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For 91��Ƭ�� Assistant Professor Dr. Alyssa Abbey, the American West landscape is full of mysteries waiting to be uncovered. Her interest in geological research began as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona with the realization that tectonic movements and climate are interrelated. “Tectonics and climate are linked; they’re so related. There are tons of people studying how tectonic activity affects climate and how climate can then affect tectonic activity." 

A key area of Dr. Abbey’s research focuses on the Rio Grande Rift, an early-stage continental rift. Two large rivers flow into the valley – the Arkansas River in Colorado and the Rio Grande River in New Mexico. “One of the big projects I have right now, which involves several students, is trying to understand how the faults related to that rift system are changing the course of rivers and how they’ve essentially blocked and/or changed the location of the rivers. We can track that movement using old river sediments”.  

These geological changes occur over long stretches of time with movement of roughly a half millimeter per year or, as Dr. Abbey describes, “fingernail growth”. One method she uses to track movement over time is thermochronology. This is a method used to date the time a rock moved through different temperatures. “If a rock is deeper under the Earth’s surface, it’s hotter. As it moves toward the surface, say on a fault, it gets colder and colder until it gets to surface temperatures. We can track when that process started and, if you’re sampling on a fault block, you can track the timing, magnitudes, and rates of motion on the fault”. 

Dr. Abbey’s research has been supported by both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). In 2024, she received the prestigious NSF CAREER award, which is given to promising early-career researchers. Dr. Abbey’s CAREER award research, which includes 91��Ƭ��, Cerritos College, and local high school students, focuses on challenging the narrative of two regions, Walker Lane Belt and the Basin and Range Province, being geologically separate. Research suggests these regions should be considered more connected than they often are, with both reacting to the same changes in stress. “It’s not a transfer of it first happened here and then happened there, it’s actually going back and forth between the two regions and you’re seeing fault activity happening in pulses on and off”. 

Dr. Abbey has simple but powerful advice to students aspiring to be scientists – don’t wait. “The kind of dating we do is time intensive and getting data takes months to years and understanding the data is complicated and takes even more time … If you’re limiting yourself to one or two semesters of research, you’re never going to get to the fun part and that’s the part you want to get to”.

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Since joining California State University, Long Beach in 2019, Kelly Suh has been building a research program focused on cardiovascular biomechanics and medical device evaluation. Her work examines how cardiovascular implants behave inside the body- an environment far more complex than the controlled conditions used in laboratory testing. By combining engineering analysis, medical imaging, and clinical insight, Suh and her students study how devices interact with the body over time and why outcomes can vary widely from patient to patient. “All four of us have different vascular shapes,” she explains. “All four of us respond differently to crisis.” Those differences can influence how a device performs long after surgery. Suh’s lab often focuses on smaller patient populations and unusual cases that might reveal patterns overlooked in larger studies. As she puts it, “One patient’s life is same, it’s 100 patient lives.” 

Several of Suh’s current projects explore how medical imaging data might help predict outcomes earlier. With support from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association, her lab analyzes CT and MRI data collected before and after cardiovascular surgery to identify subtle features that may reveal how implants interact with surrounding tissue or how patient-specific motion affects device performance over time. Although artificial intelligence is often used to process large medical datasets, Suh notes that patient-specific imaging data can still be difficult for automated systems to interpret. “Modern AI cannot do it easily,” she says. “It’s very complicated and case by case.” Her team combines computational tools with careful manual annotation to develop workflows that can capture meaningful clinical insights while reducing reliance on subjective interpretation. 

Another area of her research explores ways to monitor implants from inside the body. In collaboration with materials scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Suh is studying sensor-enabled devices designed to measure motion and deformation in real time. By capturing how implants behave within a patient’s vascular system, the technology could provide new insight into long-term device performance. The goal, she says, is simple: “We don’t want to get sick after getting surgery. We want to strive for 10 years or 20 years without getting back to the surgery room.” As her work has expanded, so has its interdisciplinary scope, bringing together collaborators in engineering, data science, materials science, and clinical practice. 

Undergraduate students play a central role in Suh’s lab, where roughly ten students contribute to projects ranging from biomechanics modeling to regulatory analysis of medical devices. Through research opportunities, senior design projects, and the Cardiovascular Research Club, Suh integrates these experiences into the undergraduate learning environment. In the lab’s early years, many students participated without financial support, gaining experience through research competitions and conference presentations. Today, external grants allow some students to serve as paid research assistants, though many remain committed to the projects they helped start. “If you go outside of our lab, you should be the best,” Suh tells them. Many former students have gone on to graduate programs or careers in Southern California’s biomedical device industry, and Suh often invites alumni back to speak with current students about their career paths. 

