Justin Biggerstaff, Biology

"Habitat Use of Barred Owls Along a Road-Density Gradient"

Advisor: Dr. Matthias Leu

Urbanization is a major threat to global biodiversity, with its effects being well-studied and multi-faceted. However, many narratives of urbanization in ecology fail to mention how urbanization has the potential to facilitate the presence of many different animal species. My project seeks to investigate how Barred Owls (Strix varia) use habitat along the urban-rural gradient so that a deeper understanding of how wildlife use urbanized habitat can be developed. I am particularly interested in how variations in road noise influence Barred Owl habitat use and if habitat use differs in the breeding versus non-breeding seasons along the urban-rural gradient. To investigate this, I am capturing owls throughout the upper Virginia peninsula and attaching GPS-equipped harnesses to study their movement ecology and how it relates to the level of urbanization in their environment. I am predicting that owls will use habitat less frequently and expend more energy near high-density roads. Additionally, I predict that owls in the non-breeding season will be more likely to use more heavily urbanized habitats due to higher human subsidized prey densities in this areas. Through this project, I hope to contribute to an understanding of how urbanized systems can be developed to better facilitate wildlife. 

Justin Biggerstaff is a second year MSc candidate in Biology at William & Mary. He is primarily interested in how wildlife adapts to rapidly changing habitats, especially in regards to climate change and urbanization, using birds as his study system. His thesis investigates how Barred Owls use their habitat throughout an urbanization gradient and how it may be impacted by traffic volume. 

Bryce Donaghue, Biology

"Bat Activity and Diversity at Pollinator Friendly Solar Facilities"

Advisor: Dr. Doug DeBerry

Bats represent nearly one-fifth of all mammal species worldwide and contribute over $3.7 billion annually to agricultural pest control. Virginia is home to 17 species of bats, all of which feed on insects and other agricultural pests. Solar energy development has steadily increased in the past 15 years, especially in Mid-Atlantic states like Virginia. As solar energy becomes more widespread, it may present new opportunities for innovative land management. The 2019 Virginia Pollinator-Smart Program encourages the development of ecologically friendly solar facilities. The program is designed to provide incentives and tools for solar energy developers to create habitats that support pollinator species, birds, and other wildlife. Several species of conservation concern in Virginia are known to forage in open and edge habitats, which are commonly associated with solar energy sites. Our research investigates how native bat species interact with these pollinator-friendly solar facilities. Using highly sensitive microphones, we recorded the ultrasonic echolocation calls bats project while flying. We used these calls to identify specific bat species at each site. Throughout the summer of 2025, we collected over 70,000 call files in total. Our research seeks to better understand how bats interact with pollinator-friendly solar sites.

Bryce Donaghue is a second-year biology master’s student at William & Mary. His research interest includes habitat management, wildlife conservation, and behavioral ecology, with a thesis on bat activity and occupancy at pollinator‑friendly solar facilities. He holds dual B.S. degrees in environmental biology and ecology & conservation biology from Oklahoma State University. 

Nhu-Lan Pho, Biology

"Managing Invasive Species: Predicting the Power of Coordination and Collaboration"

Advisor: Dr. Matthias Leu

Invasive alien species (IAS) are having widescale and expanding negative impacts on the environment, economies, and human health globally. Creating management strategies that extend beyond and across numerous anthropogenic political/ disciplinary boundaries while also balancing stakeholder wants, government capacity, and scientific support is a costly challenge. This project draws from the Global Invasive Species Database list of the top 100 invasive species to get a representative sample of IAS. I use the power of Bayesian statistics and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to uncover what sociopolitical and biological factors are important predictors of IAS management strategy success globally. I investigate how Stakeholders, Externalities, and IAS Biology contribute to the formation of legislation. From there, I investigate if the type of Legislation (Policy, Law, Regulation) or level of Government (Local, Regional, Federal, International) is an important indicator of IAS management strategy success. I predict that IAS management strategies that are supported by more levels of government and types of legislation will have more success in their initiatives. The model created from this investigation aims to inform conservationists, policymakers, and the public about what matters when managing existing IAS.

Nhu-Lan Pho is a second year graduate student in Biology at William & Mary. She has an interest in combining the policy world with her background in biology in hopes of safeguarding the natural world. Her thesis focuses on Legislation as a tool for and indicator of Invasive Alien Species management strategy success.

*Hannah Swarm, Entomology | Virginia Tech

"Mapping Wireworm Species Distribution Across Virginia "

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Kuhar

*GRS Visiting Student Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the Sciences

Wireworms are the subterranean larvae of click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae). Several different wireworm species occur across Virginia, but the genera Melanotus, Conoderus, and Aeolus predominate. The species Melanotus communis (Gyllenhal), the “corn wireworm”, is an important pest that feeds on a multitude of crops including corn, sugarcane, and potato. Meanwhile, Melanotus depressus (Melsheimer) commonly feed on corn, wheat, and sorghum. Both species act as pests on potato (Solanum tuberosum) crops both by feeding on seeds and burrowing into tubers later in the season. A major aspect of wireworm control is the identification of species present as well as their population numbers. Assessment of infestation risk can be done through female-produced sex pheromone traps that target adult male click beetles. Sex pheromones are known for 9 elaterid species in North America, including Melanotus communis, and M. depressus is currently in development. They have been increasingly considered for control through mass trapping, mating disruption, and ‘attract and kill’ tactics as the possible negative effects of current insecticides are being studied. Because these traps are species-specific, in order to be utilized effectively by growers, an understanding of what species are likely present in their field is necessary. To provide this information, the objective of this research is to use previously identified wireworm specimens collected across Virginia to better understand their distribution, and which variables may be associated with their presence.

Hannah Swarm is a fourth year Ph.D. student in entomology at Virginia Tech, and her work primarily focuses on wireworm pests in Virginia cropping systems. She holds two B.S.s from VT in biological sciences and criminology. Her future goals are centered on teaching, having assisted or lectured in general insect biology, aquatics, pest management, and other undergraduate courses. 

Quinn L. Girasek, Marine Science 

"Characterization of the Diet of Roundscale Spearfish (Tetrapturus georgii) and Comparisons to White Marlin (Kajikia albida)"

Advisor: Dr. Jan McDowell

The roundscale spearfish, Tetrapturus georgii, is a relatively rare, data-deficient istiophorid billfish found in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. T. georgii is a highly sought-after sport and tournament fish, but tournaments generally do not discriminate between T. georgii and the morphologically similar white marlin, Kajikia albida. T. georgii fall within the 250-fish US recreational quota for Atlantic billfishes, which includes blue marlin, Makaira nigricans, and K. albida, limiting sampling opportunities. To better understand the diet preferences of T. georgii, stomachs were sampled from fish landed at recreational tournaments along the east coast of the United States in 2024 and 2025. Morphological and molecular identification methods were used to identify prey items. For morphological identifications, billfish stomachs were dissected, and prey taxa were sorted and identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible. For molecular-based identifications, stomach contents were homogenized, and DNA was extracted from a subsample of the homogenate. Cloacal swab samples were also collected for DNA extraction and identification. Isolated DNA samples from each fish were metabarcoded using the cytochrome c oxidase 1 (COI) and hypervariable gene region of the 18S ribosomal DNA (V9) gene regions. Results from the different approaches were compared, and the diet of the cryptic species, T. georgii, was compared to the diet of K. albida. Advancing the understanding of the T. georgii diet is important for the management and conservation of this data-poor species.

Quinn Girasek is in her third and final year of the Marine Science M.S. program at William & Mary’s Batten School, Virginia Institute of Marine Science. She is broadly interested in using molecular techniques to advance our knowledge and support the conservation of marine species. Her research falls within the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology in billfishes. 

Madison Griffin, Marine Science

"Big Shells, Bigger Data: Cohort Analysis of Chesapeake Bay Crassostrea virginica Reefs"

Advisor: Dr. Grace Chiu

Co-Authors: R. Mann, M. Southworth, J. Thomas

Oysters in Virginia Chesapeake Bay oyster reefs are “age-truncated”, possibly due to a combination of overfishing, disease epizootics, environmental degradation, and climate change. Oysters may display resilience to environmental stressors, however; the current understanding of oyster lifespan is limited. The Virginia Oyster Stock Assessment and Replenishment Archive (VOSARA), a spatiotemporally expansive (more than 2,000,000 individual measurements) dataset of shell lengths (SL, mm), has yet to be examined comprehensively in the context of resilience. We developed a novel method using Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) to estimate the age groups in each reef using yearly SL data and then link those age groups over time to estimate cohorts and their lifespan. Sixty-four reefs had sufficient data (at least 300 oysters sampled for a minimum of 8 consecutive years) to be considered for this analysis. We fit univariate GMMs for each year (t) and reef (r) for 7 river strata (R) to estimate the mean and standard deviation of SL for each (Rrt)th age group, and the percentage of the (Rrt)th population in each age group. We developed an algorithm that linked age groups to infer age cohorts. This method shows promise in identifying oyster cohorts and estimating lifespan solely using SL data. Results show signals of resiliency in almost all river systems: oyster cohorts live longer and grow larger in in the mid-to-late 2010s compared to the early 2000s. Future work includes investigating how climate change and management influence oyster resiliency in Chesapeake Bay.

Madison Griffin is a third year Ph.D. student in Coastal & Marine Sciences at VIMS. Broadly, she is interested in the intersection between statistics, ecology, and environmental policy. Her dissertation research builds Bayesian spatiotemporal causal models to quantitatively define oyster reef resiliency to climate change in Chesapeake Bay. 

Samuel Dutilly, Biology

"Novel Habitat Enhancement Methods for a Federally Threatened Plant, Sensitive Joint-Vetch"

Advisor: Dr. Doug DeBerry

Sensitive joint-vetch (Aeschynomene virginica, SJV) is a federally threatened annual plant native to freshwater tidal marshes and sparsely vegetated sites along the Atlantic Coastal Plain from New Jersey to North Carolina. However, this rare plant has already gone extinct in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Along the Rappahannock River, adjacent to Rappahannock Tribal land, USFWS refuge land, and private farmland, thrives some of the largest populations of SJV in the world. Over 38,000 individual plants were documented in 2024 and increased to more than 42,000 individuals in 2025. Almost all plants were found in proximity to agricultural crops and within the same elevation (0.25-0.75 meters above sea level). We hypothesize that the herbicide runoff from these farm fields is reducing competing vegetation before SJV germination in the spring, creating ideal habitat conditions for the plant. To test this, we conducted a competition removal experiment at this ideal elevation range using both herbicide and mechanical control in the summer of 2025, to determine why these plants are thriving in this system while in decline across the East Coast. The results of this study will be used to develop practical methods for habitat restoration to bolster current populations of SJV where these rare plants are in decline. 

Sam Dutilly is a second-year master's student in Biology at William & Mary. His research focuses on native vegetation ecology and practical strategies for plant conservation. He is currently studying plant species diversity at Fones Cliffs, Virginia, and testing novel methods to enhance habitat quality and support populations of the federally threatened sensitive joint-vetch.

Carly Barnhardt, American Studies

"'Sleep felt productive': The Postmodern “Rest Cure” in Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation"

Advisor: Dr. Francesca Sawaya

The postfeminist antihero is mean, selfish, vain, and unlikable; she complains endlessly and shows little insight into her own faults. Otessa Moshfegh’s unnamed protagonist in the 2018 novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation has been heralded as an example par excellence of this postfeminist antihero so prevalent in millennial fiction and media (See also, Lena Dunham’s Girls and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag). While Moshfegh’s protagonist certainly fits into this mold, I contend that feminist disability studies can enrich our understanding of the novel beyond its similarities to contemporary literary works through a consideration of her literary predecessors. As Diane Price Herndl argues in Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840-1940, “each new appearance” of the literary figure of the invalid woman “carries with it the ‘ghosts’ of the others." My Year of Rest and Relaxation, I argue, can be read as a sort of parody of both the “rest cure” of the 19th century and “the bourgeois ideal of woman as ‘conspicuous consumer’” that emerges in the 20th century—both taken to the limits of postmodern absurdity. We can perhaps read Moshfegh’s protagonist as a sort of modern-day Lily Bart (Edith Wharton’s doomed socialite in The House of Mirth)—or the next line in a genealogy of invalid women protagonists– one who takes the 21st-century mandate for “self-care” to farcical lengths.

Carly Barnhardt is a PhD candidate in the American Studies program and instructor in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies program. Her work is interdisciplinary and draws primarily on psychoanalysis, feminist theory, and critical disability studies. Her dissertation will tentatively explore the hypodermic needle in the U.S. cultural imagination.

Katharine Benson, English | James Madison University

"The Polished Shield: White Women's Role in Racial Violence "

Advisor: Dr. Mollie Godfrey

The role of racial violence and the act of lynching during the Jim Crow Era has been, and continues to be, a thoroughly examined topic in literary and social discussion. However, these discussions, while emphasizing obvious fears of the collapse of white, racial dominance, oftentimes, root themselves in the explicit action of white male figures and lack the adequate addressing of white women's roles in such violences. I will additionally discuss the mythologized aspects of Black men found in the following works as a means of underscoring the hypocrisy of white supremacist ideologies and its justifications for racial violence during the period. My paper addresses the coalescence of genre, both factual and fiction, in an attempt to better understand the functions of white women’s roles with specific attention on how these roles underlie white supremacist epistemologies, or ways of knowing. I will be examining the works of Charles W. Chesnutt’s allegorical fiction, The Marrow of Tradition; and Ida B. Wells’s journalistic contribution, A Red Record; to further examine the role of white womanhood’s complicity in racial violence during the Jim Crow Era. I argue that Wells and Chesnutt expose the weaponization of white womanhood, unveiling its allegiance to myths, conditional morality, and faux protection of white, female purity in a broader white America.  In conclusion, this project–by closely examining the works of Wells and Chesnutt–uncovers the inner workings of white supremacist ideology during the Jim Crow era in order to deconstruct these oppressive methodologies.

