2026 Honors Summer Fellows

Meet the 2026 cohort of Honors Summer Fellows.

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Epilepsy is most often defined by the seizure itself: a discrete and dramatic event that is clinically urgent and potentially life-threatening. Yet for many patients, the period that follows the seizure, the post-ictal state, is equally disruptive and, in some cases, more distressing than the seizure itself. During this phase, individuals may experience confusion, exhaustion, impaired responsiveness, altered consciousness, and difficulty processing sensory information. Patients frequently describe the post-ictal period as frightening, isolating, and deeply limiting to their independence and quality of life. Despite its clear clinical importance, the post-ictal state remains poorly understood and insufficiently characterized.

Clinicians are typically able to recognize both the seizure and the post-ictal state through behavioral observation and clinical experience. However, this identification is largely qualitative and not standardized or quantified. It is also impractical for a physician to continuously observe a patient, and continuous EEG monitoring is often not feasible outside specialized clinical settings. As a result, there is a lack of scalable, objective tools to systematically measure post-ictal behavior, compare post-ictal severity across individuals, or evaluate the effectiveness of potential interventions. This gap substantially limits both research progress and clinical translation.

Silvia’s research aims to address this problem by developing objective, quantitative methods to characterize the post-ictal state, beginning in mouse models of epilepsy and ultimately informing human research. She will do this through automated behavioral analysis, using LabGym, an AI-powered software platform.

Silvia is a rising senior at the University of Michigan, majoring in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience, with a minor in Data Science. She is passionate about the complexities of the brain and the importance of studying mental health, and hopes to pursue a career in psychiatry. Outside of her academics, she also loves to travel, listen to music, and hang out with her friends.
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Misinformation and fake news are terms that polarizing politicians and large news networks alike are using. While news broadcasts, civil servants, and media outlets have implemented fact-checks to combat the rise in false statements made by politicians, these fact-checks have produced drastically different results across different nations, indicating that fact-checking decreases support for misinformation-esposing politicians only under certain, unknown, conditions. Furthermore, prior research has shown that helping someone understand the rationale behind believing a piece of information may serve as a more effective method of correction. This project aims to interview politicians and civil servants and survey diverse groups of German voters, using Germany’s unique historical relationship to information through its negative use in the Nazi period and state-sponsored repression in former East Germany to better understand the cultural forces at play in the correction of misinformation.

Markus is a rising senior triple majoring in Political Science, Economics, and German. Markus was born and raised in the Metro Detroit area. His research interests lie in understanding political polarization, civic education, and the far-right. After graduation, Markus intends to pursue law school to work as an advocate for people’s rights and civil freedoms.

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What role does assessment format play in how children demonstrate their vocabulary knowledge? Vocabulary development is essential for heritage-language (HL) children because it supports deeper language skills, cognitive development, and familial and cultural connections. Diana’s thesis examines two main objectives. First, it investigates the effects of increased exposure to target scientific vocabulary in Spanish among HL children ages 6–7. Second, it examines whether the format used to assess children’s vocabulary knowledge before and after the intervention, which uses a mixed-learning approach combining both interactive shared readings in the classroom and an optional home component, influences their responses. 

Spanish vocabulary will be assessed using two researcher-adapted versions of the Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes Peabody (TVIP): one with static images and one with short video clips representing the target words. The overall objective is to better understand which assessment format most effectively maintains children’s attention and guides them toward the target vocabulary word, in both receptive and expressive vocabulary tasks. This study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of language assessment methods and their impact on language development.

Diana Villalobos-Calderon is a rising senior majoring in Psychology. As a first-generation college student who has personally experienced learning a second language, Diana is passionate about language acquisition and how technology can support it. Her personal experiences motivate her dedication to this area of research. As part of her research experience, she joined the En Nuestra Lengua: Literacy and Culture Lab, where she has worked as a research assistant. In this role, she has administered literacy and reading assessments, analyzed quantitative data, conducted statistical analyses to evaluate vocabulary growth, and participated in shared reading sessions that introduced and reinforced target scientific vocabulary. She is also part of the Language and Literacy Lab, where she transcribes, codes, and reviews Spanish recordings using the SALT (Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts) program. Diana hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, with the long-term goal of becoming a clinical neuropsychologist. In her free time, Diana enjoys dancing, listening to podcasts, and spending time in nature.

