using Python and ICESat-2 to uncover how vegetation such as trees and larches recover after forest fires in Siberia over time. Using NASA Earth-Observing products to monitor permafrost with Sliderule, I was able to document the change in growth. With the help of my supervisor’s expert opinion, we were able to calculate an estimated average rate from my samples of how long it takes the vegetation to recover.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Computer Science, Data Science

Advisor: Dr. Joanmarie Del Vecchio, Geology

This project examines whether artificial intelligence changes the governance value of corporate debt. Debt can create value not only as a source of financing, but also by monitoring managers and limiting the cash available for inefficient investment. As firms increasingly use AI to evaluate information, monitor performance, and support investment decisions, some of these governance benefits may become less important. Using AI-intensity measures derived from corporate 10-K filings and financial data from publicly traded U.S. nonfinancial firms from 2014 to 2023, I test whether AI changes the relationship between leverage and firm value. The results show that the association between leverage and firm value becomes less favorable as AI intensity increases. Further analysis suggests that debt is more valuable when managers have greater discretion over free cash flow, but that benefit weakens among more AI-intensive firms. The findings are consistent with AI partially substituting for some governance functions of debt, while leaving debt’s contractual commitment role distinct.

Student Major: Finance

Advisors: Dr. Osman Nal and Dr. Katherine Guthrie, Finance

Electronic waste caused by corrosion in copper circuits is a growing sustainability challenge as early damage reduces conductivity and impairs device performance. This project aims to seek whether biological systems can be engineered to detect early‑stage copper corrosion before functional failure occurs. To address this, the study developed a modular biosensor using Escherichia coli engineered with a copper‑responsive promoter that activates a lysis gene. When exposed to copper, the engineered cells lyse and release intracellular molecules, including L‑alanine. L-alanine is a natural germinant that metabolically activates dormant Bacillus subtilis endospores, which in turn releases the compound dipicolinic acid (DPA). DPA then produces a measurable fluorescent change when interacting with a terbium/europium‑based metal-organic framework. Results of the engineered E. coli showed detection of copper at concentrations as low as 0.1 mM, demonstrating potential methods for early corrosion detection and suggesting broader applications for biological amplification systems in environmental monitoring.

Student Major: Chemistry

Advisor: Dr. Margaret Saha, Applied Science

This project explores the disconnect between linking metgenomic data (the DNA that is commonly sequenced) and metatranscriptomic data (looking at the underlying RNA interactions of the environment we are sequencing) which tells us which species in the DNA are actively being expressed. We have focused on addressing the gap between the two types of data and the different species that are active within a sample, as well as investigating current methods of quantifying and dividing species distributions across different samples and timepoints. This led to analyses of current wastewater samples and leading genomic data tools such as Kraken, Metaphlan, and Humann in order to understand and optimize current research standings of MTX classification.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics (Mathematical Biology)

Advisor: Dr. Yanhai Xiong, Data Science

In response to the resurgence of measles in the United States over the past two years, this project uses ethical analysis and literature review to examine a parent’s moral duty to vaccinate their child against measles and how healthcare professionals, communities, and governments should ethically respond to parental vaccine refusal and hesitancy. I argue that parents have a moral duty to vaccinate their child against measles because increasing incidence, globalization, and falling immunity coverage mean infection currently poses a significant, preventable risk of harm. I then evaluate ethical third party responses when parents refuse vaccination. Evidence shows that trusting physician-parent relationships can encourage parents to reconsider refusal, and anger based responses directed towards strangers undermine vaccination efforts. I argue an ethical response from the state prioritizes accessibility and vaccine education requirements for exemptions over punishment. These findings offer an ethical framework to both protect children and bridge the vaccination divide.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology, Philosophy

Advisor: Dr. Maria Victoria Costa, Philosophy

This project explores how late nineteenth-century European drama challenged dominant social norms surrounding gender roles, patriarchal authority, and social order during a period of significant social upheaval amid the rise of mass society. Playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw produced works that disturbed conventional ideas about marriage, sex, and autonomy, often provoking public outrage and heated discussion. This research asks how these counter-normative dramatic texts depicted the role of gender on stage and how audiences responded to controversial, censored, or banned works. The project combines close readings of selected plays with analysis of the works’ reception, mainly through historical reviews, censorship records, and performance history. By examining how subversive content influences its audience, this research aims to better understand theatrical performance’s ability to prompt social change.

Student Major: English

Advisor: Dr. Brett Wilson, English

The antennal lobe of the honeybee is a part of their brain that is necessary for them to track food sources and other important signals. A challenge they face is that the sensory environment is dynamic and unpredictable, meaning their inputs need to be appropriately scaled to fire at appropriate levels through vastly varying amounts of input. One proposed mechanism of this is through divisive normalization, which scales the strength of the input on how active neighboring neurons are, to strengthen inputs when at low stimulation environments, and weaken inputs when in noisy environments. This was tested using an integrate and fire model of the antennal lobe based on previous research, which is made up of glomeruli containing projection neurons and local neurons, and receives both odor and mechanosensory input. We found that divisive normalization occurs in this model of the antennal lobe.