Katharine Benson is a first year English M.A. student at James Madison University. Her research areas include African American literature, Western American literature, and intersectionality studies. Her current research explores the geospatial conceptualizations surrounding the American “West” and its overlap with Indigenous studies.

Audrey Carranza, English | James Madison University

"Edith Wharton's 'Roman Fever' and Women as the Pawns of Patriarchy"

Advisor: Dr. Sofia Samatar

Literature can be used to analyze how these systems are mirrored from their original form through the feminist work of Armine K. Mortimer. Edith Wharton’s short story, “Roman Fever,” can nearly be critically fabulated, or address historical silences through literature, to demonstrate the ideas of women participating in patriarchal systems through Armine K. Mortimer’s theorization of feminist narration. By examining Wharton’s “Roman Fever,” the irony of women participating in patriarchy and structures that are interested in pitting women against each other can be closely viewed. “Roman Fever” has a prevalent motif of uncovering truths of the characters and the audience that can be applied to the revelation of male-centric systems through literature. In this paper, Grace and Alida will be examined as women seeking to survive and even thrive in the patriarchal system. The developing secrets in “Roman Fever” bloom in the showers of patriarchy and male-attention that are pruned within this essay. Wharton uses Grace and Alida to examine and expose the actions of women within the male-centric, systemic world through their highly competitive interactions. By examining the short story “Roman Fever,” critical ways to understand the negative and divergent consequences of patriarchy can be found and disrupted. 

Audrey Carranza is a first year Master's student in English Literature at James Madison University. Their research interests include Victorian literature, Gothic literature, the horror genre, and women's and gender studies. They are currently prioritizing research of literary vampires from the 19th century. They hold a B. A. from the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. 

Chloe Allen, American Studies

"The Devil Drives a Lavender Car: Dante Reyes as the Hardbodied, Queer Coded Villain in Fast X"

Advisor: Dr. Elizabeth Losh

This paper analyzes the Fast & Furious film franchise against the 1980s/90s hardbody action films & how it represents masculinity in the U.S. Focusing on Fast X (2023), I identify how impromptu creative choices for antagonist Dante Reyes lends itself to a queer reading of the character through what is known as “queer coding.” I establish my framework through hardbody action cinema, masculinity, & queer studies to investigate how Dante’s embodying of both queerness & the traditional hardbody challenges or reinforces the portrayal of masculinity in Fast X. From my analysis, I demonstrate how his role as antagonist targeting main character Dominic “Dom” Toretto’s family, & specifically that of his young son, represents an atheist, homosexual threat to the Christian heterosexual family unit. Moreover, I identify how Dante’s narrative parallels that of Dom’s & functions as a cautionary tale about the absence of the father, both biologically & spiritually, in forming & maintaining the franchise’s ideal masculinity. I find that Dante’s role as a queer-coded antagonist is complicated, wherein the combination of his hardbody adorned with feminine-coded presentations challenge past stereotypes of the slender, physically weak queer-coded male villain. However, unlike the heterosexual male protagonists, his hardbody is the only one to show signs of damage from physical encounters & may function as a punishment for his gender deviance. My research demonstrates how this franchise navigates purported threats to masculinity deeply rooted in a history of homophobia targeting effeminate men.

Chloe Allen is a master's candidate in the American Studies program at the College of William & Mary. Their research areas include film & media studies and gender & sexuality studies with interest in cultural and fan studies. They hold a B.A. in Film & Media Studies and Gender, Sexuality, & Women's Studies from the College of William & Mary.

Mikaela Krim, Business | University of Virginia

"Four Years or Four Life: Evaluating the Effects of Fraternity Membership on Workplace Masculinity "

Advisor: Dr. Lauren Kaufmann

Fraternities act as incubators for the formation of masculine ideologies that can include promotion of male bonding and vulnerability, but also involve toxic displays of aggression, subservience, and sexual objectification. While research has been conducted regarding the outcomes of these organizations on the immediate college experience, little has been said about the lingering after-effects. How does belonging—or not belonging—to these all-male institutions lead to differentiated professional outcomes? Through a combination of qualitative interviews and quantitative analysis, I examine the effects of past college fraternity membership on present-day workplace performance. An experimental procedure positing a hypothetical workplace scenario will be presented to upwards of 1,000 individuals to reveal a causal relationship between fraternity membership and preference for an aggressive, male-bodied masculine environment. These results are complemented by semi-structured interviews with fraternity alumni that aim to reveal patterns in workplace identity, networking approach, and gender perception. I propose that increased comfort for a hegemonic masculine environment combines with the improved career prospects afforded by fraternity membership to present a hidden structural barrier inhibiting gender equality at work. However, I anticipate that results will differ depending on the type of masculinity promoted by members’ respective fraternities, demonstrating that positive change requires not a reduction of male bodies, but a diversification of masculine ideology.

Mikaela Krim is a third year PhD candidate in Strategy, Ethics and Entrepreneurship within the Darden School of Business at UVA. Her dissertation deals with organizational masculinity and identity maintenance across institutional boundaries. She holds an MPhil in sociology from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Economics from Villanova University.

Nathaniel Sutherland, American Studies

"Salvation in the Flesh: Prince, Reaganism, and the Theology of Black Desire"

Advisor: Dr. Charlie McGovern

This paper reads Prince’s “The Ladder” (1985) as public theology that locates salvation in erotic embodiment and resists Reagan-era discourse that cast Black male sexuality as national danger. The song does not treat desire as sin to master. Instead longing, surrender, and overwhelming attachment are staged as the path toward the divine. Prince thus reclaims the erotic Black male body not as obscene matter to be disciplined but as a consecrated site through which grace becomes available to listeners. Situating this claim in a mid-1980s United States that tied Black masculinity to moral decline and demanded respectability, the paper argues that Prince performs a countertheology: he stages a vulnerable, feminized, erotically available Black body and teaches that this body is not the nation’s problem but the ladder to transcendence. To name the stakes, I place the song in conversation with Marcella Althaus-Reid, James Cone, and John Donne. Althaus-Reid’s “indecent theology” clarifies how pop music can be a site of revelation in spaces Christianity calls improper. Cone grounds divine presence in Black embodiment; I argue Prince radicalizes that claim by locating revelation in Black erotic pleasure itself. Donne’s devotional grammar of salvific erotic surrender helps read Prince’s staging of spiritual ascent through sexual yielding. The result is a sacramental account of Black erotic life and a critique of how U.S. popular culture could consume that vision while translating its specifically racial erotic charge into a universal promise of redemption.

Nathaniel Sutherland is a 3rd year PhD candidate in American Studies at William & Mary. His work in literary theory and cultural studies concerns race and media production in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly Black and Jewish-American cultural production.

Jiaze E, Computer Science

"HiSin: A Sinogram-Aware Framework for Efficient High-Resolution Inpainting"

Advisor: Dr. Bin Ren

Co-Authors: S. Banerjee, T. Bicer, G. Wang, Y. Zhang

High-resolution sinogram inpainting is essential for computed tomography reconstruction, as missing high-frequency projections can lead to visible artifacts and diagnostic errors. Diffusion models are well-suited for this task due to their robustness and detail-preserving capabilities, but their application to high-resolution inputs is limited by excessive memory and computational demands. To address this limitation, we propose HiSin, a novel diffusion-based framework for efficient sinogram inpainting that exploits spectral sparsity and structural heterogeneity of projection data. It progressively extracts global structure at low resolution and defers high-resolution inference to small patches, enabling memory-efficient inpainting. Considering the structural features of sinograms, we incorporate frequency-aware patch skipping and structure-adaptive step allocation to reduce redundant computation. Experimental results show that HiSin reduces peak memory usage by up to 30.81% and inference time by up to 17.58% than the state-of-the-art framework, and maintains inpainting accuracy across.

Jiaze E is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at William & Mary. Her research interests include machine learning system.

Trevor Stalnaker, Computer Science

"An Empirical Analysis of Machine Learning Model & Dataset Documentation, Supply Chain, & Licensing Challenges on Hugging Face"

Advisors: Dr. Denys Poshyvanyk, Dr. Oscar Chaparro 

Co-Authors: N. Wintersgill, L. Heymann, M. Di Penta, D. German

The last decade has seen widespread adoption of Machine Learning (ML) components in software systems. This has occurred in nearly every domain, from natural language processing to computer vision. These ML components range from relatively simple neural networks to complex and resource intensive large language models. However, despite this widespread adoption, little is known about the supply chain relationships that produce these models, which can have implications for compliance and security. In this work, we conducted an extensive analysis of 760,460 models and 175,000 datasets extracted from the popular model-sharing site Hugging Face. First, we evaluate the current state of documentation in the Hugging Face supply chain, report real-world examples of shortcomings, and offer actionable suggestions for improvement. Next, we analyze the underlying structure of the existing supply chain. Finally, we explore the current licensing landscape against what was reported in previous work and discuss the unique challenges posed in this domain. Our results motivate multiple research avenues, including the need for better license management for ML models/datasets, better support for model documentation, and automated inconsistency checking and validation. We make our research infrastructure and dataset available to facilitate future research.

Trevor Stalnaker is a fifth-year Ph.D. student at William & Mary with primary research interests in the software supply chain and software licensing. He has also conducted research in the areas of quantum software engineering, digital humanities, and generative artificial intelligence. Other interests include automation, web development, and advanced features of the Python programming language.

Swostika Thapa, Data Science

"Seasonal Space Use Patterns of African Elephants Using Graph Convolution Networks"

Advisor: Dr. Jennifer J. Swenson

Co-Authors: J. Swenson, S. Chamaillé‐Jammes

Elephant movement studies are important not only for identifying corridors and habitat connectivity but also for understanding their space use patterns driven by seasonal resource fluctuations. The Zimbabwe-Botswana transboundary area supports the world's second-largest African elephant population, making it critical for conservation amid conservation challenges including climate-induced drought, habitat fragmentation and human-wildlife conflict. We tracked six female elephants from 2019 to 2021 using GPS telemetry in this landscape. Movement data were integrated with key habitat variables—vegetation greenness, surface topography, surface temperature, and water availability derived from Sentinel-2 and Landsat imagery. Using graph convolutional networks (GCNs), we constructed movement graphs for dry and wet seasons to model how elephants adjust their space use in response to environmental changes. We expect results to reveal a contraction in their space use range during the dry season, with elephants concentrating near permanent water sources. In contrast, wet season patterns should show expanded space use across the landscape. These findings can be used to target conservation efforts and management interventions focused on important habitat zones for this elephant population.

Swostika Thapa is a first-year Ph.D. student in Data Science at William & Mary. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Science and has prior research experience in the population ecology of otters and snow leopards in Nepal. Her current research focuses on understanding the influence of landscape changes on movement patterns of African elephants using geospatial analysis and graph-based computational methods.

Nathan Wintersgill, Computer Science

"Developers' Perspectives on Software Licensing: Current Practices, Challenges, and Tools"

Advisor: Dr. Oscar Chaparro

Co-Authors: T. Stalnaker, D. Otten, L. A. Heymann, M. Di Penta et al.

Most modern software products incorporate open-source components, requiring development teams to maintain compliance with each component's licenses. Noncompliance can lead to significant financial, legal, and reputational repercussions.  While some organizations may seek advice from legal practitioners to assist with software licensing tasks, software developers still play a key role in such a process. To this end, it is essential to understand how developers approach license compliance tasks, the challenges they encounter, and the tools that they use.  This work studies these aspects of software licensing practices through a study – conducted by a joint team of software engineering and legal researchers – consisting of a survey with fifty-eight software developers and seven follow-up interviews. The study resulted in fifteen key findings regarding the current state of practice. The results reveal which software licensing tasks are performed most frequently, which are perceived as the most difficult, ways in which licensing tasks are performed and the roles involved in performing them, if and how practitioners use tools to assist with licensing tasks, and the benefits and limitations of such tools. These findings highlight uncertainties in the processes employed to resolve licensing issues, up to and including the question of who is responsible for addressing them in the first place, while also highlighting how such processes can be improved, such as by targeting difficult tasks with specialized tools and exploring opportunities to leverage machine learning technologies.

Nathan Wintersgill is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at William & Mary. His research focuses on software supply chains, especially focusing on software licensing and software bills of materials (SBOMs). He is also studying the use of generative AI in software engineering, including analyzing AI model supply chains and prompting.

Anna Gitchell, English | James Madison University

"Devolving Morality and Uncanny Societies in The Walking Dead"

Advisor: Dr. Mollie Godfrey

AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010-2022) raises the question of the impact of society’s collapse on the ever-changing nature of morality—the evolution, or devolution, of society's moral compass. Regardless of whether the character's moral compass evolves or devolves, they exhibit the desire to return to their selves, lives, and communal moral standards that existed before the advent of the zombie apocalypse. However, even in the moments where the characters' lives feel closest to their former pre-apocalyptic selves, the show evokes the idea of Fruend's uncanny—the eeriness in the convergence of the familiar and unfamiliar—within the safety and seemingly moral uprightness that's bracketed by the rotting nature of the zombies within the show. Scholars, such as Kyle Bishop, posit that the characters in The Walking Dead both evolve into more accurate and better versions of their pre-apocalyptic selves, while also exhibiting the characters' moral decay, marking a deep contrast whenever they’re positioned in an environment that mirrors the pre-apocalyptic way of life. Through the uncanny contrast, the show posits that despite the characters' desires to return to the safety promised by their former lives, the new world order deems it impossible.  The series transforms the apocalypse into a place where survival necessitates the abandonment—or redefinition—of pre-apocalyptic moral standards, rendering once-familiar routines and standards of morality eerily strange.