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“If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much!” is a phrase commonly heard in West Michigan, particularly in the suburban and rural communities just west of Grand Rapids, where Dutch Americans continue to exert a significant influence on the region’s social, economic, and political landscape. Early Dutch immigrants to the region were strict Calvinists who hoped to escape what they viewed as a rapidly liberalizing Dutch society. They established the “Holland Kolonie,” a highly conservative ethnic enclave in West Michigan that grew substantially over the following decades. Existing scholarship has focused heavily on the Dutch ethnic enclave of Holland. However, many studies overlook the substantially larger Dutch immigrant population in nearby Grand Rapids — a more diverse city where Dutch Americans lived and worked alongside other ethnic and religious groups.

Lauren’s research asks how a community that sought to maintain a distinctly Dutch Protestant identity adapted to life in a multiethnic urban environment and how those interactions shaped Dutch American identity and West Michigan as a whole. Drawing on historical newspapers, memoirs, demographic data, and oral history interviews, Lauren is investigating differences between Dutch American communities in Holland and Grand Rapids, historical tensions between the Dutch and Polish American communities in the city, and the growth and sustained influence of Dutch Americans on the conservative character of the region to the present day. By tracing the development of Dutch American communities in Grand Rapids, Lauren’s thesis seeks to connect the present political and cultural landscape of West Michigan to its historical roots.

Lauren is a rising senior studying History, with minors in Writing and Russian. Outside of the archives, she enjoys painting, quilting, adding to her Delftware collection, and hammocking on the Diag. 

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In multicellular organisms, cells must divide and adopt specialized roles in order to serve different areas of the body. As a cell differentiates, genes that become unnecessary to its function will be silenced to prevent expression. One way this can be achieved is through compartmentalization of chromosome regions: sections of DNA that are highly relevant and actively transcribed (euchromatin) are left open and accessible at the center of the nucleus, whereas unneeded, repressed genes (heterochromatin) are compacted and sequestered away to the inner nuclear lining known as the lamina.

For the miniature roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, this system of spatial organization is mediated by CEC-4, a protein which binds to distinct chemical marks on heterochromatic regions and tethers them at the nuclear lamina to promote silencing. However, while this protein’s effect on gene regulation is somewhat understood, the physical methods it employs to shuttle DNA outward remain unclear. Emily’s thesis project aims to gather insight on the mechanisms by which CEC-4 recognizes and repositions heterochromatin. This includes understanding the localization of the protein itself within the nucleus and investigating its interactions with other cellular components.

Emily is a rising senior majoring in Microbiology and minoring in Music. She hopes to help advance knowledge and the real-world application of molecular biology concepts by pursuing a Ph.D. and research career in the biomedical sciences. Outside of the classroom and lab, she loves listening to and practicing music, experimenting with sourdough recipes, and exploring the Arb.

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To study how individuals differ in their judgments and preferences, researchers run surveys and experiments that ask subjects to rank different “objects.” These objects can range from political candidates and proposed legislation to ice cream flavors and sneakers. Rank order data are incredibly valuable across psychology, political science, economics, marketing, and other fields because they impose order and force decisions, revealing how subjects evaluate multiple alternatives in relation to one another. 

By definition, rank order data explicitly record what a subject prefers most to least, but with further analysis, they can offer deeper insight into subjects’ underlying preference structures. Elinor’s thesis examines how the unfolding model can represent rank order data geometrically by configuring a shared latent space with both the objects and subjects, which should be fitted such that each subject’s “ideal point” is closer in distance to objects they ranked as more preferred. 

The unfolding model has theoretical promise, but can be challenging to practically employ. Interpretations of goodness-of-fit can be nuanced. Elinor is interested in rank order recovery and implementing machine learning methods that optimize for it more directly. She will compare the stability, interpretability, and robustness of solutions optimized by these methods to solutions optimized by the traditional stress majorization (SMACOF) algorithm. Through this work, she hopes to contribute to a better understanding of what rank order data can reasonably uncover. 

Elinor is a rising senior triple-majoring in Statistics, Applied Mathematics, and Cognitive Science. After graduation, she seeks to pursue further statistical training and research in judgment and decision making. Beyond academics and research, Elinor loves music, racquet sports, cooking, travel, and spending time with family and friends. 