Student Major: Neuroscience

Advisor: Dr. Mainak Patel, Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics

Compute increasingly gates U.S.–China strategic competition for fourth‑industrial‑revolution advantages, driving investment in quantum technology. In 2026, the U.S. announced its first major quantum policy since 2018: the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act. This research conducts document coding and historical analysis to provide a longitudinal perspective on U.S. emerging‑technology policymaking, that remains underdeveloped in existing literature. Major trends are evaluated through case studies of U.S.–U.S.S.R. and U.S.–Japan semiconductor‑competition policy, drawing implications for isolating markets versus strengthening domestic industry within an integrated system. Strategic competition and quantum maturation are driving a convergence in U.S. and Chinese investment policy. Additionally, government investment increasingly mirrors the role of financial institutions. As industry adapts to geopolitical constraints and governments prioritize private‑sector constraints, such as ROI, conflation of priorities marks a departure from U.S. precedent, bearing potential benefits and risks for quantum competition.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Government, Finance

Advisor: Dr. Eun Jo, Government

This project examines how nuclear fusion technologies may affect proliferation risks and international security. It asks: How should a state’s fusion program development inform an assessment of proliferation risks? The research proceeded in two stages. First, a research primer synthesized scholarship on material risks—including plutonium production, tritium diversion, and fusion-fission hybrids—and non-material risks involving dual-use technologies, tacit knowledge, inertial-confinement fusion, and gaps in safeguards. It also identified commercialization, private investment, governance, and strategic competition as priorities for further research. Second, a comparative analysis used the United States as a baseline to examine China, India, and Brazil across fusion capabilities, nuclear infrastructure, weapons status, safeguards obligations, and civil-military relationships. Initial findings suggest that fusion development alone is an insufficient indicator of proliferation risk; its significance depends on whether new capabilities create usable nuclear options. Future research will primarily refine and expand the comparative analysis, synthesizing cross-case findings and incorporating additional cases, while developing complementary research products that may include a global dataset, thematic analyses, or policy-focused work on fusion governance, strategic competition, and proliferation risk. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology, Government, Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Chemistry, AI

Advisor: Dr. Jeffrey Kaplow, Government

Recent scholarship within the field of children’s history has gravitated towards historically “significant” topics such as revolution or war. As a result, the mundane, everyday details of childhood have received a lack of scholarly attention. Rather than study children through the lens of larger historical events, this project seeks to refocus attention back to the children themselves. In particular, it intends to gain a better understanding of everyday lived experience in eighteenth-century Britain by exploring children’s play as the primary medium through which children encountered and shaped their environments. This project will aim to answer questions such as: How did children experience play, and where did it occur? How did children’s play relate to the eighteenth-century backdrop of the rising British Empire and early beginnings of industrialization? In what ways did play mediate adolescent friendships and parent-child relationships? To answer these questions, this project will critically analyze a mixture of primary and secondary sources, with a special focus on parenting guidebooks, letters, manuscripts describing children’s play, and items of material culture (contemporary board games, toys, etc.).

Student Major: History

Advisor: Dr. Kathrin Levitan, History

The present study aims to investigate the relationship between social anxiety and coping-motivated cannabis use among undergraduate college students. Specifically, this study examines whether negative attitudes towards self, specifically high self-criticism, and cannabis use expectancies, particularly tension/relaxation reduction and social/sexual facilitation, moderate this relationship. Participants consisted of 475 undergraduate college students, originating from six U.S. universities across the country, where they completed an online survey; the source of all of my data. From my hypothesized three-way model moderations, it revealed that social anxiety significantly predicted coping-motivated cannabis use. However, no significant interaction was found between self-criticism and cannabis expectancies on the interaction. These findings suggest that social anxiety itself is a primary driver of coping-motivated cannabis use among college students despite varying levels of self-criticism or drug expectancies. Hence, intervention strategies at universities should directly target social anxiety to reduce the risk of problematic dependency.

Student Major: Undecided

Advisor: Dr. Adrian Bravo, Psychological Sciences

This project explores the space between order and chaos in fiction. Writers have long introduced narrative and stylistic chaos to their writing in order to convey emotion, character, setting, and meaning, or challenge conventional storytelling. However, disorderly writing walks a fine line between drawing readers in and alienating them with confusion. Disorder in literature also contains a contradiction: readers expect books that lead them to a unified meaning and are composed of straightforward language, but incoherence threatens to dissolve cohesive messages and organized prose. This project draws from extensive reading of books with central elements of disorder and examination of the reception they received. These books illuminated what approaches to disorder have been successful, and this knowledge was used to create an original novella that addresses what readers find appealing about chaos and how incoherence and coherence can coexist in a work.