Anna Gitchell is a First Year Master's student in English at James Madison University. Her research areas include Film & Media Studies, Dystopian Literature, and Monster Studies. She holds a B.A. from William & Mary.

Lucy Saunders, English | James Madison University

"Performative Grief: The Metamorphosis and Bourgeois Respectability"

Advisor: Dr. Sofia Samatar

The ubiquitous experience of mourning has curated psychological models of coping, such as Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief. Understanding Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis as an elegiac arc of mourning, my paper contemplates Kübler-Ross' model in the context of Gregor Samsas’ transformation into a bug. I argue this novel is a study of grief, for both Gregor and the Samsa family. The paper traces how Kafka's narrative displays denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventual acceptance - without any of the healing the previously mentioned stages imply. Gregor's ego death insists upon a loss of bodily autonomy and a failure to communicate. By closely examining Kafka's intertwining of grief and guilt in conjunction, I argue the novel inverts a traditional mourning process, revealing the true insects of the novel are Gregor's metamorphosed family members. Through a psychoanalytical lens, I interpret Gregor's death and the Samsas’ subsequent ambivalence as a social commentary on how bourgeois families and societies grieve dehumanized, "othered" aliens. By analyzing a narrative that refuses to illustrate ritual or redemption in the mourning process, I argue Kafka's novel situates grief as a socially coded act. To grieve is not to honor the deceased, but rather to live through their ongoing disappearance. In conclusion, this paper claims The Metamorphosis redefines mourning as a dehumanizing act; a bourgeois obligation rather than necessity.

Lucy Saunders is a first year Masters student in the English department at James Madison University. She is most drawn to the Gothic genre and Victorian era of literature. She is currently studying the uncanny in European gothic short stories, with an emphasis on doublings and framed narratives in fiction. Lucy is absolutely thrilled for the opportunity to present her research in front of an academic audience!

Micah Turner, English | James Madison University

"Eloquence and Hideousness in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein"

Advisor: Dr. Mollie Godfrey

One of the most fascinating aspects of the creature from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the duality of its hideousness and eloquence. These characteristics are highlighted in essays such as Peter Brook’s “Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts: Language and Monstrosity in Frankenstein”, which elaborates on how the creature uses his eloquent words in an attempt to overcome his monstrous image. However, this topic becomes even more fascinating when one factors in the presence of the audience, who only experiences his speech and not his appearance. This idea is highlighted even further by the early film adaptations of Frankenstein, such as the 1931 film of the same name, and 1957's The Curse of Frankenstein, as once the audience can see the creature, the ways in which he is presented, and the ways the audience is supposed to relate to him, change drastically. Within Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the audience’s unique position of experiencing the story through words and not images, and consequently experiencing only the creature’s eloquent words and not his horrifying visage, make them uniquely situated to understand and empathize with the creature in an unprejudiced manner, a privilege that the characters in the story do not have. As the only ones who know the creatures entire story, told through his own words and without his supernaturally repulsive visage, the readers of Frankenstein are placed in a unique position to sympathize with the creature, and called on as the only once able to judge him fairly.

Micah Turner is a first-year graduate student in James Madison University's Masters in English program. He has a range of literary interests, but has a particular interest in speculative fiction and children's literature.

Ethan Oliver, Applied Linguistics | Old Dominion University

"Literacy and Language: A Case Study on the role of First Language Literacy in Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition"

Advisor: Dr. Staci Defibaugh

English Language Learners (ELLs) are a rapidly growing demographic in US schools. At varying ages, these ELLs often enter with limited reading comprehension skills even in their primary language (L1). This creates significant obstacles to reading comprehension in the target language (L2): English. When assessing and accommodating ELLs, no formal distinction is made between literacy limited by a lack of English language skills and literacy limited by a lack of overall reading skills including the L1. This case study examines whether these L1 literacy skills are positively correlated with the acquisition of English vocabulary. First, a group of ELLs of varying skill levels in both L1 and L2 literacy and reading comprehension were gathered. Following a series of vocabulary lessons, the students were then tested on their recall of the vocabulary and phrases. The results were compared to the students’ respective literacy competencies to verify a possible correlation. The content of this research is crucial for advancing our understanding and implementation of accommodation and support for ELLs who arrive with limited literacy exposure.

Ethan Oliver is a first year Master’s Degree student in the Applied Linguistics Department at Old Dominion University. He has four years of experience teaching ESL at the elementary level in Virginia public schools and is concentrating on TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) in his graduate coursework. His research interests include second language literacy and second language teaching strategies. 

*Mohammad Rahman, Strategic Leadership | James Madison University

"How Financial Literacy Education Can Help Low-Income High School Students Access College"

Advisor: Dr. Minjong Jun

*Honorable Mention, GRS Visiting Student Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences

Many low-income students in the U.S. miss the chance to attend college because they lack financial knowledge. They often do not understand how to find scholarships, apply for financial aid, or handle college costs. This study explores whether teaching financial literacy in high school can help more low-income students make better financial choices and feel confident about going to college. The main question is: Does financial literacy education increase college enrollment among low-income students?

To answer this, the study aims to survey about 500 -1000 high school seniors from low-income backgrounds. The survey will measure how much financial knowledge they have, if they learned financial skills in school, and whether they plan to go to college. The study will compare students who received financial literacy education to those who did not.

This study expects that students who learned financial literacy will feel more prepared to handle college costs, be better at finding resources, understand scholarships and loans better, and be more likely to plan for college. The study will also look at how financial knowledge can give students the skills and support they need to make better choices about their future. This research may help schools and leaders see how financial education can reduce barriers and give more students a real chance to attend college.

Mohammad Rahman is a 2nd-year Ph.D. student in the School of Strategic Leadership Studies at James Madison University. His research interests include Leadership in Criminal Justice (Reentry Program), Nonprofit Management, and leadership. He is currently exploring different directions and refining his interests for his dissertation topic. He holds a BBA from Malaysia, an M.A. from South Korea, and an MPA from JMU, VA.

*Isabelle Castro, Marine Science

"Disruption of Redox Homeostasis by Domoic Acid and Okadaic Acid in a Marine Invertebrate Model. "

Advisor: Dr. Juliette Smith

Co-Authors: M.P. Sanderson

*Honorable Mention, GRS Award for Excellence in Scholarship -- Batten School & VIMS

Marine invertebrates serve as valuable models for understanding sublethal responses to environmental toxins due to their simplified physiological systems and direct exposure to marine toxins. Within Chesapeake Bay, blue crabs may be co-exposed to the phycotoxins domoic acid and okadaic acid. While limited domoic acid (neurotoxin) exposure does not pose great risk to exposed invertebrates due to its small and polar structure, co-exposure with okadaic acid (diarrhetic toxin), a potent protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) inhibitor, may fundamentally alter detoxification pathways and antioxidant defense systems. As such, the capacity of an organism to metabolize co-occurring toxins may be impaired, creating compounding oxidative stress, damage, and enhanced accumulation. In this study, crabs were then to domoic acid (20,000 ppb), okadaic acid (10,000 ppb), both combined, or controls via feed at times 0 and 24 hours, with sacrificial sampling at 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours (n = 6 per timepoint). Hepatopancreas were dissected and analyzed using ultra performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) to establish toxicokinetic profiles. Sublethal stress was assessed through comprehensive antioxidant enzyme activity analyses including superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase (CAT), and glutathione-s-transferase (GST). Enzymes were compiled into an “integrated biomarker index” (IBRv2i), where values for the observed co-exposed treatment was significantly lower than the expected values – suggesting antagonistic antioxidant response. 

Isabelle Castro is a 3rd year Ph.D. student at Virginia Institute of Marine Science in the Ecosystem Health section. Her research interests lie at the intersection of biochemistry and food security, specifically looking at the effects and distribution of harmful algal bloom toxins in highly harvested marine species. Isabelle hold a B.S. in Biochemistry from University of Colorado. 

Jessica Fergel, Marine Science

"Estimating Crustacean Productivity Enhancement at Restored and Natural Salt Marsh Edge Habitats"

Advisor: Dr. Donna Marie Bilkovic, Dr. Robert Isdell

Co-Authors: R. Chambers, J. Thompson, M. Crist

Salt marshes provide critical nursery habitat and support high densities of ecologically and economically important crustaceans, including blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus), white shrimp (Litopenaeus setiferus), and grass shrimp (Palaemonetes pugio). Living shorelines are nature-based solutions to coastal erosion that use native vegetation, often with stabilizing “hard” structures, to restore or create habitat while providing ecosystem services. However, quantitative measures of how these habitats contribute to productivity are limited. This study quantifies and compares crustacean productivity across five sets of vegetated (restored and natural marshes) and unvegetated shorelines (beaches) in the Chesapeake Bay. Crustaceans were sampled along the shoreline edge using fyke nets in the summer and fall of 2024 and 2025 to collect individual lengths and quantify biomass and density for each species. Productivity was estimated using two approaches: one based on life history parameters and density estimates, and the other based on lifespan and biomass estimates. Preliminary results suggest enhanced productivity for blue crabs and grass shrimp at vegetated shorelines, while white shrimp show little to no difference between shoreline types. These findings emphasize the ecological and economic value of vegetated habitats, with living shorelines restoring key processes along degraded coasts. Quantitative productivity estimates for each shoreline type can be extrapolated to the broader Chesapeake Bay and used to inform management decisions and demonstrate the value of habitat restoration.

Jessica Fergel is a second-year Ph.D. student at William & Mary's Batten School of Coastal and Marine Science. Her research areas include living shorelines, nekton communities, and wading bird habitat and behavior. Her dissertation focuses on the importance of living shorelines, a shoreline restoration technique, for organisms, such as fish, crabs, and herons. She holds a B.S. from W&M.

Danielle Recco, Marine Science

"Modeling the Impact of Derelict Crab Traps in the Chesapeake Bay "

Advisor: Dr. Andrew Scheld, Dr. Donna Bilkovic

Lost or abandoned crab traps, known as derelict gear, continue to capture and kill marine life in the Chesapeake Bay long after they are discarded—a process called “ghost fishing.” This phenomenon affects both target species such as blue crabs and non-target species like diamondback terrapins, while also reducing profits for fishers by competing with active traps for catch. This study applies an ecosystem modeling approach (Ecopath with Ecosim) to estimate how derelict crab traps influence the Bay’s food web and the economic value of major Chesapeake Bay fisheries. The model compares scenarios with and without derelict traps and evaluates management options such as large-scale trap removal and bycatch-reduction devices that prevent terrapin capture. Derelict traps are expected to reduce the biomass of key species and lower fishery profits by decreasing yield and increasing competition among gear types. By integrating ecological and economic data, this research will identify management strategies that best mitigate these effects. This is one of the first studies to incorporate derelict fishing gear into an ecosystem modeling framework, providing a tool that can be adapted to evaluate ghost-fishing impacts and management solutions in other coastal systems.

Danielle Recco is a second-year Master's student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. She is majoring in Marine Science and minoring in Marine Policy. Her research is on the impact of derelict blue crab traps on the Chesapeake Bay food web and the economics of the major Bay fisheries. She holds a B.A. in Geography and a minor in Biology from Vassar College in New York.

Aljawharah Almuhana, Computer Science

"Adaptive Mixed-Code Entanglement Distillation for Quantum Repeaters"

Advisor: Dr. Qun Li

Quantum networks transmit information using fragile quantum states that are easily damaged by noise and signal loss. To support long-distance communication, intermediate devices called quantum repeaters store and repair these states. Most existing repeater designs use only one fixed error-protection method, even though channel conditions constantly change. This research asks: Can a quantum repeater improve reliability and performance by adapting its internal error-protection strategy in real time? This research proposes an adaptive control framework in which a quantum repeater dynamically divides its memory across multiple error-protection methods instead of committing to a single one. Each method has strengths under different conditions, such as high noise or low signal success. Using simulations, we design an allocation rule that continuously adjusts how many stored quantum states are protected by each method based on real-time indicators such as connection quality, error probability, and success rate. Results show that adaptive control improves both the accuracy of quantum connections and data transmission speed compared to fixed systems. These improvements are achieved through software-based decisions without additional hardware. This work suggests that real-time resource management can make future quantum networks more reliable and efficient, helping bring large-scale quantum communication closer to practical use.

Aljawharah Almuhana is a third year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at William & Mary. Her research focuses on quantum communication networks, quantum repeaters, and optimization of entanglement distribution using dynamic programming and error-correcting codes. She holds a B.A. from Saudi Arabia, and MS degree from University of Colorado Denver.

Peyton Boggs, Computer Science

"Calypso: Fine-Grained Access Control for Zero-Trust Cloud Service Discovery"

Advisor: Dr. Stephen Herwig

Co-Authors: P. Niroula, A. Poudel

Modern systems have embraced the zero-trust philosophy of "never trust, always verify" for application security through the use of advanced access control.  However, the directory services that support the discovery and coordination of these applications remains implicitly trusted.  As a result, application names and addresses can be exposed to any other application, enabling unauthorized enumeration and undetectable tampering if the directory is compromised.  We present Calypso, a service-discovery system that brings zero-trust to cloud-based service discovery by hiding both record contents and names.  Calypso does not trust the directory's users: it stores only ciphertexts and cryptographic hashes, so that only services that have the keys to discover an application can do so.  Our design composes advanced public key encryption with an obfuscated-name matching scheme so that (i) only authorized clients learn record plaintexts and the existence of matching names, and (ii) unauthorized parties---including a fully compromised directory---cannot enumerate names or undetectably modify records.  We implement Calypso using industry standard software while preserving existing operational workflows.  Our prototype demonstrates that Calypso is deployable with modest lookup-latency overheads and negligible server resource impact, while providing authenticity, end-to-end confidentiality, tamper evidence, and name hiding not available in today's discovery systems.