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Diffuse gliomas are considered an incurable type of brain cancer despite advancements being made in surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and pharmaceuticals. One reason for this is that each tumor’s behavior is strongly shaped by its molecular subtype – meaning that we are not just fighting one disease, but rather dozens. 

Currently, Anthony is studying how immunostimulatory gene therapy – a therapy that uses adenoviruses encoding genes to kill tumors and trigger an immune response – varies in efficacy across glioma subtypes, such as gliomas harboring a mutant IDH1 protein. This gene therapy is traditionally delivered intratumorally; however, there are several shortcomings to this approach. The first is that many gliomas have an infiltrative growth pattern, meaning the tumor is not merely confined to a solid mass, but rather cancer cells infiltrate throughout the brain and increase the risk of recurrence. Additionally, some tumors, such as Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Gliomas, a subtype of Diffuse Midline Gliomas, are inoperable since they reside in the brainstem and can cause immediate morbidity with attempted resection. Lastly, there are concerns that off-target expression of therapeutic transgenes in healthy neural cells could induce chronic neuroinflammation and neurotoxicity. To circumvent these shortcomings, Anthony is using genetically engineered mouse models to replicate tumors seen in humans and is investigating ways to create a specific, yet still therapeutically effective, gene therapy that can be delivered intravenously. Selectivity becomes even more crucial since an intravenous approach could lead to systemic toxicity if the gene therapy exhibits off-target transgene expression (i.e., the genes encoded by the viral vectors are also expressed by healthy, somatic cells such as heart, liver, and kidney cells).

Anthony is a rising Senior at the University of Michigan majoring in Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience, with a minor in Sociology of Health and Medicine. He serves as a Resident Advisor, works as an inpatient Pharmacy Technician, and recently started working as a Patient Care Technician. Anthony is also a co-founder of VaxShield, a nonprofit initiative dedicated to improving vaccine literacy and combating health misinformation through educational resources for students. Outside of academics, he enjoys reading, weightlifting, and watching sitcoms such as The Big Bang Theory and The Office. Anthony plans to apply to MD-PhD programs, where he can continue his work in translational neurooncology to further advance current therapies available to patients

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In the late 1960s, the Green Revolution transformed agriculture across many developing countries, introducing high-yielding crop varieties that dramatically raised farm productivity and reshaped rural economies. But did this transformation reach girls and women in the same way it reached boys and men? Existing research suggests that the answer is not straightforward. While rising agricultural income created new incentives for families to invest in their children's education, the Green Revolution was concentrated in crops like wheat that relied more heavily on male labor, potentially reducing the economic value of women's work and, with it, families' motivation to invest in girls' futures.

Sophia’s project examines how exposure to the Green Revolution affected girls’ schooling, age at marriage, and fertility choice in rural India. The project compares educational and demographic outcomes for women who grew up in districts better suited to high-yielding crop varieties with those in less suitable districts to identify the long-run effects of agricultural development and assess whether the gains of the Green Revolution were shared equally across gender lines.

Sophia is a rising senior pursuing Honors majors in Math and Economics. Her research interests lie in labor and development economics, with a particular focus on the determinants of human capital investment in developing countries. After graduating, she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Economics, with the goal of becoming a professor. Outside of research and coursework, Sophia enjoys cooking and walking in the Arb.

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People constantly transform sensory experiences into memories. Visual scenes, sounds, spatial cues, and other forms of information are processed across the brain, with many signals reaching the hippocampus through the entorhinal cortex to form new memories. Within the hippocampus, the CA3 region is especially notable for its recurrent excitatory connections, in which excitatory neurons activate other excitatory neurons to provide a controlled positive feedback mechanism that keeps the network highly active and sensitive to external inputs. This recurrent architecture is thought to support associative memory processes, such as pattern completion, through the formation of memory engrams, which can be modeled as “hot spots” of the network with enhanced activities and heterogeneous connectivities. A lot of these memory formation and consolidation activities are thought to happen during sleep, but the network mechanisms that support such processes remain incompletely understood. In particular, it is still unclear how multiple interacting memory engrams can be stabilized within hippocampal circuits during sleep, and how different sleep states shape this process.

