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The Graduate School

2026 Graduate Student Research Symposium Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the nineteenth annual Graduate Student Research Symposium. Each year, the symposium showcases the outstanding quality and diversity of graduate-level research at NC State. The symposium was held April 8 on campus at the McKimmon Center. First, second, and third-place winners have been announced in nine categories.

Agricultural Sciences

Sofia Jauregui

First place: Sofia Jauregui, Crop Science

Breeding For Healthier Wheat: Investigating the Genetic Basis of Grain Quality

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Seung Hyun Yoo

Second place: Seung Hyun Yoo, Food Science

Evaluate Environmental and Nutritional Sustainability of U.S. Dietary Patterns via Nutritional Life Cycle Assessment

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Thaciane Amaral

Third place: Thaciane Amaral, Prestage Department of Poultry Science

In Vivo Challenge Model for Evaluation of Systemic Translocation and Skeletal Disease in Enterococcus cecorum infected Broilers

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Design

Rosa McDonald

First place: Rosa McDonald, Design

Architectural Solar Control Assessment: The Impact of Four Strategies on Building and Occupant Factors on the East and West Facades of Offices

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Chengchen Zhang

Second place: Chengchen Zhang, Graphic & Experience Design

The Geography of Fatigue: Making Performance Difficulties Interpretable for college Women Athletes through Layered XAI Design Visualizing the interaction between training load and physiological variability over time

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Third place: Christopher Mismash, Design

The Social Media Governance Crisis: Why Centralized Governance is Failing and What Commons Governance Can Teach Us

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Engineering

Kayla Hahn

First place: Kayla Hahn, Nuclear Engineering

Demonstration of the SPIDER probe for online material quantification of actinide-bearing molten salt

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Cormak Weeks

Second place: Cormak Weeks, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Modeling 3D Printing for Nanoemulsion Hydrogels

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Vasuki Garg

Third place: Vasuki Garg, Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Optimizing Criminal Investigation Resource Allocation via Decision Focused Learning

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Environmental Sciences

Alden Sears

First place: Alden Sears, Plant and Microbial Biology

Untangling associational effects via resources and insects on plant reproductive fitness

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Christopher Oates

Second place: Christopher Oates, Biological and Agricultural Engineering

Nutrient monitoring in surface waters of agriculturally-intensive regions of the U.S.: Current status and needs for expansion

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Sierra McMurry

Third place: Sierra McMurry, Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology

Not All Food Is Equal: Mast-Wildlife Relationships Depend on Population Status

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Humanities

Syd Fryer

First place: Syd Fryer, Parks, World Languages and Cultures

Between Accusation and Ambiguity: Political Commitment and Literary Form in Rodolfo Walsh and Julio Cortázar

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Raquel Olvera Diaz

Second place: Raquel Olvera Diaz, World Languages and Cultures

Rethinking First-Year Spanish Instruction: A Culture-Centered Approach to Teaching First-Year Spanish

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Jordan Matheney

Third place: Jordan Matheney, Technical Communication

Life Sciences

Emma Atwood

First place: Emma Atwood, Comparative Biomedical Sciences

Determination of the First High-Resolution Structure of HIV-1 Envelope in Complex with Macaque CD4

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Second place: Jade Lyons, Genetics and Genomics

Disrupting Upstream ORFs for Enhanced Protein Production in Plants

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Jade Fluharty

Third place: Jade Fluharty, Molecular and Structural Biochemistry

Integrative transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis provides insights into metabolic reprogramming by UDP-glucose dehydrogenase

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Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Irene Silvernail

First place: Irene Silvernail, Physics

Utilizing Coarse-Grained Models in Simulations to Study Chromatin Organization

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Matthew Gleason

Second place: Matthew Gleason, Operations Research

Limiting Risk In Manifests for U.S. Army Airborne Operations: An Optimization Framework for Risk-Aware Personnel Load Planning

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Azka Arshad

Third place: Azka Arshad, Chemistry

Roblonski: A Material-Efficient Robo-Fluidic Toolbox for Rapid Photochemical Characterization

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Social Sciences

Swathi Vepachedu

First place: Swathi Vepachedu, Psychology

When access to resources isn’t enough: Engagement as the key to remote worker well-being

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Alexa Clymer

Second place: Alexa Clymer, Communication

Against Ephemerality: Understanding Physical Media Audiences in the Age of Streaming

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Sloan Wilson

Third place: Sloan Wilson, Sociology

“This is gonna sound really bad, but…”: Feminist Politics and Stigma Management in True Crime Podcast Fandoms

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Textiles

Md Abul Shahid

First place: Md Abul Shahid, Fiber and Polymer Science

Integrating Spectroscopic Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy with DNA-PAINT for Simultaneous Multiplexing Super-Resolution Microscopy

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Mohammed Kayes Patoary

Second place: Mohammed Kayes Patoary, Fiber and Polymer Science

Xiaorui Guo

Third place: Xiaorui Guo, Fiber and Polymer Science

Engineering the Molecular Ladder: Designing Stronger, Sustainable Carbon Fiber for Global Innovation

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