Peyton Boggs is a first year Master's student in the Computer Science department at William & Mary. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from W&M, where he primarily studied software engineering. Now in graduate studies, he concentrates in cyber security and researches systems security under Professor Stephen Herwig.

Yijia Shi, Computer Science 

"Data-Flow Architectures, Ranging from Systolic Arrays and Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Arrays (CGRAs) to Large Mesh-Based AR"

Advisor: Dr. Yifan Sun

Co-Authors: B. Cui, C. Tan

Designing the next generation of powerful, energy-efficient computer chips is severely hampered by inadequate simulation tools. Engineers currently face a difficult trade-off: use tools that are accurate but extremely slow, or tools that are fast but too simplistic to be reliable. This bottleneck slows down hardware innovation. Our research addresses this gap by creating Zeonica, a new simulation platform that is both fast and accurate. Our core method is a novel framework called an Execution Intermediate Representation (E-IR), which acts as a universal blueprint for modeling diverse chip designs. This allows Zeonica to capture critical performance details with high fidelity, but at a fraction of the computational cost of traditional methods. We anticipate that Zeonica will allow engineers to test new ideas orders of magnitude faster than current accurate simulators. The ultimate implication of our work is to accelerate the development of more advanced computer hardware for fields like artificial intelligence and scientific computing, by providing a tool that enables rapid and reliable design exploration.

Yijia Shi is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at William & Mary. His research focuses on computer architecture and AI accelerator design. He earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech.

Grace Helmick, Anthropology

"Framing Sovereignty: Indigenous Diplomacy in C.M. Bell’s Portraits of Tribal Leaders, 1880s (Red Cloud Case Study)"

Advisor: Dr. Danielle Moretti-Langholtz

In June 1880, Oglala Lakota leader Red Cloud—after decades of deliberate refusal—entered the Washington, D.C. studio of renowned portrait photographer, Charles Milton Bell. Meticulously staged, the image that followed later circulated in government reports and on commercial markets—transforming him into one of the most recognizable figures of Native leadership in postwar America. Yet this image, along with eight additional portraits of tribal leaders preserved in William & Mary’s Special Collections, is far more than colonial artifact or ethnographic documentation. Taken together, they reveal the photographic studio as a space of reciprocal looking—where visibility itself became a site of recognition. This research reinterprets Bell’s studio as a frontier of diplomacy—where sovereignty was negotiated—and the portraits as political performances through which subjects brokered both visual simulations and real power. Drawing upon archival documentation, visual analysis, and theory from critical Indigenous studies, I argue in this presentation that these photographs are staged encounters in which Native leaders entered—and in subtle ways, refigured—the camera’s gaze, making visible their authority, endurance, and sovereign presence. Within this entangled field of representation, portraiture emerges as an Indigenous-state tool of diplomacy: a visual language through which leaders mediated political agreements and reasserted sovereignty amid a landscape convulsed by war, industrialization, and the remaking of a nation’s own image.

Grace Helmick is a second year M.A. student in Anthropology at William & Mary. Her research interests include Native Studies and sovereignty, photography, visual anthropology, and archival research. Her thesis examines nineteenth-century photographic portraiture as a diplomatic and political space, foregrounding Indigenous agency, performance, and visual sovereignty within U.S. governmental and institutional archives.

Patrick Hussey, Anthropology

"The Politics of Repatriation: A Tale of Two Approaches to Repatriation"

Advisor: Dr. Michelle Lelièvre

Repatriating human remains and cultural objects to Indigenous communities has been a complex process since 1990, with the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in the United States and the acceptance of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDRIP) in Canada as of 2021. Even with these actions, the process of repatriation is at the discretion of the entity that houses the remains and cultural objects. An objective of my research is to investigate whether NAGPRA and UNDRIP could be revised to facilitate reconciliation between Indigenous communities and entities like museums, universities, and other professional organizations. There may not be a one-size-fits-all solution; this research may provide more comprehensive and culturally competent directions for entities housing Indigenous human remains and cultural objects. Therefore, to (a) extract potential solutions and (b) culturally consider what Indigenous communities want, I will rely on case studies from both the United States and Canada, because one is a legislative act (NAGPRA) and the other a multilateral declaration (UNDRIP) both inform processes of repatriation and, in an attempt to provide a full enough context, it requires an analysis of both NAGPRA and UNDRIP. So far, the case studies have shown that unspecific directions for repatriation have resulted in Indigenous communities forcing the issue for reform.

Patrick Hussey is a second-year MA/Ph.D student in Anthropology at William & Mary. His research aims to investigate policy and procedural deficiencies regarding the repatriation of ancestral remains, cultural patrimony, and other significant objects, with the goal of understanding the impact of repatriation on community health. Patrick holds a B.A. from the UNH in Communication and Educational Studies.

Zoë M. Packel, History

"Moral Hydrography: Anishinaabe Power, Underwater Manidoog, and the Social Depths of Great Lakes Waterways"

Advisor: Dr. Josh Piker

During the second half of the seventeenth century, the Great Lakes was an Indigenous space in both population and character. This was a world defined by constant movement: Anishinaabe bands practiced structured seasonal mobility, following well-traveled routes to winter and summer sites each year in their pursuit of the key resources that different areas afforded. At the same time, movement throughout the lakes and rivers of the area could be highly contingent, responsive to weather or the presence of enemies. In this unstable world, the Anishinaabe relied upon carefully cultivated relationships with powerful underwater spirits, known as manidoog, for individual protection and safe mobility. Understanding Anishinaabe mobility in the context of relationships with underwater manidoog, as an articulation of Indigenous moral geography in the seventeenth century, allows for a framework that foregrounds Anishinaabe epistemologies by recognizing non-human persons as key actors. As a crucial element of Anishinaabe ecological knowledge, underwater manidoog and the relationships with both the broader environment and other Indigenous groups they engendered speak to the reciprocal obligations that structured life in the region. This presentation seeks to elucidate the dynamics of reciprocity and exchange with non-human persons that characterized water-based mobility in the Indigenous Great Lakes of the late seventeenth century, making clear that this Anishinaabe-centered world was one in which relationships facilitated movement as much as they conferred power.

Zoë Packel is a third year Ph.D. Candidate in History at William & Mary. Her research focuses on the material worlds and ecological knowledges of the Great Lakes Anishinaabe and other Indigenous peoples in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She holds a B.A. from Kenyon College. 

Andre Taylor, American Studies

"Sit-ins and Takeouts: Greensboro, the Civil Rights Movement, and Food"

Advisor: Dr. Simon Stow

Greensboro, NC is considered the epicenter for the sit-ins that spread throughout segregated lunch counters in the American south. Intended to desegregate the American south, the sit-ins—which gained national attention on February 1, 1960, when four male students at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State College sat at the lunch counter at F.W. Woolworth’s in Greensboro—could have been held in other spaces and had a similar impact. Why was the lunch counter selected as the space to launch what became a national movement and what did the lunch counter represent to the men and women who sat at them in the name of civil rights? In this project, “Sit-ins and Takeouts: Greensboro, the Civil Rights Movement, and Food,” I have conducted oral histories with individuals who were involved in the sit-ins movement in Greensboro to understand the rationale behind using the lunch counter. Examining Civil Rights Movement protests in Greensboro centered around food gives a nuanced analyzation of what Black men and women were seeking to gain in their fight for full citizenship.

Andre Taylor is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at William & Mary. His research areas include historical memory, resistance and capitalism, Southern foodways, and African American history 1877-present. His dissertation focuses on the memories of those who participated in the sit-ins and other protests centered around food, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Ailidh Wallace, Education

"Fahrenheit 2022: White Christian Nationalism and Tennessee Schools’ Queer Literature Bans"

Advisor: Dr. Amanda Simpfenderfer

Co-Authors: T. Wallace

This study examines how Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022 has been used primarily to remove books featuring queer and trans (QT) themes, especially in rural K12 districts where students already have fewer supportive resources. This project asks: (1) How do these book policies disproportionately affect QT students in rural public schools? and (2) How do these practices reflect broader cultural and political forces shaping education? Using a critical qualitative policy analysis and discourse analysis of state law, district policies, and rural Tennessee news reporting, the study is guided by the Dynamics of Power and Inequality framework—an interdisciplinary model integrating Conflict Theory, Symbolic Violence, Queer Theory, and Normative Violence—to explain how power operates across both policy structures and cultural norms. Findings show that vague language in the law allows districts to justify book removals as neutral or protective, while actually functioning to restrict QT representation. These bans have serious implications for mental health, belonging, and identity development. This research expands understanding of how contemporary political movements, such as White Christian nationalism, shape public education and reveals how book censorship acts as a form of cultural exclusion for marginalized youth.

Ailidh Wallace is a fourth year PhD candidate in the EPPL Department at William & Mary whose work sits at the intersection of education, religious violence, and equity. They use critical methodology to study how systemic inequities shape queer and trans students’ access to and success in K12 and higher education, emphasizing rural contexts and how normative and symbolic violence operate through institutions and policy.

Carolyn Zeitz, American Studies

"Manufacturing American Citizens in Public Schools"

Advisor: Dr. Michelle Lelièvre

Amid ongoing debates about what values schools should teach, it is important to examine how schools function as a site for reproducing national identity and creating citizens. Oftentimes, when examining citizenship, schools are studied through the impact of civics programs on public participation and the assimilation of foreign-born students to American values. An overlooked area of study is how schools socialize U.S.-born students into American citizens, as current literature rarely connects the socialization of students in schools with citizenship. Students are subject to a citizen-making project in schools through routine school programs and practices such as English and History classes that are not formally civics education. I will draw on existing literature on critical citizenship theory and cultural reproduction through this new perspective. I argue that school curricula work to reproduce a narrow version of ideal Americanness and national belonging in domestically born U.S. citizens. Understanding how schools manufacture American identity reveals how citizenship and national belonging continues to be defined, limited, and reproduced through education.

Carolyn Zeitz is a first year Ph.D. student in American Studies at William & Mary. Her research areas include, United States history education, resistance studies, and American mythologies. She is currently exploring the methods teachers use in U.S. history classes to enforce or resist different narratives.

*Ibrahima Medina Aaquil, Data Analytics | The Catholic University of America

"Enhancing Road Safety Through Data Analytics in Washington, DC"

Advisor: Dr. Matthew Jacobs

*Honorable Mention, GRS Visiting Student Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the Sciences

This project applies data analytics to analyze crash patterns and predict future risks in Washington, DC, a city that consistently ranks among the top five in the U.S. for traffic collisions. Despite ongoing initiatives like Vision Zero and expanded bike lanes, fatalities remain high, underscoring the need for more precise, data-driven strategies. We examine over 336,000 crash records from 2011 to 2025 in Open Data DC, combined with roadway and environmental records, using geospatial mapping, temporal analysis, and machine learning. Our research addresses four key questions: (1) Which locations are persistent high-risk hotspots? (2) How have crash trends changed over time? (3) What environmental and human factors, such as weather, speeding, or impairment, most influence severity? (4) Can future outcomes be forecasted to guide preventive measures?

By integrating hotspot detection, trend analysis, and severity prediction into one framework, we expect to produce a thorough model of DC traffic risks. Anticipated results include identification of collision clusters, seasonal and cyclical patterns, and robust forecasts of crash severity in coming years. Our findings will offer policymakers concrete evidence to target enforcement, prioritize infrastructure redesign, and conduct safety campaigns. The methodology can apply to other U.S. cities. Ultimately, the project contributes to safer streets, reduced fatalities, and improved public confidence in urban mobility.

Ibrahima Medina Aaquil is a graduate student in the M.S. Data Analytics program at The Catholic University of America. His research focuses on applied data science for public policy, including urban transportation safety, spatial analysis, and machine learning. His current work examines traffic crash severity patterns in Washington, DC using geospatial analysis and predictive modeling.

Shaheera Sayed, Public and International Affairs | Virginia Tech

"Reading Between the Lines: Large Language Models and the Politics of Language Access in Housing Policy "

Advisor: Dr. Margaret Cowell

This study examines how local housing agencies in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region; specifically Washington, D.C., Fairfax County (VA), and Montgomery County (MD) to address or overlook the language needs of Asian immigrant communities. Although Asian immigrants are among the region’s fastest-growing and most linguistically diverse populations, their needs often remain obscured in policy documents, where they are grouped into broad categories such as “Asian languages” or “other minorities.” The project asks how housing-related policies describe “language access,” and what those descriptions reveal about how immigrant communities are understood and served. To answer this question, I analyzed roughly 3,000 policy plans, local laws, meeting minutes, and public communications using a combination of close reading and large language model (LLM)–assisted text analysis; a human–AI approach that helps identify large-scale language patterns. The findings show that most housing policies equate language access with Spanish translation, leaving Asian languages mentioned only sporadically. Terms such as “barriers” and “burdens” appear far more often than strengths-based or inclusive framings. These results suggest that current policies remain compliance-oriented rather than equity-driven, highlighting the need for more intentional multilingual planning in housing governance.

Shaheera Sayed is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Planning, Governance, and Globalization at Virginia Tech. Her research interests lie at the intersection of economic and community development, including housing policy, language access, and immigrant access to public systems. She holds a B.A. from Hollins University and an M.P.A. from North Carolina State University.