Arthur’s Honors thesis uses computational modeling to investigate how hippocampal network structure affects memory engram dynamics. In this project, biophysical neural networks are constructed using Hodgkin-Huxley-type equations, which describe neuronal activity through voltage-dependent ionic currents and synaptic interactions. Different sleep-related states are modeled through changes in acetylcholine-associated parameters. The project focuses especially on small-world network structures, which combine many local connections with a smaller number of long-range connections in the network. By varying network topology and comparing the resulting neural activity patterns, this work aims to identify which forms of connectivity may promote or disrupt the stabilization of interacting memory engrams.

Arthur Han is a rising senior and he hopes to pursue a doctoral study in computational neuroscience or theoretical biophysics. He would like to thank Professor Michal Zochowski for his support and mentorship on this project. Beyond research, Arthur enjoys running and watching movies.

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What stories does Kansas, a state once nicknamed “the great American desert,” have buried underneath its surface? Which narrative threads have simply trailed off or vanished into the ever-expanding western frontier, leaving a history that seems destined to remain incomplete?

Harper’s thesis seeks to answer these questions and more, resulting in a book-length collection of poems which takes a closer look at what happened after the dust settled on manifest destiny. Each piece will be rooted in Kansas history from the mid-19th to early 20th century—a period shaped by frontier violence, inventive folklore, ecological transformation, settler colonialism, and unstable systems of justice. Grounded in archival research, American storytelling, environmental shifts, and regional language, these poems will use creative writing to enter and explore the gaps left by traditional historical accounts. As a native Kansan, the writing process will allow Harper to navigate both the well-tread and uncharted territory of her own state’s complex past.

Written from the perspective of the land itself, a third-person omniscient witness, the poems will also examine the stories of key characters who have passed through Kansas: Billy the Kid, Amelia Earhart, Buffalo Bill, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Brown (among others). Looking at the lives and experiences of these infamous figures, she seeks to challenge accepted outcomes and narratives of their lives that have pervaded popular culture despite the questionable truth of these accounts. Utilizing inhabited persona, historical voice, and place-based imagery, the collection will ask how poetry can challenge inherited myths of the West and represent a truer portrait of place, memory, and cultural inheritance.

Harper is a rising senior majoring in English and Creative Writing with minors in the History of Law and Policy and American Culture. Originally from Salina, Kansas, after moving out of state she was surprised to learn that not everyone had “Pioneer Day” as a class party in elementary school. Now that she lives outside of Kansas, Harper appreciates just how interesting and complicated the legacy of the land is — and the importance of learning about it. After graduating, she hopes to continue writing as a creative outlet while working her way through law school. 

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The signaling pathway driven by a protein called KRAS is one of the most frequently upregulated in breast cancer. As part of the family of the first oncogenes (cancer drivers) discovered, KRAS is a well studied protein. However, early stages of tumorigenesis (cancer initiation) are less understood even though KRAS may play a big role in this first step of cancer development. If KRAS signaling is upregulated in most breast cancers, what happens if this upregulation is the first step in cancer progression? What changes need to take place after this upregulation to drive the cancer towards a triple-negative subtype rather than a HER2+ one?

In order to study this critical timepoint in cancer development, we need models that will recapitulate its events and provide a cellular-level resolution that we can track in real time as cells transform from healthy to cancerous. Organoids (3D collections of cells grown in a dish) are the perfect system for this kind of study as they allow for the instantaneous and cellular-resolution techniques that in vivo (animal models) do not allow. Simultaneously, organoids provide the 3D structure more representative of biological settings than most 2D cell culture models. 

The goal of Darby’s project is to develop and validate a KRAS-mutant model for early cancer development so that other scientists can use this model to study the cellular-level changes that drive breast cancer. Long term, this could help detect specific subtypes of cancer in the clinic and expose new drug targets for cancer treatments while building our knowledge of the disease’s mechanisms in general. 

Darby is a rising senior in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology with a minor in Computer Science. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology, studying how to apply the immune system to treat solid tumors. Outside of the lab, Darby enjoys reading, making art, and being outdoors.

