Graduate Research Symposium
2025 Winners
Best Presentation of the Symposium, $1000
Monica Multer
Literature
Poster: De-Forming the Devil: Disability and Impairment in Milton’s Paradise Lost
Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Peter Biehl (right) presents the Best Overall Presentation of the Symposium Certificate to Monica Multer (left)
Best Presentation of the Arts Division:
TIE! $250 each
ksenia fir
Film & Digital Media
Talk: “RoboCops and Prison Planets: Carceral Futurism and Abolitionist Potentialities in Science Fiction Film and Television”
Assistant Dean for Student Success and Chief of Staff, Esthela Bañuelos (right), presents the Best Presentation of the Arts Division Certificate to ksenia fir (left)
Shireen Nabatian
Music
Spiritual Jam: Tracing the Definition of Meşk from Ottoman Pedagogy to Summer Music Camp
Assistant Dean for Student Success and Chief of Staff, Esthela Bañuelos (right), presents the Best Presentation of the Arts Division Certificate to Shireen Nabatian (left)
Best Presentation of Baskin Engineering, $250
Shourya Bose
Electrical & Computer Engineering
AI Meets the Grid: Towards an Efficient and Greener Future
Associate Dean for Graduate Experience for Baskin School of Engineering, Roberto Manduchi (right), presents the Best Presentation of the Baskin School of Engineering Certificate to Shourya Bose (left)
Best Presentation of the Humanities Division, $250
Meleia Simon-Reynolds
Literature
Santa Cruz County History from Our Own Mouth:” Community Archiving and Liberatory Activation Among Second-Generation Filipino Americans
Former Professional Development Coordinator for the Graduate Division, Sonya Newlyn (left), presents the Best Presentation of the Humanities Division Certificate to Meleia Simon-Reynolds (right)
Best Presentation of the Physical and Biological Sciences Division $250
Nathan McGregor
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Talk: “What Meteorites Tell Us About Planets Around Other Stars”
Dean of Physical and Biological Sciences Bryan Gaensler (left) presents the Best Presentation of the Physical and Biological Sciences Division Certificate to Nathan McGregor (right)
Best Presentation of the Social Sciences Division, $250
Piyush Gandhi
Economics
Talk: Extinguishing the Blaze: Reducing Crop Residue Burning in India
Dean of Social Sciences, Katherine Mitchell (right), presents the Best Presentation of the Social Sciences Division Certificate to Piyush Gandhi (left)
All Participants
Posters
| Name | Division | Program | Title |
| Acero, Darien | Humanities | History of Consciousness | July 11: A New Era of Class Struggle in Cuba? |
| Arroyo, Mar | Physical and Biological Sciences | Ocean Sciences | Representations of the changing ocean carbon cycle in ocean biogeochemical models |
| Berry, Annika | Humanities | Literature | Thick, Squiggly, and Generative: Collaboration and Entanglement in Donna Haraway’s Archive |
| Butingan, Leonard | Humanities | History | What is this ‘Black’ in Black Britain? Television and the Shifting Articulations of Blackness 1976-2000 |
| Chan, Manning | Humanities | History | “Music, Tradition, and Politics: A History of the Qin-zither in Early Modern China” |
| Cotei, Stefania | Humanities | History of Consciousness | Unarchiving Memory |
| Egorova, Anna | Humanities | History of Consciousness | Muslim Socialist Visions: Volga Tatars and Self-Determination in Revolutionary Russia |
| Frakes, Lilith | Humanities | History of Consciousness | Care, Beyond Conservation |
| Huse, Amanda | Humanities | History | Speech and Power: Women’s Social Networks and Reconstruction-Era Ku-Klux Violence |
| Jones, Robin | Humanities | History of Consciousness | Dissident Communism: Trajectories of the Independent Left in Postcolonial Syria |
| Kaplan, Max | Humanities | Linguistics | Native language & systematic mishearing |
| kassadjikova, kalina | Social Sciences | Anthropology | Ancient DNA at the Intersection of Community and Genetics in the African Diaspora |
| Klawitter, Danielle | Social Sciences | ENVS | Inter-row cover cropping with deep-rooted perennial grasses for soil health benefits |
| Mack, Melissa | Humanities | Literature | The Language of Acknowledgement and Memorialization: Memorial Ceremonies and Slave Ship Landing Site Markers on the Georgia Coast, and a University Poetry Commission in Upland South Carolina |
| Mah Gricuk, Ania | Humanities | History | Medicine in Diaspora: A Modern History of Cooling Herbal Tea, 1880s-present |
| Mogollón, Anny L. | Humanities | Literature | We Fight Alongside Our Mothers |
| Multer, Monica | Humanities | Literature | De-Forming the Devil: Disability and Impairment in Milton’s Paradise Lost |
| Nelson, Kristen | Humanities | Literature | The Witches of Benevento |
| Padilla, Rene M. | Physical and Biological Sciences | Physics | Ultra-fast diamond detectors for Xray applications |