Michael Sizemore, Physics

"Metrics for Measuring Quantum Advantage in Noisy Devices"

Advisor: Dr. Gregory Bentsen

Quantum computing is a model of computation where storage and measurement of information is governed by quantum mechanics. To be a useful paradigm, we must demonstrate that this model of computing can perform better than a normal computer on some test by some metric, a task known as “reaching quantum advantage”. One useful test for advantage is how efficiently a quantum computer can reconstruct probability distributions from a chaotic system via sampling (a very difficult task for classical computers). We choose the case where this chaos is generated by a set of hypothetical circuits, each composed of layers of random operations, referred to as “random circuit sampling”. We then measure the similarity of the outputs from the quantum computer and the known distribution as our metric - the “cross entropy” or XEB.  Quantum computers are suspected to converge faster to the correct results than typical computers in this task, but we are still working to understand which statistical moments of the XEB can distinguish completely between the quantum case and “spoofers" - classical algorithms that can outperform current quantum machines - as well as if different sources of noise can be differentiated. This work presents a study thereof, showing the impacts of different noise profiles on key statistics in this process and examining whether those noise channels are distinguishable by using these statistics. We develop a rigorous mathematical theory to explain these results, which can be used for noise and classical spoofer comparison in future work.

Michael Sizemore is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the Physics Department at William & Mary. His research focus is theoretical quantum information science, particularly the fields of random circuits and quantum advantage. His current area of study is developing the theory of Brownian random circuits as a tool for diagnosing and controlling the impacts of noise on quantum advantage measures for random circuit sampling.

Shelby Arrigo, Physics

"Shining a Light on Particle Identification"

Advisor: Dr. Justin Stevens

Particle physics can seem like magic. We smash “things” together and observe particles that exist for less than the time it takes you to blink an eye. Due to technological advances in the last hundred years we have seen particle physics experiments reach higher collision energies and precision in the detection of the particles produced in those collisions. In particular, particle identification (PID) detectors are used to identify the different species of charged particles observed in these collisions. One type of detector for particle identification is called the Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov radiation (DIRC). DIRCs utilize a peculiar phenomenon called Cherenkov radiation in which particles travel faster than the speed of light (under specific circumstances) in a medium. The medium the DIRC uses is a lab-made crystal which was first used in the BaBar experiment at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Now, the DIRC bars are being prepared for the Electron Ion Collider to be used in the ePIC experiment at Brookhaven National Lab in New York. My work on the DIRC has thus far centered on ensuring the crystal bars meet the design specifications for the ePIC experiment. I have measured the amount of light lost through individual bars when a laser beam is sent through it at a specific angle to investigate the quality of the bars. This talk will include a description of experiments that have utilized DIRCs to further improve the cutting edge of PID over the past 30 years, and my impact for the next chapter of the DIRC’s evolution.

Shelby Arrigo is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the Physics Department at William & Mary. Her research area is experimental hadronic physics.  Her current research projects involve quality assurance of crystal radiator bars and data analysis from an experiment at Jefferson Lab probing the structure of the proton. She holds a B.S. from FSU and a M.S. from William & Mary.

Nicholas Chambers, Physics

"Mapping the Spectrum of Hadrons by Solving a Three-Body Problem"

Advisor: Dr. Andrew Jackura

Co-Authors: Raúl Briceño

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the accepted theory governing the strong nuclear force, which binds together the diverse collection of hadrons we observe in particle colliders. Protons and neutrons are two familiar examples of the hundreds of hadrons that have been discovered, but remarkably few of these particles have been calculated to emerge from QCD. If QCD is indeed the proper theory of nuclear interactions, its predictions should agree with what we observe experimentally. This talk discusses our most rigorous method of calculating physical properties of hadrons using QCD. Using supercomputers at Jefferson Lab, we apply a technique known as lattice QCD to simulate nuclear reactions in a finite box, then use this data to construct scattering amplitudes -- quantum-mechanical functions that describe collisions of hadrons. In the past twenty years, this methodology has been immensely successful at calculating hadrons that appear in collisions of two particles. However, most hadrons are heavy enough that they can decay into three or more particles, so the next frontier of this method is to perform the same calculations on reactions of three particles. I will present recent progress in constructing scattering amplitudes of three particles -- including observable quantities that exhibit the rich symmetries of three-body nuclear interactions. 

Nicholas Chambers is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics at William & Mary. His research focuses on the calculation of properties of hadrons from quantum chromodynamics. He is currently developing methods to analyze three-hadron interactions from a numerical technique known as lattice quantum chromodynamics.

Derek Holmberg, Physics

"A New Spin on Physics: Probing the Proton's Spin Structure with Polarized Scattering"

Advisor: Dr. Todd Averett

The proton continues to puzzle physicists with the details of its inner workings. Even though the proton is composed of a swirling mess of quarks and gluons darting around at near the speed of light, the proton has a fixed value of ½ for a fundamental property of all particles: spin. All particles have an intrinsic angular momentum called spin, making them act like tiny spinning tops. However, what fraction of this spin comes from the quarks and gluons themselves? The quark spin contribution is encoded within the so-called spin structure functions, g1 and g2, as well as the so-called virtual photon asymmetries, A1 and A2. The goal of my research is to find A1 and g1 of the proton through inelastic scattering of polarized electrons off polarized protons in the CLAS12 detector at Hall B in Jefferson Lab. I present preliminary values of A1 as it compares to world data, the corrections to the data required to calculate g1, as well as the systematic corrections that still need to be applied to finalize the analysis. This research will hopefully put a new spin on how we understand the structure of nucleons like the proton!

Derek Holmberg is a sixth year Ph.D. candidate in the Physics department at William & Mary. His primary area of research is experimental nuclear physics with the CLAS Collaboration at Jefferson Lab in Newport News. His dissertation topic is the structure of the proton, which is probed using a polarized electron beam from the CEBAF accelerator incident on a frozen ammonia target in Hall B in Jefferson Lab.

Benjamin Spaude, Physics

"Studying the Charge Distribution of the Proton"

Advisor: Dr. Todd Averett

The proton is a particle which exists inside the nucleus of every atom. It was once thought to be a fundamental particle, meaning there was no substructure to it. As it turns out, the proton is not a fundamental particle and is made up of quarks and gluons, having two "up" quarks and one "down" quark. As a result of this substructure, the proton can have different distributions of charge, magnetization, spin, and momentum. All of these are things we can measure, allowing us to better understand the proton. Extracting GpE, the electric form factor of the proton, we can use a fourier transform to get the non-relativistic charge distribution inside the proton. At Jefferson Lab, a series of experiments scattering electrons off protons has been conducted to measure the electric and magnetic form-factors of the proton. The most recent one, GEP-V, aims to measure the electromagnetic form factor ratio of the proton, GpE/GpM up to a momentum transfer squared, Q2 , of 11.1 GeV2. Q2 can be thought of as the energy and momentum the electron transfers to the proton. Larger values mean the interaction probes smaller distances, allowing us to see smaller details in the proton. On the other hand, smaller Q2 values mean we are just scratching the surface of the proton. In this talk, I will explain the experimental setup and how we will measure GpE/GpM.

Benjamin Spaude is a third year PH.D. candidate in the Physics Department at William & Mary. His research is in experimental nuclear physics, where he aims to understand the structure of the proton. His dissertation uses high-energy electron scattering experiments to investigate how the proton's electric and magnetic properties arise, contributing to our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter. 

Jessica Brabble, History

"Farming for Health: Agriculture and Eugenics in North Carolina's 4-H Clubs, 1920-1965"

Advisor: Dr. Melvin P. Ely

Co-Authors:

On July 23, 1947, the North Carolina newspaper The Robesonian reported an odd wedding scene. Peggy Lawson, dressed in a “becoming white evening gown” walked down the aisle; Billy Sessoms awaited her in front of a crowd of onlookers.  The couple joined in as the 23rd Psalm was read aloud, followed by group singing and a poem reading. The ceremony closed with the couple joining hands and the audience singing “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” Peggy and Billy were officially joined as one—not in legal marriage, as one might suspect, but as crowned royalty of the Robeson County 4-H Health Contest. Like many other rural youth in the twentieth century, Peggy and Billy participated in their local 4-H chapter to learn how they could become better stewards of their environment, and by extension, their health. This program not only taught them how to become better farmers and homemakers, but also how to be better and healthier citizens. Their faux marriage ceremony was meant to exemplify to other young people what an “ideal” couple looked like—and implied that these were the kinds of couples that should be reproducing for the good of the next generation. This paper argues that, while it may not have been the direct goal of 4-H programs to promote eugenics to the South’s rural youth, they nonetheless utilized eugenics rhetoric when organizing and judging health contests in North Carolina. This paper seeks to understand how these seemingly disparate programs became intertwined. 

Jessica Brabble is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at William & Mary. Her dissertation examines connections between agriculture and eugenics in the U.S. South in the twentieth century. 

Dustin Hyder, American Studies

"God-Given: The Neoliberal Faith of Hobby Lobby and the Green Family"

Advisor: Dr. Simon Stow

This presentation examines the intersection of evangelical Christianity and neoliberalism through a case study of David Green, founder of Hobby Lobby, and his family’s religious and business practices. By analyzing their writings, philanthropic endeavors, and the founding of the Museum of the Bible, this project argues that the Greens exemplify a distinctly neoliberal faith—one that merges the free market with divine providence. Drawing on research from scholars Candida Moss and Joel Baden, as well as the works of David Harvey, Bruce Waller, and scholars of the Prosperity Gospel, this study demonstrates how neoliberal ideals such as individualism, deregulation, and market rule have been internalized within the Green family’s evangelical faith. Through this synthesis, economic success for them has become both evidence and expression of divine favor. This analysis reveals how neoliberalism can reshape evangelical understandings of faith, justice, and moral responsibility, producing a theology that sanctifies market outcomes and legitimizes inequality. Ultimately, this presentation argues that understanding the Greens’ brand of evangelicalism as neoliberal exposes the broader entanglement of religion, capitalism, and cultural power in the modern United States.

Dustin Hyder is a second year M.A./Ph.D. student in American Studies at William & Mary. His research interests include evangelical Christianity, capitalism, neoliberalism, and 20th century American history and culture. He holds a B.A. in American Studies and English from Penn State, and he recently completed the M.A. portion of his degree program at William & Mary.

*Xinyi Xu, History

"Wearing Grief: Mourning Dress and the Transformation of Widowhood in the Civil War South"

Advisor: Dr. Kathrin Levitan

*Honorable Mention, GRS Award for Excellence in Scholarship -- College of Arts & Sciences

This study investigates how mourning dress functioned as a material and visual language through which elite white Southern women navigated grief, gender, and political identity during the American Civil War. Far from being a private emblem of sorrow, mourning attire became a public and politicized performance that redefined widowhood in a society overwhelmed by death. Drawing on diaries, letters, periodicals, fashion manuals, and surviving garments, the project traces how mourning dress reflected Victorian sentimental culture yet adapted to the unique pressures of war—mass casualties, material scarcity, and shifting gender roles. The analysis demonstrates that elite women used mourning attire to assert emotional authority and civic presence, transforming bereavement into a visible form of loyalty to the Confederate cause. At the same time, this visibility exposed them to moral surveillance and ideological discipline, as garments were interpreted as statements of patriotism or betrayal. Situating mourning dress within broader debates about continuity and change in Civil War death culture, the study argues that gender was central to shaping emotional expression in wartime. Ultimately, it shows how mourning attire, once a vehicle of female agency and solidarity, was appropriated into the rituals of Confederate commemoration and postwar restraint, illuminating the complex interplay of emotion, politics, and material culture in a collapsing society.

Xinyi Xu is a second year Ph.D. student in History Department at William & Mary. She plans to study cultures of death and mourning in Britain from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, placing British death culture within a global context of emotions. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from Renmin University of China.

Mica Miralles Bianconi, History

"Partners in Trade: Anglo-Iberian Merchants in Rio de la Plata, 1790- 1805"

Advisor: Dr. Fabricio Prado

Amid inter-imperial rivalries and war between the Spanish and British Empires, in January 1797, a ship under a British flag entered the port of Montevideo, in Rio de la Plata, the realm of the Spanish Empire's southernmost viceroyalty and the main slaving port complex of the area. The cargo of The Matty included an assorted selection of low-value trinkets and 198 enslaved people from the coast of Guinea. The ship was consigned to Joseph Jackson Maló, a British merchant residing in Buenos Aires, and Francisco Antonio Maciel, one of the most prominent local slave traders in Montevideo.  Although The Matty was one of the last British arrivals, and according to a Royal decree of 1796, British ships were not allowed to conduct business in the region, British captains and merchants remained in the area, introducing copious amounts of manufactured goods and transporting enslaved people. While forbidden by Spanish regulations, Anglo merchants used the Spanish policy of commerce with neutrals as a cover to their trade in manufactured goods and other mechanisms to access Rio de la Plata's large markets, high-quality hides and other cattle-derived products, and, most importantly, silver – vital for the British Empire's war machine. By analyzing the case of The Matty alongside the influx of other foreign vessels from 1790 to 1805, this chapter explores the pervasiveness of entanglement among Iberian, British, and American subjects in the Rio de la Plata area during a period of warfare and imperial reforms.  

Mica Miralles Bianconi is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in History at William & Mary. Her research includes Atlantic and Latin American history, as well asthe Age of Revolutions. Her dissertation addresses Anglo-Iberian entanglement in the South Atlantic during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She holds a B.A from Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Argentina), an M.A. in History from Villanova University, and W&M. 