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In many materials, electricity is carried by electrons moving through a solid. In an ideal crystal, electrons would travel without interruption. In real materials, however, they are constantly scattered by imperfections, vibrations, and magnetic structures. By measuring how electrons move — and how their paths are bent — physicists can learn about the hidden properties of a material. Yiqian’s research focuses on a special kind of magnetic structure called a skyrmion. A skyrmion can be imagined as a tiny magnetic whirlpool, where the magnetic directions inside a material twist into a stable swirling pattern. These structures are exciting because their stability may make them useful for future low-energy electronic devices and information storage technologies.

Yiqian's project investigates possible skyrmion phases in the material system TmMn6Sn6−xGax​. While skyrmions are often stabilized by a specific type of magnetic interaction called the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction, recent studies suggest that they may also appear in materials with different crystal symmetries through dipolar interactions. This is important because dipolar interactions can combine with other tunable magnetic effects, and offer ways to actively control where skyrmions form. Using Hall effect and Nernst effect measurements, Yiqian studies whether a specific type of signal that is always associated with skyrmions can be detected in samples with different gallium concentrations. By combining these measurements with magnetic susceptibility studies, this project aims to map out the magnetic phase diagram of the material and identify regions where skyrmions may emerge.

Yiqian is a rising senior double majoring in Mathematics and Physics. He began working in this lab last summer, first focusing on bridge methods for quantum oscillation measurements, and started this project last winter because of his interest in the connection between topology and physics. Yiqian hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in condensed matter physics or materials science. Beyond academics, he enjoys watching movies and practicing Chinese calligraphy.

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Postcolonialism provides an indispensable perspective in analyzing critical social, literary, and cultural phenomena. By deconstructing the impacts of colonialism on both colonizers and the colonized, this framework has profoundly mapped colonial violence across epistemic (the process by which people acquire or create knowledge), psychological, and social dimensions. Foundational Caribbean philosophers, including Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, and others, have forged essential tools for interrogating these dynamics that direct a pathway towards a progressive decolonizing world, yet these intellectual works are scarcely studied alongside East Asian colonialism.

Yuxuan’s work focuses on breaking down the geographical boundaries between East Asian and Caribbean societies, constructing direct dialogue between them by situating postcolonial voices within the East Asian world. Rather than the traditional framework that focuses on dialogue between the Western world and the East, Yuxuan draws on Caribbean theories to reexamine the prolonged, non-linear process of East Asian decolonization. In turn, he expands Caribbean theories through literary works from historically complex locations, such as Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. Furthermore, as the rapid emergence of AI reshapes modern society, Yuxuan extends this temporal scope to the present day. Using digital humanities approaches, his work initiates a vital dialogue between historical postcolonial theory and the digital present, interrogating how AI technologies complicate and possibly enable decolonization.

Yuxuan is a rising fifth-year student. He studied Data Science and Math while trying to settle his interests and concerns within the humanities, and then switched to English and Comparative Literature. Prior to studying at Michigan, he spent two and a half years at a lovely university in Hong Kong. He hopes to pursue graduate education in literary studies afterward and devote his life to intellectual work that benefits humans. Outside of the academic research that he conducts under beautiful trees near the Shapiro Library, he loves exploring super tasty lunches at random little hole-in-the-wall joints and daydreaming that the construction at Hatcher will end very soon, that tomorrow won’t be a rainy day, and that more people will realize the importance of the humanities.  

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Arthur’s project explores gender and sexual politics in Ancient Rome from the late Republican period to the early Empire period. The enforcement of gendered expectations upon Roman men and women is deeply rooted in Roman views on sexual relationships, ethnicity and nation, and power. Instances of gender deviance or nonconformity illustrate how Roman society reacted when these expectations were broken or even expanded. By viewing Roman gender nonconformity through a transgender and queer theoretical lens, Arthur hopes to bring a deeper reading of gender deviance to Classical studies that acknowledges the ambiguities and complications present in Roman expectations of gender.  

Clothing as a site of gendered expression is attested throughout Roman primary sources regarding gender. Additionally, there are several poems and plays that depict fictional instances of cross-dressing/transformation in depth and explore the experiences of gender deviant characters. Coupling sources describing mythological gender transformation with real-life instances or cases of cross-dressing will come together to create a more holistic view of gender deviance in Ancient Rome.