| Palea, Dustin | Baskin School of Engineering | Computational Media | Annota: Peer-based AI Hints Towards Learning Qualitative Coding at Scale |
| Pham, Quyen | Humanities | Literature | Disorienting Poetics: Book/Archive/Body |
| Richardson, Elliot | Humanities | History | Trans Transnationalism: Travestís en Tijuana |
| Stevers, Meredith | Physical and Biological Sciences | Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology | Human U2 snRNA sequence mediates splicing efficiency driven by branchpoint sequence complementarity |
| Swarts-Zanin, Kristine | Humanities | History | The Permanent Mark of the British Mandate on Jerusalem |
| Wax Cavallaro, Maya | Humanities | Linguistics | An Acoustic Study of Final Sonorant Devoicing in Two Indigenous Mesoamerican Languages |
Talks
| Name | Division | Program | Title |
| Aditya Gadam, Sri | Physical and Biological Sciences | Physics | Hidden Clues in the Fundamental Structure of Nature |
| Asefi, Niloofar | Baskin School of Engineering | Electrical & Computer Engineering | Data driven Lagrangian data assimilation for ocean dynamics |
| Bose, Shourya | Baskin School of Engineering | Electrical & Computer Engineering | AI meets the Grid: Towards a Efficient and Greener Future |
| Centeno, Betsy | Social Sciences | Psychology | Perspectives on Substance Use and Sexual Health Education Among Latine/x College Students at an HSI |
| Dodd, Sierra | Physical and Biological Sciences | Astronomy & Astrophysics | Disk Perturbations: A Potential Model for Changing-look Active Galactic Nuclei |
| Dou, Wei | Social Sciences | Psychology | Introspective Metacognition Alters Perceptual Decision-Making Mechanisms |
| fir, ksenia | Arts | Film and Digital Media | RoboCops and Prison Planets: Carceral Futurism and Abolitionist Potentialities in Science Fiction Film and Television |
| Gandhi, Piyush | Social Sciences | Economics | Extinguishing the Blaze: Reducing Air Pollution |
| Groth, Philip | Humanities | Philosophy | The Epistemology of Mental Imagery and Perception |
| Hebbar, Prajna | Baskin School of Engineering | Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics | Looking for genes in genomes & pangenomes |
| Kahinga, Lordrick | Physical and Biological Sciences | Astronomy & Astrophysics | Weighing the Unseen: How Cosmic Flashes Reveal Andromeda’s Hidden Atoms |
| Kapoor, Rolly | Social Sciences | Economics | Together in Search: Experimental Evidence from Coordinating Travel Among Women Job-Seekers in Urban India |
| Liu, Minghao | Baskin School of Engineering | Computer Science & Engineering | Human and AI Perceptual Differences in Image Classification Errors |
| Maroto Vargas, Adriana | Social Sciences | Latin American and Latino Studies | Can a Feminist and Conservative Christian Women Really Talk? |
| McGregor, Nathan | Physical and Biological Sciences | Earth & Planetary Science | What Meteorites Tell Us About Planets Around Other Stars |
| Nabatian, Shireen | Arts | Music | “Spiritual jam”: Tracing the definition of meşk from Ottoman pedagogy to summer music camp |
| Negi, Shloka | Baskin School of Engineering | Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics | Advancing rare disease diagnosis with long read sequencing and pangenomics |
| Ohanyan, Mané | Physical and Biological Sciences | Microbiology & Environmental Toxicology | Skilled Sailor, Stormy Sea: Yersinia pseudotuberculosis navigates host environments to cause disease |
| Pačar, Ivana | Baskin School of Engineering | Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics | NOTCH Your Average Genes: Using Ultra-long DNA Reads to Understand the Role of 1q21.1 Locus in Neurodevelopmental Disorders |
| Rushworth, Rico | Humanities | Literature | Indigenous American Rap and Activism |
| Si, Yufei | Physical and Biological Sciences | Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology | Is sensory experience required to form a map of auditory space in the superior colliculus |
| Simon-Reynolds, Meleia | Humanities | History | “Santa Cruz County history from our own mouth:” Community Archiving and Liberatory Activation among Second-Generation Filipino Americans |
| Sunil Arvindam, Vishal | Humanities | Linguistics | Processing anti-local reflexives in Telugu |
| Teter, Alexis | Baskin School of Engineering | Applied Mathematics | Contractions and Reactions in Schrödinger Bridges |
| Trapp, Aubrey | Physical and Biological Sciences | Ocean Sciences | A Tale of Two Blooms: Distinct environmental drivers result in consecutive toxin events in Monterey Bay, CA |
| Wintz, Paul | Baskin School of Engineering | Applied Mathematics | Globally Stabilizing Hybrid Control While Exploiting Uncertified Controllers |
| Ziaur Rahman, Md | Physical and Biological Sciences | Microbiology & Environmental Toxicology | Effects of antenatal hormones and immune status on maternal gut microbiome and child stress response |
IN THIS SECTION