Jennifer Motter, History

"Salt Diplomacy: The Use of a Commodity in the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations"

Advisor: Dr. Nicholas Popper 

In the 16th century, the Northern Netherlands had a high yearly demand for salt to support its fishing industries, Baltic trade, and domestic consumption. The bulk of this commodity came from the Iberian Peninsula as the cold and wet Netherlandish environment was ill-suited for salt formation. Thus when the Dutch Revolt broke out in the 1560s as a bid for independence from Spain, the latter decided to strike the former economically by cutting off its access to Iberian salt. For the next eight decades, with a brief respite from 1609–1621, Spanish rulers employed legal policies and military tactics to prevent the Dutch from gaining access to new sources of the commodity across the Atlantic, effectively creating a western "salt blockade." Yet at the end of the appropriately named Eighty Years’ War, when officials from the Dutch Republic and Spain sat down to outline conditions for peace, the two sides agreed on terms for Dutch access to and purchase of Iberian salt. Furthermore, when Spain tried to suppress a Portuguese rebellion in the following decade, they turned to their former enemies, offering access to Atlantic salt in exchange for their aid. This paper uses diplomatic correspondences and peace treaties signed between the Dutch Republic and Spain to demonstrate how salt transitioned from a point of political conflict to one of diplomatic cooperation.

Jennifer Motter is a seventh year Ph.D. candidate in History at William & Mary. Her research centers on the early modern Dutch Atlantic and the relation of its salt trade to the Eighty Years' War. She holds a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.A. from William & Mary.

Sydney Sweat-Montoya, History 

"'Furtive, Vicious, and Acquired Through Piracy:' Lumber and Piracy in the Early Modern Western-Circum Caribbean"

Advisor: Dr. Julia Gaffield

This paper establishes ties between the Yucatán, the Gulf of Honduras, and Jamaica that were based on the logwood trade. Loggers and merchants from across the Atlantic seeking to purchase lumber were consistently captured by Spanish authorities. The ensuing depositions highlight early logging practices and show how logwood was a fundamental part of raiding and contraband networks. By connecting logwood, Spanish attempts to mitigate illicit trade, and raiding practices in the broader circum-Caribbean I show the prevalence of seasonal logging practices for maritime groups and that lumber was the lynchpin between Jamaica, the Yucatán, and the Gulf of Honduras in the late seventeenth century. While historiography established the role of illicit trade and raiding in an entangled Caribbean, it is yet to be shown how Gulf of Honduras fits into the broader Caribbean and Atlantic World. The Gulf of Honduras operated as the center of the lumber trade and as a place of reprieve for those escaping British and Spanish authorities. By drawing on depositions, travel logs, and correspondence regarding piracy trials in Jamaica, I argue that the lumber trade itself was a primary node that organized broader maritime networks. Logwood drew diverse groups into the Gulf of Honduras and resulted in consistent interactions based on illicit trade, coerced labor, and coastal raiding. By moving past a commodity history of lumber, this project establishes the environmental and economic connections of the lumber trade to show the Atlantic implications of what is often considered an imperial backwater.

Sydney is a fifth year PhD candidate in the history dept. at William & Mary. Her work explores the relationship between loggers in the Bay of Honduras and on the Mosquito Coast to the broader Caribbean through the production and export of mahogany and logwood in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

Claire Aminuddin, Biology

"From Flies to Humans: Discovering Stem Cell Regulation in Cancer and Fertility"

Advisor: Dr. Matthew Wawersik

Stem cells are critical for tissue homeostasis and organ function, maintaining the balance between stem cell self-renewal and differentiation into specific cell types. Disruption of this balance can contribute to tumorigenesis and cancer. The Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) testis provides a model for studying stem cell regulation. The fly testis has two stem cell populations: germline stem cells (GSCs), which generate sperm, and somatic cyst stem cells (CySCs), which support and signal cues for sperm differentiation. Previous work from the Wawersik lab identified the novel gene, Chigno (CG11180), as a regulator of somatic CySC maintenance and differentiation. Somatic inhibition of Chigno leads to over-proliferation of stem cells, undifferentiated germ cells, and reduced fertility. Building on these findings, the current study further characterizes the function of Chigno in the CySC and GSC lineages. Somatic-specific RNAi inhibition of Chigno results in CySC expansion and reduced cyst cell differentiation. Germline-specific RNAi inhibition of Chigno results in reduced numbers of GSCs and spermatogonia. This data suggests that Chigno normally functions to inhibit CySC self-renewal while promoting GSC survival and/or differentiation. Given that Chigno shares a common ancestor with the human gene PinX1, an RNA-binding protein expressed in reproductive tissues, these results have broader implications for understanding human reproductive disorders and cancer. Insights into Chigno function could reveal conserved mechanisms of stem regulation and its link to human diseases. 

Claire Aminuddin is a second year M.S. candidate in the Biology Department at William & Mary. Her research areas include molecular and cellular biology, developmental genetics, and stem cell regulation. Her thesis research involves characterizing a novel gene in fruit fly testes that regulates stem cell maintenance, cancer, and fertility. This gene has a related human gene with implications for human disease. 

Nirvanjyoti Sharma Shimul, Biology

"Building Order from Chaos — Constructing a Cytoskeletal Organelle"

Advisor: Dr. Diane Shakes

Co-Authors: B.T. Andrew, G.E. Ashley, J.P Diaz, J.R. Matthew, S.D.L.V. Mirelles

Specialized cells, including sperm cells, employ diverse regulatory strategies to control their cytoskeleton. Cytoskeleton is composed of intercellular protein fibers and regulatory proteins that provide cellular structure and movement. The crawling movement of nematode sperm is driven by a unique cytoskeletal protein – Major Sperm Protein (MSP). In developing spermatocytes, MSP is sequestered as bundled fibers called Fibrous Bodies (FB) on the cytosolic face of the membranous organelles (MOs). During an asymmetric cell division, MSP loaded FB-MO complexes effectively segregate into sperm. Formation of FB-MO complexes involves accessory proteins. To date, the role of these accessory proteins in FB formation remains unclear. Our study shows a SPE-55 kinase, a phosphate group adding enzyme, essential for FB-MO complex formation. In the absence of SPE-55 protein, MSP fails to form FBs and remains diffusely cytosolic. Without forming FBs, minimal MSP segregates to sperm, impairing sperm motility and causing infertility. Our study reveals that MOs are the earliest of FB-MO components appearing before MSP is detectable in the cytosol as diffuse form. To build the ordered FB-MO structure, SPE-55 first localizes on the cytosolic side of the MOs to recruit an intrinsically unstructured protein, SPE-18. Both SPE-55 and SPE-18 are positioned at the FB-MO interface for transforming MSP into FBs. Interestingly, SPE-55 initiates the ordered packaging of MSP into FB-MO complexes by localizing an intrinsically disordered protein, SPE-18. Our study demonstrates an essential interplay between two proteins in formation of ordered cytoskeletal structures. This study also provides further insights into the related conserved pathways in humans, dysregulation of which could lead to cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Nirvanjyoti Sharma Shimul is a second year biology master's student working on the cool male reproductive organ of worms that will reveal more about human fertility. 

Keegan Sweeney, Biology

"The SUMO Balancing Act: Insights into Cellular Robustness of the Yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus"

Advisor: Dr. Oliver Kerscher

Co-Authors: S. Lee

SUMO is a conserved post-translational modifier protein that plays an essential role in managing cell division, DNA repair, and stress tolerance. SUMO also helps prevent the aggregation of cellular proteins and regulates their synthesis, interactions, and degradation. Therefore, it is not entirely surprising that cancer cells co-opt SUMO function to enhance cellular robustness. Indeed, altered SUMO dynamics are a hallmark of breast and prostate cancer cells. A SUMO protease involved in regulating SUMO removal, SENP6, has been shown to increase cancer metastasis and resistance to cancer treatment. To investigate the function of SUMO proteases in cancer-related processes, we study the stress-tolerant yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus (Km) (Hutson et al., 2025). Using a CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing approach, we created truncation mutants of the SENP6 ortholog Ulp2 in Km cells and tested their stress tolerance in combination with mutants of other genes that affect SUMO levels, especially the conserved SUMO ligase Siz1. The results of our analysis indicate that Ulp2 and Siz1 interaction regulates the tolerance of Km to proteotoxic stress as well as DNA damage.  Additionally, our results highlight the genetic instability of some ulp2 mutants. Overall, our study is consistent with the observation that SUMO dynamics contribute to the tolerance of Km exposed to proteotoxic and genotoxic stress. It also suggests that stress-tolerant K. marxianus strains could be useful for better understanding how SUMO dynamics affect cellular robustness in cancer.

Keegan Sweeney is a second-year Master's student in Biology at William & Mary. His research areas focus on protein modification and stress tolerance within the cell. His work aims to understand how cells use a small protein, SUMO, in response to heat stress. This research is foundational in understanding the mechanisms of cancer cell resilience and treatment tolerance.

Abigail Croft, Biology

"Anthropogenic Effects on Soil Microbiomes in Irrigated Farming Systems"

Advisor: Dr. Josh Puzey

Co-Authors: H. Dalgleish

The plant-microbe relationship underlies ecosystem functionality and agricultural crop productivity. Environmental changes, such as the introduction of mulch, can drive shifts in microbial dynamics. This study investigates how cultivation practices, organic traditional mulch, polyethylene mulch, short-term fallow (1–4 years), and long-term abandonment (~50 years) fields, along with environmental conditions, influence soil and leaf microbiomes in taro (Colocasia esculenta) irrigated pondfields on Rurutu Island, French Polynesia. The soil and leaf samples will be analyzed for nutrient profiling and microbial community composition through metagenomic sequencing. Results indicate reduced microbial diversity in long-abandoned fields compared to mulched fields. While community composition differed between plastic-mulched and fallow soils, these changes were characterized by shifts in relative abundances rather than complete taxonomic turnover. Although soil nutrients varied between treatments, they do not significantly contribute to microbial community structure. These findings suggest that cultivation practices, particularly the use of plastic versus organic mulching, drive subtle shifts in soil microbial community composition and nutrient makeup. This study provides new insight into how human management shapes soil microbiomes in irrigated agroecosystems.

Abigail Croft is a second-year master's student in the Biology department at William & Mary. Her research areas include microbial ecology and agroecosystems. Their thesis addresses cultivation methods and soil microbiomes of irrigated farming systems. She holds a B.A. in Field Ecology from Ohio University. 

Cyrus Hulen, Anthropology

"Agriculture Behind the Dryline: An Archaeological Examination of Paleoclimatic Impacts on the Abandonment of an Island"

Advisor: Dr. Jenny Kahn

Malden Island sits in the Central Line Islands just south of the equator and within an area of very low annual rainfall. At the time of its discovery by European explorers, the island had already been abandoned by the indigenous population. The question of why Malden and other atolls near the equator were abandoned pre-contact has never been sufficiently addressed. I report on yam and sweet potato fields on Malden identified through satellite imagery and computer modeling. This is coupled with cultural discussions of agriculture and reconstruction of historic climate conditions to highlight the significance of aridification in the abandonment of the island. I use this analysis to argue for the importance of studying underrepresented settings, like Malden, as critical repositories of information in developing strategies of sustainability in a modern Pacific threatened by increasingly limited access to freshwater resources.

Cyrus Hulen is a first year MA/PhD student in the Anthropology Department as William & Mary. His research is focused on geospatial and archaeological analysis of agricultural practice in East Polynesia. His current projects include modeling taro cultivation on Rurutu, French Polynesia, and modeling rain-fed agriculture in the Line Islands.

*Moses Mathew, Anthropology 

"Carbon Markets and Climate Change: Scientific Controversies and Role of Traditional Communities in Sustainable Development"

Advisor: Dr. Neil Norman

Co-Authors: Alice Abiodun

*Carl J. Strikwerda Award for Excellence in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences -- College of Arts & Sciences

In Cross River State, southern Nigeria, indigenous and traditional communities' ways of life and cultural heritage have faced serious threats due to climate change. Despite contributing minimally to carbon emissions, these traditional communities suffer from environmental depredation through deforestation, wildfires, and climate-related disruptions. As the global climate crisis accelerates, carbon market systems have emerged over time at the center of international strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions under global climate policy frameworks (e.g., Article 6 of the Paris Agreement). These frameworks have adopted the carbon credit system as a global solution. This paper examines the intricate components of the carbon credit system and its impact on climate  change and traditional communities in Cross River State. Through the use of published and  unpublished documentary resources, as well as major scientific debates, the application of the carbon credit system in the region has been appraised, while also shedding light on the relevance of traditional knowledge and the genuine participation of indigenous communities in global climate policies.

Moses Mathew is a first-year PhD student in Anthropology at William & Mary. His research focuses on historical archaeology, indigenous technologies, trade networks, migration, and climate change in West Africa. He is currently studying indigenous glass bead production in precolonial Ile-Ife society, Nigeria. He holds a B.A. from Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria and an M.A. from the Federal University of Para, Brazil.

Kyle Joseph Aspen-Tso, American Studies

"The Ink Bleeds Through: Paper Identities, Documentation, Erasure, and Reclamation in U.S. Slavery and Korean Adoption"

Advisor: Dr. Francesca Sawaya

In March of 2025, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Korea published its findings on human rights violations occurring within the South Korean adoption process involving 367 adoptees between the years 1964 and 1999. Their research discovered that numerous adoptees’ files were tampered with, rewritten, or falsified in order to expedite the process of adoption in return for state profit in a postwar economy. Upon hearing the news, many of the 141,778 South Koreans adopted between 1955 to 1999 anxiously turned to their trusted adoption papers with newfound perspective: could their records have been falsified? This paper examines how legal documents, such as bills of sale, birth records, and adoption records, act as both sites of erasure and reclamation of personal identity in the afterlives of forced migrants, such as those under U.S. slavery and post-Korean War adoption. While adoption is by no means a form of enslavement, I propose that a comparative archival and narrative analysis, drawing on two sets of press releases, legal records, and first-person narratives, one from postwar South Korea and one from U.S. enslavement context, demonstrates a similar unearthing and how obtaining ownership of these documents provides new pathways for understanding afterlives in forced movement accounts, even in drastically different situations. In doing so, the findings promote the advancing creation of a shared language for adoptees to engage in collective self-definition and identity construction. 