Student Major: Psychology

Advisor: Dr. Nicole Tsuno, English

This project investigates how scholars have interpreted the portrayal of family dynamics in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and what remains unexplored in our understanding of the Samsa family as an interconnected system. The research is structured as a literature review as a way of synthesizing existing scholarship. By examining how scholars have interpreted the Samsa family and the meaning of their interactions, the project hopes to identify both areas of consensus and overlooked perspectives. While the study does not conduct new primary analysis at this stage, its results anticipate showing that scholarship has often privileged economic or symbolic readings while leaving relational and systemic understandings of family less developed. These findings will provide a critical foundation for future research into the ways Kafka’s novella critiques broader familial structures and how these critiques can be seen as a reflection of the society of the time.

Student Major: English

Advisor: Dr. Keith Johnson, English

This project explores the United Nations peacekeeping efforts. Specifically, it investigates how UN peacekeepers are trained and the real-world impact that training has on UN missions. Some components of this research is the actual enrollment in and completion of several of the e-learning courses used to train UN peacekeepers, literature review, visits to the United States' and Bangladesh's missions to the UN, and to the Integrated Training Service. The argument is that UN training itself is strong, but three pressures weaken how it reaches peacekeepers. Countries train their own troops, so the same standard produces very different preparation across 121 contributing states. Missions keep taking on new tasks, and each one adds training that must be built, approved, and passed down before it reaches anyone. Meanwhile, falling political and fiscal will leaves the system short of money, producing a negative cycle. Together these pressures leave peacekeepers least prepared for the newest threats.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Government, Economics 

Advisor: Dr. Harvey Langholtz, Psychological Sciences

Spider silk is an extraordinarily strong biomaterial built from tightly bundled protein-based fibrils. At the molecular level, silk is composed of repeating protein-based secondary structures that blend flexible α-helices with crystalline β-sheets. This provides the material with high tensile strength and extensibility, outperforming materials such as Kevlar and high-grade steel. Raman spectroscopy is a technique used to observe the vibrational modes of molecules, of which this research focuses on amide bonds. Comparing the peak positions and bandwidths of Raman spectra can reveal how applying strain to a silk strand impacts the atom positions, chemical bond lengths, and strengths of the amide bonds in the protein-based secondary structures. By characterizing what elements are affected by strain on a silk strand, we are able to determine what structures contribute to the strength and extensibility of Latrodectus mactans (Southern Black Widow) silk.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Human Health and Psychology, Chemistry 

Advisor: Dr. Hannes Schniepp, Applied Science

Abstract coming soon!

Student Major(s)/Minor: International Relations, GIS 

Advisor: Dr. Daniel Maliniak, Government

As Large Language Models (LLMs) become more advanced, they must balance competing goals, such as being helpful versus harmless, or prioritizing accuracy against computational costs. Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning (MORL) trains models on these multiple goals simultaneously. However, a major challenge is gradient conflict, where opposing objectives cause the model to prioritize the most dominant goal while silencing others. This project addresses how to effectively balance these conflicting objectives without unintentionally altering the user's intended priorities during training. By investigating advantage manipulation methods (such as GRPO and GDPO) and dynamic gradient weighting, we evaluate techniques to properly scale and combine different rewards. We anticipate that dynamic weighting will yield high average performance and greater robustness across diverse tasks. Ultimately, this approach will improve AI alignment, ensuring models behave exactly according to human-defined trade-offs across real-world applications.  

Student Major(s)/Minor: Mathematics, Computer Science

Advisor: Dr. Haipeng Chen, Data Science

As nuclear fusion technologies transition from a scientific aspiration to a commercial reality, they introduce distinct proliferation threats that challenge existing governance frameworks. Material risks include the potential production or diversion of weapons-relevant materials, such as tritium and plutonium. Non-material risks arise from the dissemination of dual-use technologies, sensitive expertise, and military applications associated with fusion research. Growing private-sector investment and intensifying international competition further complicate these concerns, raising questions about whether current export controls, safeguards, and nonproliferation regimes are equipped to govern the technology at a commercial scale. With support from the Margaret S. Glauber Faculty-Student Research Fellows and Scholarship Fund, the Troy A. Cullen Emerging Technology Fellows Program drafted a research primer examining the current landscape of nuclear fusion and its implications for national security. The primer features a risk assessment of the leading approaches to nuclear fusion, addresses the insufficiency of international safeguards, and outlines entry points for further research.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Philosophy, Data Science

Advisor: Dr. Jeffrey Kaplow, Government

In recent decades, Senate confirmation hearings for United States Supreme Court Justices have become platforms for politically charged debates and the airing of personal grievances, instead of the questioning of a nominee to evaluate whether they are qualified to serve on the Court. This behavior has become more apparent alongside the rise of televised confirmation hearings. But the evolution of Senate confirmation hearings has been changing since they were first opened to the public in 1916. This project seeks to evaluate how Senators’ speaking behavior has changed alongside the rise of modern media. The product will be a play written to outline the distinct stages of Senate interaction with the American media. This play will communicate to audiences and readers how Senate behavior has become more performative in the past century, and how media has allowed information to become more accessible to the American public, but not necessarily more accurate.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Government, Theater

Advisor: Dr. Laurie Wolf, Theatre and Dr. Larry Evans, Government