Arthur Pfeifer-Rubey is a rising senior majoring in Classical Civilizations with a minor in Latin. He is especially interested in Greek and Roman lyric poetry and the intersection of gender and power in antiquity. They work in Hatcher Graduate Library and the Michigan Papyrology Department. After graduation, he plans to pursue an MLIS and continue to work in libraries. Outside of academia, he enjoys sewing and cooking. 

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A cell’s response to stressors, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, is heavily controlled by regulatory mechanisms. Saccharomyces cerevisiae (more commonly known as Baker’s yeast) is a type of budding yeast that responds to nutrient stress by undergoing pseudohyphal growth. During pseudohyphal growth, yeast cells transition from round, single cells to an extended multicellular, filamentous form. This filamentous form is invasive and has been proposed to be a means by which nonmotile yeast cells scavenge for nutrients. In essence, pseudohyphal growth is characterized by the elongation of individual cells and their adhesion to one another, even after cell division. These changes in cell shape, cell polarity, and cell-cell adhesion are hallmarks of the pseudohyphal transition of yeast.

Kayla is a research assistant in the Kumar Lab, which studies every aspect of yeast pseudohyphal growth, including the genes that regulate it and its regulatory signaling pathways and mechanisms. Kayla’s project focuses specifically on adhesin proteins and their role in the adhesion of yeast cells to one another in their pseudohyphal filament form. Adhesin proteins are encoded for by the FLO gene family and localize to the yeast cell wall. By investigating the individual adhesin protein makeup, Kayla’s Honors thesis hopes to better understand the protein’s amyloid-like aggregate regions and how mutations to this region affect cell-cell adhesion. Overall, this work is important as these proteins aggregate in a manner similar to the plaques associated with Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Kayla is a rising senior studying Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. Outside of the lab, she works as an LSA Honors Program Resident Advisor, LSA Honors Program Content Creator, and Michigan Recreation Lifeguard. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, going for runs, and swimming. After graduation, Kayla hopes to attend graduate school to receive her Master's in Reproductive Sciences and to work as a Clinical Embryologist in an IVF lab.

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Many non-experts are familiar with the harm museums have caused in object acquisition and exhibition. However, fewer people are aware of the very real harm done behind the scenes in collections management. Kes’s thesis is situated within this harm, as he draws on anthropology, museum studies, and archival studies to understand how strict categorization obscures the complex histories and relationships of anthropological items. One such example is the assignment of the labels “archaeological” and “ethnographic” to items that have moved back and forth between these two seemingly disparate anthropological realms. Using one of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology’s earliest formal collections (a set of anthropological items collected in early-1870s Peru) and contemporary expedition documents, Kes attempts to recontextualize and recomplicate the items within this anthropological muddle. Ultimately, he hopes to propose a new way of description within museum collections that takes the lives of objects into greater account.  

Kes is a rising senior majoring in Anthropology with a minor in Museum Studies. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Crossroads Undergraduate Journal of Anthropology and works as a docent at the Frankel Detroit Observatory. After graduation, he plans to pursue a Master’s degree in anthropology with an appropriate concentration in museums. He hopes to work in anthropological collections management. When not working on academic or professional pursuits, Kes enjoys reading queer sociological theory, swimming, and watching hockey.

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In the human gut, various bacteria form a community capable of digesting materials that humans can’t, such as resistant starches, which are commonly found in legumes and other vegetables. Bacteroides is an abundant gut microbe that comprises up to 50% of microbial life in the colon. To better understand these gut microbes’ starch import mechanisms, Aarav’s research takes a bacteriocentric focus on the starch utilization system (Sus) to compare the function of a critical starch-degrading enzyme (SusG) across Bacteroides species. A long-term goal of this work is to understand how different starch-degrading enzymes influence a bacterium's ability to utilize starch and effectively compete for it.

To evaluate this enzyme’s function, he is comparing how SusG binds and digests starch across species. To this end, he uses structural methods, such as X-ray crystallography, to visualize the starch-enzyme interface. Additionally, he uses biochemical methods, such as isothermal titration calorimetry, to evaluate the strength of the starch-enzyme interaction. Elucidating Bacteroides’ starch preferences at the species level may eventually inform the design of probiotics that modify the composition of the gut microbiome.

Aarav is a rising senior majoring in Biochemistry with a minor in Moral and Political Philosophy. He joined the Koropatkin lab in his sophomore year out of a growing curiosity about the gut microbiome and its effect on various pathologies. Upon graduation, Aarav plans to pursue a career in medicine.