Kyle Aspen-Tso is a first year MA/PhD in American Studies at William & Mary. A former high school English teacher, his research areas include culture acquisition, adoptee studies, and Black/African American culture studies. Using frameworks of capitalism and monetary value, he examines how South Korean adoptees navigate identity.

Margaret Perry, American Studies

"'No Longer a Legal Subject': Disability, Exclusion, and the 1830 'Idiot Act'"

Advisor: Dr. Hannah Rosen

Idiocy, a historical psychiatric category commonly glossed as cognitive disability, has received significant attention within recent studies of American eugenics. Scholars have traced how 'idiots' were segregated into institutions and later recommended for sterilization in the early twentieth century. However, a century before this push to institutionalize the 'idiot', Virginia had first legislated the opposite: their exclusion from all existing psychiatric facilities. This paper explores the 1830 ‘Idiot Act', a law banning 'idiots' from Virginia’s lunatic asylums. Drawing from primary sources at state and local levels, I argue that state legislators mobilized a category without clear diagnostic boundaries to create a legal mechanism by which asylum administrators could exclude patients on a more discretionary basis. I locate the foundation of this law in an 1828 case brought by the Western Asylum board of directors, investigating the board’s legal argument for delegating the care of 'idiots' to the counties. I then trace those patients who were released from Virginian lunatic asylums for idiocy after the law was passed, arguing that both asylums implemented distinct and uneven protocols to determine whether a patient would be removed for idiocy or rejected outright. Finally, I discuss how the law later expanded to also exclude those deemed ‘harmless and incurable’ - a decision that presaged both the construction of specialized idiot asylums in the early twentieth century as well as growing unease towards public support for those with mental disabilities.

Margaret Perry is pursuing a master's degree in American Studies at William & Mary. Her research interests include history of psychiatry, disability studies, and social geography. Her current work synthesizes early-nineteenth-century archival records from Virginia's state mental hospitals in order to investigate the dynamics of psychiatric patienthood within one of the oldest multi-hospital systems in the United States. 

Leah Stein, Anthropology

"The Damascus Affair of 1840: American Jewish Responses to the Persecution of Syrian Jewry"

Advisor: Dr. Audrey Horning

In February of 1840, a monk and his servant went missing in Damascus. The local Jewish community was subsequently blamed, and rumors spread that accused its members of murdering the two in a ritual sacrifice and using their blood to make matzah. Over a dozen Jews were arrested, tortured into false confession (in four cases fatally), and jailed awaiting execution. This event—the Damascus Affair—was reported on widely and provoked outrage across the global Jewish diaspora. As British and French Jewish leaders went to Istanbul to appeal to the Ottoman Sultan, American Jews organized protests, held committee meetings, and petitioned the US government to help their brethren in the east. After international intervention and public pressure, the surviving arrestees were eventually released. In the wake of these events, Virginia’s Jewish community, under the aegis of the Committee of the Israelites of Virginia, wrote a letter to President Martin Van Buren to thank him for his public support of the Jews of Damascus. This study will foreground the committee’s letter as a window into this particular historical moment, shedding light on the solidarity, the diasporic bridge, forged between American and Syrian Jews during this period. Supplemented by the extensive newspaper coverage of the Damascus Affair, this study will examine the concerns, interrelations, and advocacy of mid-19th century American Jewry, amidst their efforts to raise awareness for the plight of Syrian Jews and during a brief historical moment in which these efforts succeeded in gaining government attention and action.

Leah Stein is a third year Ph.D. student in Anthropology at William & Mary. Her research area is the historical archaeology of the Jewish diaspora, focusing specifically on Sephardic and Mizrahi diasporic experiences and material cultures. She is currently exploring the experience of Sephardic communities in the Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean. She holds a B.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Oxford.

Alyssa Mountain, American Studies

"Learning Through Transitions: A Closer Look at the St Andrews William & Mary Joint Degree Programme"

Advisor: Dr. Michelle Lelièvre

This paper provides a closer investigation into higher education through an ethnographic examination of the St Andrews William & Mary Joint Degree Programme. This is a unique collegiate program that offers students from around the world the opportunity to live, study, and fully integrate into two different university campuses over the course of four years: the University of St Andrews in Scotland and William & Mary in the United States. The students enrolled in this program receive two degrees, one from each institution, and are purportedly able to immerse themselves in two distinct educational, cultural, and social contexts over the course of two years at each institution. In this research, I explore the social dynamics of learning on these college campuses along with the ways people orient and navigate their way through the unique circumstances of both campuses and countries. By employing ethnographic interviews along with elements of photo elicitation and photovoice, I examine the ways in which the students of the Joint Degree Programme learn—whether that be socially, academically, culturally, or otherwise. I also interrogate the constant movement and periods of transitions the students must undergo in order to understand how this movement impacts their college experience. Finally, in analyzing the photographs taken by the Programme students with Programme students, I illustrate the ways these students produce and circulate knowledge among themselves that occurs as a result of their constant movement between and integration into two completely distinct institutions.

Alyssa Mountain is a second year PhD student in American Studies at William & Mary. Her research areas include university studies, social theories of learning, and history of knowledge. She is currently exploring the role of movement and mobility in the process of learning.

Audra Nikolajski, Public Policy 

"Education's Vaccine: High Dosage Tutoring's Impact on K-12 Learning Loss"

Following the widespread school closures of the COVID-19 pandemic, students returned to school with new behaviors, shortened attention-spans, and, most concerningly, extreme knowledge deficits. Now, educators, administrators, and policymakers are working to address the nationwide learning loss. In the 2021 Virginia assessment, math Standard of Learning (SOL) pass rates decreased by 28% in grades 3-8 and reading pass rates decreased by 9%. To address this, many have proposed High Dosage Tutoring (HDT) programs, which pair a tutor with a student for an individualized session during or immediately after the school day. In this study we investigate whether HDT programs are associated with improving SOL pass rates. Using SOL data from six Northern Virginia counties from 2015 to 2024, we apply a difference-in-difference regression design comparing outcomes in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, both of which implemented HDT, with neighboring counties that did not. Our results suggest that schools in counties with HDT programs see higher SOL pass rates comparatively, particularly among upper elementary and middle school students. We also find that targeting HDT to subjects with the lowest pass rates, like math, returns a greater benefit. As VA counties start to adopt new strategies for improving pass rates, targeted HDT could be an effective way to help students restore grade-level proficiency and obtain subject mastery.  

Audra Nikolajski is a second year Master of Public Policy student at William & Mary. She is dedicated to the quality and equality of education for all students everywhere and maintains a special dedication to ensuring storytelling abilities are nurtured in classrooms and communities. Audra is an academic program developer and tutor, and her research looks at K-12 educational program and policy impacts. 

Syed R. Rizvi, Computer Science | Old Dominion University

"Dynamic Placement of Mobile Wi-Fi Buses Using Demand-Aware Optimization for Rural Connectivity"

Advisor: Dr. Stephen Olariu

In many rural communities, students lose internet access once they leave school, limiting their ability to complete homework, attend online classes, or access digital learning resources. To bridge this gap, we propose an intelligent system that uses school buses as mobile Wi-Fi hubs, strategically positioned to provide internet access where it is most needed. The core algorithm predicts the best placement and movement of these Wi-Fi buses based on student travel routes, population density, and demand patterns collected from daily activity data. Using machine learning and optimization, the system identifies underserved areas and relocates buses dynamically to maximize coverage while minimizing travel distance and fuel cost. The algorithm continuously learns from usage feedback—improving its decisions each day as it adapts to changes in student schedules, weather, and community events. Unlike static internet points, these mobile hubs follow demand, ensuring that every student has a fair opportunity to connect and learn. By combining predictive analytics, real-time optimization, and adaptive mobility control, the proposed framework transforms school transportation into a smart connectivity network, offering an affordable and scalable solution to the digital divide in rural education.

Syed Rizvi is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Old Dominion University. He is a senior NASA contractor with over 24 years of experience at NASA Langley Research Center, where he serves as a lead software architect supporting the Atmospheric Science Data Center. His research interests include data science, satellite data systems, artificial intelligence, wireless networks, and environmental applications.

Mariah Garneau, Biology

"Nectar Acidity: How Nectar pH Affects Pollinia Germination Within Common Milkweed"

Advisor: Dr. Harmony Dalgleish

Milkweed undergoes successful pollination when pollinia, or packets of pollen, are deposited into a nectar containing chamber within the flower. In addition to playing a vital role in pollination, this nectar is also home to a variety of microbes. While many are commensals, several isolates have been found to detrimentally impact pollinia germination. One of these detrimental microbes, Lactococcus lactis is known to produce lactic acid, which could potentially affect the pH of nectar. Research conducted at Blandy Experimental Farms in Boyce, VA, sought to answer the question: how does nectar pH affect germination vigor? Milkweed flowers were collected and dissected for pollinia, to be used for pollinia germination assays. Each pollinium was placed into a droplet of nectar; each droplet had a different pH, ranging from 3.5 to 8.5. Pollinium germination vigor was computed as a composite z-score based on, whether germination had occurred, the number of pollen tubes grown, and the length of the longest tube. Results are currently still being analyzed, however, it is hypothesized that lower nectar pH will have a more detrimental effect on pollinia germination. The results from this experiment will give insight into how lactic acid production, which could be an antimicrobial defense against other microbes in order to protect resources, also impacts plant reproductive success. The results will also provide background for thesis research on nectar microbial competition.

Mariah Garneau is a first year M.S. candidate in Biology at William and Mary. Her research topics focus on exploring the intersection between microbiology and plant ecology. She is currently studying the reproductive microbiome of common milkweed with a focus on detrimental microbes and how they negatively impact pollen germination. 

Aidan Lucas, Applied Science

"Deeply Hierarchical Ceramics from Harvested Diatom Algae Frustules"

Advisor: Dr. Hannes Schniepp

Co-Authors: Katharine McEvoy, Ryan Yoder, Brian Janicki, Jonah Oxman

Ceramic production (including glass and cement) is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions. This is because high temperatures and pressures are often required for the manufacturing of many ceramics or their starting materials. Here we present ceramics that can be made at near ambient conditions from the glass shells (also known as frustules) of photosynthetic microorganisms called diatoms using a variety of manufacturing techniques. Two species called Thalassiosira pseudonana (a common model diatom) and Didymosphenia geminata (an invasive species known as rock snot) were harvested, their shells purified at gram scales, and linked together to make bulk materials consisting of frustules from a single species. Our processing techniques left the intricate natural microstructure of the frustules intact, leading to lightweight materials less dense than water. These materials also featured mechanical properties comparable to Portland cement, and outstanding thermal properties, with thermal stabilities up to 600–700 °C and excellent thermal resistance (≈16 K·m/W). Casting and 3D-printing were used to make objects with structural features spanning six orders of magnitude from 22 nm to 2.2 cm, and with eight levels of structural organization; an achievement that cannot be matched by known modern manufacturing techniques. As a result, we believe that we have developed a sustainable alternative to other ceramics in energy, separation science, high-temperature materials, and biomedical devices. 

Aidan Lucas is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in the Applied Science department at William & Mary. His research studies how glass-producing algae called diatoms might be used to make new eco-friendly materials with applications in thermal management, biomedical implants, and chemical processing. He holds a B.S. in Nanoengineering with a concentration in materials science from UC San Diego. 

Emmanuel Opoku, Biology

"Genomic Analysis of Plant-Microbiome Interaction: A Machine Learning Approach"

Advisor: Dr. Joshua Puzey

Plants and their microbial partners have evolved to form interdependent relationships over time. While this relationship has been extensively studied in drylands, wetlands have remained substantially underexplored. The present study examines the effect of plastic mulching and plant genotype on leaf microbial communities using taro (Colocasia esculenta), a wetland crop species.  Here, we investigate the impact of agricultural cultivation technique on leaf and soil microbiomes in taro grown in semi-flooded fields. To do this, seventy-two leaf samples were collected from eight taro cultivars. DNA was extracted from these leaf samples for high-throughput genome sequencing. Machine learning approaches were used to identify genotype-level similarity and its impact on microbial composition. Initial clustering analysis identified two distinct groups based on genotype. Moreover, agricultural practices, specifically plastic mulching, was found to significantly impact the composition of microbial communities. This study’s findings have two implications: 1) taro’s morphological variation is not driven by high genetic differentiation 2) plastics, even though not in direct contact with the leaf, alter the diversity of microbial groups.

Emmanuel Opoku is a second-year MS student in biology at William & Mary. He has a broad interest in plant-microbe genomics and evolutionary interactions. His current research explores the genetic variation in taro plant cultivars and how human management in irrigated systems over the longue durée affects the microbial composition of plants' above-ground parts.

Mariami Bagishvili, Physics

"Disorder Effects in Hybrid Semiconductor-Superconductor Structures"

Advisor: Dr. Enrico Rossi

When certain materials with different properties are combined together, they can exhibit entirely new forms of quantum behavior. One great example is when a superconductor is placed in contact with a semiconductor, creating what is known as a superconducting heterostructure.  These hybrid systems are promising platforms for realizing topological superconductivity; this state could be used to realize error-free quantum bits (qubits). In real materials, however, imperfections such as impurities are unavoidable. These defects can have a strong influence on how the electrons behave and may create low-energy states that would interfere with the operation of qubits based on superconductor-semiconductor heterostructures. We seek to understand how such disorder induced low-energy states could affect the observation and control of the topological superconductivity. In this work, we perform theoretical calculations to study how multiple impurities affect the low-energy spectrum of hybrid semiconductor–superconductor systems. We examine impurities located separately in the semiconductor and the superconductor, as well as when impurities are in both materials. Our analysis aims to clarify how disorder and geometry influence the robustness of qubits based on topological superconductivity in realistic hybrid structures. This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, via Award DE-SC0022245.

Mariami Bagishvili is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Physics Department at William & Mary. Her research focuses on theoretical condensed matter physics, with an emphasis on topological superconductivity, Josephson junctions, and semiconductor–superconductor hybrid systems. She holds a B.A. from Free University of Tbilisi and M.S. from W&M.

Russell Kamback, Physics

"Ultracold Ramsey Interferometry for Atom Chip Sensors and EM Field Imaging"

Advisor: Dr. Seth Aubin

Co-Authors: Yiyang Ding

Ultracold atoms are advantageous in that they allow for near-exact manipulation of their internal and external quantum states without the rapid thermal motion exhibited by room-temperature atoms. As such, we can interact with them and use them as sensors to make precision measurements of physical quantities. More specifically, we are working towards using ultracold rubidium-87 atoms to create a trapped atom interferometer. The first step in the process is to make a laser-cooled Ramsey interferometer, in which atoms are separated into a superposition of two spin states and recombined again to generate an interference signal. Then, we will spatially separate the atoms using a microwave lattice on a microfabricated atom chip. A large component of this process is the construction of a microwave amplifier and control system which allows us to tune and amplify the necessary microwave signals. In this talk, I present progress on both our Ramsey interferometry and the hardware that goes into generating stable, high-power microwaves. We anticipate that this approach will allow us to make high-precision measurements of electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields. Additionally, we anticipate using this approach to image laser beams and possibly electron beams. 

Russell Kamback is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in Atomic Physics at William & Mary. His primary research areas include quantum sensing and microwave spectroscopy. Currently, he is working to perform atom interferometry on ultracold rubidium-87 atoms. He holds a B.S. from RPI and an M.S. from William & Mary.

Pravin Sharma, Applied Science

"Thickness and Temperature Dependent Magnetic Damping and Emergence of Spin-Wave Modes in CoFe/MgO Thin Films"

Advisor: Dr. Gunter Luepke

Co-Authors: E.C. Sampson

CoFe is one of the widely studied magnetic structures due to its strong spin polarization, high tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) when doped with Boron, and is very much suitable for next-generation spintronic devices. The B2-CsCl phase of CoFe provides an ideal platform for exploring the fundamental mechanisms governing magnetic relaxation, damping, and dynamic spin behavior at the nanoscale. In this work, we investigated the thickness- and temperature-dependent effective Gilbert damping in CoFe/MgO thin films using atomistic spin dynamics simulations. In the case of ultrathin films, the magnetization exhibits uniform precession and relaxation, which usually has one mode. However, when the thickness of the film increased from 30 nm onwards, we were able to see the multiple standing spin-wave (PSSW) modes in the relaxation profiles. These higher-order modes are responsible for the additional energy dissipation channels, which result in noticeable enhancement of the effective Gilbert damping. Additionally, we have obtained the surface and bulk damping, and there has been an increment in the bulk damping as the temperature is increased and a decrement in the surface damping. We have also done hysteresis loop calculations to analyze the magnetic switching characteristics. Overall, the results highlight that the interplay of thickness, temperature, and spin-wave excitation governs the magnetic relaxation in CoFe/MgO systems – offering in-depth insights for optimizing the magnetic damping in high-speed, energy-efficient spintronic applications.

Pravin Sharma is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Applied Science Department at William & Mary. His research focuses on ferromagnetic materials and interfaces using Atomistic Spin Dynamics Modeling to study interfacial spin dynamics, spin-waves, and magnetization switching. He uses both experimental and theoretical approaches. His work advances the fundamental physics behind next-generation spintronic storage devices.

Trevor Tingle, Physics

"Microwave Chip for Ultracold Atom Interferometry"

Advisor: Dr. Seth Aubin

We present progress on the development of a microwave atom chip to be used for trapped atom interferometry using spin-specific AC Zeeman potentials. An atom chip is a microchip that utilizes the magnetic fields generated by current in its wires to trap atoms. Atom interferometry uses the quantum principle of particle/wave duality of the atom to analyze interference fringes produced by the atom for precision measurements.  The AC Zeeman effect is how atomic energy levels are shifted by a microwave magnetic field. Our chip will use three parallel microstrip transmission lines to generate microwave ACZ traps.  Efficient DC-10 GHz coupling of microwave signals onto the chip is based on a tapered microstrip wedge interface. We present microfabrication progress of chip components. This work furthers the development of our atom interferometry capabilities for gravimetry, electric and magnetic field measurements, and possible measurements of the Casimir-Polder force and submillimeter gravity. This work is supported by NSF.

Trevor Tingle is a forth year Ph.D. candidate in the physics department at William & Mary. He works in ultracold atom trapping and atom interferometry for the purposes of making precision measurements of force fields.

Amy Connolly, Anthropology

"'And Bless Each Door That Opens Wide to Stranger as to Kin': Persistence on Two Irish Islands"

Advisor: Dr. Audrey Horning

This paper explores how descendant communities sustain meaningful relationships with place through return journeys to two abandoned Irish islands, Inis Oírc and Inis Bearachain, in south Connemara, Co. Galway, Ireland. These islands are part of an archipelago known as Ceantar na nOileán, where the Irish language is predominantly spoken. Drawing on archaeological fieldwork and oral histories with former residents and descendants, I examine how the landscape and houses left behind by former residents continue to anchor familial and spiritual ties. These return visits reflect enduring connections to place and work to challenge conventional narratives of abandonment. By tracing the material and oral histories of these homes, I situate the islands within a broader landscape of movement where objects and return visits serve as markers of continuity. Rather than sites of abandonment, these islands persist and are continually shaped by those who return, remember, and reconnect.

Amy Connolly is a third-year Ph.D. student in Anthropology, with a focus in Historical Archaeology at William & Mary. Her research interests include Irish island communities, the Irish language, household archaeology, and abandonment. Her current project examines the archaeology of Inis Oírc, an abandoned island off the west coast of Ireland, where she works closely with former residents and their descendants.

Taylor M. Garrison, History

"'And His Wife': Enslaved Spouses as Marketing and Resistance in Sale Advertisements, 1800-1865"

Advisor: Dr. Hannah Rosen

Despite their illegitimacy in the eyes of the law, enslaved people's marriages regularly appeared in American newspapers from 1800 to 1865. Underutilized by historians of slavery and family history, advertisements for the sale of enslaved people explicitly labeled as husbands and wives, though often sparse in text, provide a vital lens into the multiple meanings of slave marriage in the Early Republic and antebellum era. Using over four hundred sale advertisements from across the United States, this paper explores the appearance of enslaved husbands and wives as both marketing and resistance. Spousal relationships, or the lack thereof, communicated the productive and reproductive labor possibilities of the enslaved individuals as well as calculated the risk of future losses to potential enslavers. Sale advertisements also reveal enslaved spouses’ negotiations with those who enslaved them and resistance to the practice of family separation that defined the domestic slave trade.

Taylor M. Garrison is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at William & Mary. Taylor's research areas include family and gender history. Her dissertation explores the multivocal discourse of slave marriage in the United States from 1800 to 1865. Taylor holds an M.A. from William & Mary and B.A. from Muhlenberg College. 

Maia N. Wilson, Anthropology

"Finding Greentown: Mixed Method Care-Based Approach to Family Centered Archaeology in Brunswick County, Virginia"

Advisor: Dr. Michelle Lelièvre

This project explores my family’s historic Black and Afro-Saponi-Occoneechee Travis  homesteads and burial grounds in Indigenous-founded Greentown, Virginia (est. 1730). Using ethnographic and autoethnographic methods, archival sources, non-invasive archaeological techniques, and mapping techniques and location-based information, my relatives and I co-discover and co-narrate our family’s story of persistence through oppressive systems from 1820 to 2026. I frame my project in a genealogy of kin researchers; relatives who conduct research produce scholarship that informs my work. My Black Feminist perspective as a descendant researcher promotes an anthropology of care. This approach contributes to my reconceptualization of the “descendant researcher” —an innovation I introduce to the ethical clientage model, prioritizing my family's ethical needs and position as co-researchers. I prioritize gathering spaces—sharing space and time— to explore care dynamics within scientific process. I discuss care as vital everyday strategies, studied materially, that illuminate Black family survival. Simultaneously, I show that being family shapes how descendant researchers and collaborators use science as a space for community care today. My project innovates community-engaged work by using the dissertation for my family’s use of state tools (e.g., preservation grants) to preserve Black persistence the state aims to destroy.

Maia Wilson is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at William & Mary. Her focuses are Black Feminist archaeologies and family-based research. Her dissertation explores her family’s historic Black and Afro-Saponi-Occoneechee Travis homesteads and burial grounds in Greentown, Virginia via ethnographic methods, archival sources, non-invasive archaeological techniques, and mapping and location-based information. 

Felipe Julián Mosquera Blanco, Politics | The Catholic University of America

"Floridablanca Between Neutrality and Secret War: Spanish Strategy in the American Revolution, 1777–1781"

Advisor: Dr. David Walsh

 This paper examines the foreign policy of José Moñino y Redondo, Count of Floridablanca (1728–1808), as Spain navigated the American War of Independence. Appointed Secretary of State in February 1777, Floridablanca initially pursued a policy of cautious neutrality. He sought to mediate between Britain and France, proposing in 1777–1778 a series of truces that would grant commercial concessions while sparing Spain from open war. At the same time, however, Floridablanca authorized covert assistance to the rebelling colonies, approving secret shipments of arms from Bilbao through Diego de Gardoqui, loans negotiated by the Count of Aranda in Paris, and clandestine support channeled through Bernardo de Gálvez in Louisiana. This “double strategy”—diplomatic neutrality combined with clandestine warfare—allowed Spain to weaken Britain while protecting its empire from revolutionary contagion. Britain’s rejection of Spanish mediation forced Floridablanca into open conflict: the Convention of Aranjuez (April 12, 1779) aligned Spain with France, and war was declared on June 22, 1779. By 1780–1781, Floridablanca directed the deployment of 11,000 troops to reinforce Gálvez’s Gulf Coast campaigns, culminating in the capture of Pensacola (May 1781). The paper argues that Floridablanca was not only the architect of Spain’s diplomatic maneuvering but also the strategist of its covert and military contribution, making him a central—though often overlooked—figure in the transatlantic struggle for American independence.

Felipe Julián Mosquera Blanco is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Politics Department at The Catholic University of America. His research focuses on political theory, modern constitutionalism, Hispanic political thought, and the intellectual legacies of revolution and reform. He holds a Master’s in Political Philosophy from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain.

Giacomo Green, History

"Colonial Peace: Locke, Slavery, and the Foundation of Society in South Carolina"

Advisor: Dr. Nicholas Popper

Was John Locke a supporter of slavery? Recent research has increasingly troubled the idea that Locke had any significant investment in the Atlantic slave trade, with some scholars even arguing that Locke sought to abolish slavery altogether. In this paper I'll summarize some of the debate, then discuss how Locke thought (and wrote) about colonial slavery in South Carolina. I'll argue that Locke saw slavery—and, particularly, indigenous slavery— as a distinct problem that undermined the fabric of colonial society. I'll show that Locke envisioned a model of colonial governance based on a negotiated pact between Indigenous groups and English settlers. Influenced by Spanish precedents, this model aimed to maintain social peace and prevent violent conflict. Crucially, however, Locke’s framework was not incompatible with slavery itself; rather, it sought to regulate colonial violence and constrain settler excesses within a more orderly system of domination.

Giacomo Green is a PhD candidate in history at William & Mary. He studies the history of trade and politics in seventeenth-century England and early America.

Kirsten Smitherman, History

"Liberty, Seduction, and Subjugation: The Sexualized Female Body in Revolutionary Political Imagery"

Advisor: Dr. Catherine E. Kelly

Paul Revere’s "The Able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught" (1774) portrays America as a Native woman stripped naked while being restrained and force-fed tea by British officials in response to the Intolerable Acts. Echoing rape imagery common in eighteenth-century print, the scene evokes sexual violence, turning colonial protest into a dramatization of bodily violation. This image reinscribes women’s vulnerability and passivity in times of political and social crisis. The use of gendered violence in this kind of imagery equates revolution with political treason, reflecting trans-Atlantic fears of societal breakdown during wartime. To do so this paper investigates the ways that women’s bodies were sexualized and politicized in political cartoons during the Revolutionary War. I use both British and American sources to argue that artists used the female figure to negotiate anxieties about power, virtue, and authority. Visual culture transformed political violence into intimate gendered spectacles and played a central role in constructing narratives of domination, victimhood, and transgression. By reading these visual texts through a gendered lens, this paper will reveal how the female body served as a site onto which revolutionary desire and moral panic were projected. This paper situates real and symbolic women at the heart of revolutionary discourse to highlight the way violence against the female body became contested terrain in the struggle to define liberty and authority.

Kirsten Smitherman is a second-year Ph.D. student of History at William & Mary. Her research investigates Early American women and gendered obligations, with particular attention to how understandings of women’s bodies and the cultural meanings attached to them shaped both personal and collective identities in the emerging Republic.