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Vision loss caused by retinal degenerative diseases, such as glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration, is usually irreversible because the human retina cannot effectively replace damaged or lost nerve cells. Zebrafish, however, have a remarkable ability to regenerate retinal neurons after injury. Lara's project uses zebrafish as a model to understand how retinal regeneration works and how new neurons are formed after damage.

In the zebrafish retina, a type of support cell called Müller glia can respond to injury by becoming stem-cell-like, dividing, and producing new retinal neurons. Lara is studying whether these regenerated neurons can recreate the diversity of cell types normally found in the retina, how different types of injury influence which neurons are regenerated, and which molecular signals help guide this process.

This project helps us better understand how the zebrafish retina is able to rebuild complex tissue after damage. By studying this natural regenerative process, we can learn more about why some animals can repair the nervous system while humans cannot. In the long term, this knowledge may help guide future approaches for promoting retinal repair in people with vision loss.

Lara is a rising senior studying Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology.

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Woolly mammoths are extinct relatives of elephants whose tusks record body chemistry that reflects the animal’s life history. Internally visible growth increments help determine yearly and seasonal boundaries in an animal’s life and can help determine the age of the animal. Each increment represents a distinct period in the animal’s life and preserves valuable biological information representative of when the material was deposited. Hormones are signaling molecules that help coordinate growth and complex behaviors like reproduction. Previous work identified the steroid hormones testosterone and progesterone, which are chemically similar to lipids, in mammoth tusk material. Protein hormones are chemically different—they are larger and more complex structurally than steroid hormones but also play essential roles in reproduction and pregnancy. Using powdered samples collected from serial growth increments, Zoë's project works with hormone assays to measure hormone concentrations across consecutive months of an individual mammoth’s life. When plotted over time, these data can provide insight into the reproductive histories of these animals. By combining hormone assay results with information from CT scans and other analyses, we can gain a better understanding of mammoth reproductive biology across different geographic regions and time periods, an area of paleontology not yet fully explored. 

Zoë is a rising senior majoring in Biology, Health, and Society with a minor in Paleontology. She has been fascinated by paleontology since childhood, when she spent many afternoons at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. Zoë hopes to pursue a Ph.D. that combines her passion for biology with her long-standing interest in paleontology. Outside of research, she plays rugby for the University of Michigan Women’s rugby team and enjoys reading, hiking, and spending time with friends and family.

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Smoking remains one of the leading causes of preventable disease and death worldwide, yet most individuals who attempt to quit remain unsuccessful despite strong motivation to do so. Mobile health (mHealth) smoking cessation apps have emerged as a scalable approach to supporting quit attempts, offering tools such as craving management exercises, goal tracking, and mindfulness activities. However, many existing digital interventions rely on generic, one-size-fits-all feedback that fails to sustain engagement over time. Although personalized text-based feedback offers a promising avenue to address this challenge, little is known about which message characteristics most effectively capture attention and enhance willingness to use self-regulatory strategies.

Drawing on the Broaden-and-Build Theory, this study will examine how specific features of text-based feedback can elicit experienced interest, a positive motivational state associated with heightened attention, cognitive engagement, and increased likelihood of taking action. Five characteristics of feedback messages will be evaluated: tone, personalization, framing, actionability, and source. These characteristics will be tested using a 2⁵ factorial optimization experiment, which systematically compares every possible combination of the five message features to identify the most effective combination.

Tiffany Sudijono is a rising junior pursuing a dual degree in Honors Cognitive Science (Decision and Cognition) and Information Science (User Experience), with minors in Complex Systems and Digital Studies. Her academic interests center on human-computer interaction and behavioral science, which she explores through interdisciplinary work at the Data Science for Dynamic Intervention Decision-Making Center at the Institute for Social Research and the Center for Surgical Innovation at Michigan Medicine. Across several studies, she investigates digital health technologies and artificial intelligence. Outside of research, she enjoys creating mixed media art, cooking a variety of cuisines, and traveling. Tiffany hopes to pursue a career in product design and UX research after graduation.

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Throughout several passages in his Histories, the ancient Greek historian Polybius lays out his understanding of history as (1) a study of the causes of historical action and their effects (e.g. Alexander wages war against the Persians––what causes him to do so and what comes about as a result of this action?); and (2) an organic entity forming a single whole which, guided by Fortune, tends towards one unified end or goal. Polybius, in his sustained emphasis on the importance of cause and effect and in his overtly teleological conception of history, demonstrates a certain, palpable affinity with the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who understood philosophy as the discovery and study of the first causes and principles of nature and maintained the efficacy of teleological explanation (an internal orientation towards a particular end or final cause) in accounting for the activity of living creatures, among other natural phenomena such as the movement of heavenly bodies. Polybius can by no means be considered a doctrinaire Aristotelian, yet the question remains whether his understanding of historical causality and teleology cannot be synthesised and incorporated into a larger, more comprehensive Aristotelian scheme. Through a thorough and systematic study of the philosophy of Aristotle and the Histories of Polybius, Rim aims to examine the viability of such a synthesis.

Rim is a senior in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, majoring in Classical Languages and Literature. He has a variety of literary and academic interests, though his primary scholarly interests center on the political and philosophical thought of classical antiquity, with a particular emphasis on the Platonic tradition. After completing his undergraduate studies, Rim intends to pursue his Ph.D. in classics with the ultimate goal of becoming a college professor. In his leisure, Rim prefers to read, especially novels, drama, or poetry, and to spend time with his loved ones.

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In the second half of the 1940s, Germany experienced growing division between the East and West, or what became the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This partition between the Soviet and the American, French, and British occupation zones lasted for more than 40 years and, during that time, led not only to opposing economic reconfigurations but also to vastly different forms of cultural production.

Elizabeth’s research focuses on the influence of American literature on the widening ideological divide of the Cold War era in these occupation zones. Specifically, she is investigating how certain American authors were positioned and circulated on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Her archival research will include a close examination of Die Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, the predominant academic journal from the GDR, analyzing American texts. Questions guiding her research are: What role does literature play in national identity? How did people living in the GDR receive and interpret American literature in a society heavily surveilled by the East German Ministry of State Security? How were specific American authors positioned in both zones to support opposing ideological perspectives?

After writing her thesis and completing her bachelor’s degree in English and German, Elizabeth plans to pursue a Ph.D., where she will continue her investigation of American literature and its role in ideological formation throughout the twentieth century.

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“It’s their fault, they knew people can that information found online.” 

Jacob’s Honors thesis draws its inspiration from his prior work in digital privacy, which demonstrated that one-third of children ages 6-13 referenced “personal responsibility” when justifying being able users’ information online. “Personal responsibility” was defined as responses which placed blame on the poster as personally responsible for their information being found by others online. This raised questions: Why and what is influencing these responses? Would this result be different in varying contexts? 

His current research recognizes the challenges children face on social media by assessing children’s understandings, attitudes, and moral reasoning about responsibility in online spaces. Utilizing three main manipulations, “Children’s Intuitions About Digital Citizenship” asks children about people of different status (famous vs. not famous) who post on various social media accounts (public vs. private) information of varying types (personal vs. private). By the conclusion of Jacob’s follow-up study, he hopes to better understand the causes of the previous studies' findings and why it is that your 6-year-old thinks it’s your fault that a stranger can find your information online.

Jacob is a rising senior majoring in Psychology. He began his higher education journey at Schoolcraft Community College, where he completed an associate’s degree in science and graduated with honors. Before transferring to the University of Michigan, Jacob started his research journey in 2025 with U-M’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program’s (UROP) Community College Summer Fellowship Program. Through this opportunity, Jacob became involved in research with his mentors, Dr. Lauren Girouard and Dr. Susan Gelman, and their digital privacy projects. Since then, he has presented two award-winning research presentations, received M-LEAD’s  “Quiet Influence Award” for outstanding research work, and been accepted to present at the Michigan Psychological Association (MPA) and American Psychological Association’s (APA) regional and national conferences in Chicago and Washington D.C. Jacob also serves as SUPER fellow for the APA. Throughout the next academic year, Jacob will serve as a Peer Facilitator for UROP’s Changing Gears program, a research-focused program for transfer students at the University of Michigan. In the future, Jacob hopes to attend graduate school and pursue a PhD in a Psychology-related field.

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