For Suh, the motivation behind this work is also deeply personal. Her older sister lived with kidney failure for many years and experienced multiple complications, including hearing loss, before passing away in her twenties. That experience shaped Suh’s interest in biomedical engineering and continues to guide her research today. “Without mentioning her, it’s actually hard to define my route,” she reflects. Looking ahead, she hopes to expand her work into new areas such as venous and neurovascular systems and explore opportunities to translate laboratory discoveries into real-world technologies. At its core, her research is driven by the goal of improving how medical devices perform so that patients can live not only longer lives, but healthier ones.

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I am a British-born and educated historian of the United States best known for my publications about the history of the CIA. I came to this subject circuitously. My PhD research was about American cultural and intellectual history, focused on the group of mid-twentieth-century leftist writers known as the “New York Intellectuals.” Toward the end of that project, which became my first book (The New York Intellectuals, Manchester University Press, 1995), I discovered a surprising story. During the early years of the Cold War, the CIA had secretly funded US writers and artists in the so-called Cultural Cold War, the superpower battle for the hearts and minds of the world’s intellectuals. I was fascinated and began to shift my research focus from intellectual history to intelligence history. 

I have since written four books about the CIA: The CIA, the British Left, and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? (Frank Cass, 2003); The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Harvard University Press, 2008); America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East (Basic Books, 2013); and The CIA: An Imperial History (Basic Books, 2024). I have also published numerous articles and chapters in edited collections; co-edited a book with Helen Laville, The US Government, Citizen Groups, and the Cold War: The State-Private Network (Routledge, 2006); and created a 24-lecture course, The Agency: A History of the CIA, for the adult learning platform, the Great Courses. This work has been supported by a variety of grantors, including the British Academy, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I have also been the grateful recipient of RSCA and MGSS awards from 91��Ƭ��. 

Currently, in Spring 2026, I am back in the UK as a visiting fellow at the University of Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Study. I am working on two new book projects at Warwick. One concerns another surprising story from the early history of the CIA: its covert support for a group of Black leaders in the Cultural Cold War as they campaigned for hearts and minds in Africa and at home in the United States. Another represents a return to an earlier research interest of mine, the history of Anglo-American relations, which I am exploring through the lens of the history of emotions, gender, and intimacy.  

I try to reach multiple audiences with my work: my students and colleagues at 91��Ƭ��; other scholars in my discipline (I have been particularly concerned with modeling the potential benefits to intelligence history of recent conceptual “turns” in the wider field of  “America in the World”); and, finally, the general public, both in the US and overseas. My guiding aim has been to bring deeply researched yet critical historical judgment to controversial matters of contemporary relevance, from the history of US-Middle East relations to clandestine political warfare.  

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinematic Arts, and a film historian with research interests in Latin American cinema, exile and migration, transnational solidarity, documentary film, and archives and film heritage. My research stems from a personal interest in neglected histories of political filmmaking, particularly due to the exile of thousands of Latin Americans during the military dictatorships of the 1970s. I was born in Chile in the last decade of the dictatorship and lived there until starting graduate school in the United States. As such, I witnessed my country’s long transition to democracy, the fraught memory battles over the legacies of the military regime, and their transformations over time. Like other art forms, cinema played a huge role in understanding issues like state violence, disappearance, exile, and cultural practices of resistance. When I began my scholarly work as a graduate student about fifteen years ago, I knew that I would devote my efforts to retracing these cinematic histories.

This is what I do in my first book, (University of California Press, 2025). After the 1973 military coup in Chile most filmmakers fled the country, producing over two hundred films in all corners of the world. Relying on extensive archival research conducted in multiple countries, TransnationalCinema Solidarity traces a history of this exile cinema, from its beginning out of global networks of solidarity in the 1970s to its return to Chilean archives and museums in the last decade.  

In my next book project, tentatively titled The Cinema to Come: Archival Thinking with Raúl Ruiz, I focus on the archives of one of these exile filmmakers. Raúl Ruiz made over one hundred films in Chile, France, Portugal, Germany, the United States, and Taiwan, among other places. His status as a key figure of world cinema has kept growing after his death in 2011, with rediscovered films, videos, installations, and writings that result from an archival constellation conditioned by exile. The Cinema to Come examines the nature of archival collections shaped by forced displacement as well as the possibilities of a film history that foregrounds scatteredness as its fundamental precondition. Rather than an “auteur” study, this book project thinks with and through Ruiz a series of problems, such as historiography and the archive, materiality, exile and transnationalism, and radical politics and filmic experimentation. This project was recently awarded a . 

Besides publishing journal articles and academic books, my research has a public-facing dimension. I have been a programmer of film series in cultural venues in New York City and Santiago. I have also led exchange projects between international archives that resulted in new digitizations and repatriations of exile films from institutions in Sweden and The Netherlands to archives in Chile.  

My scholarship has deeply shaped my pedagogy in courses I teach with regularity, such as “CINE 388B Latin American Cinemas” or “CINE 364 Cinemas of Rebellion and Resistance.” Overall, as a scholar and professor, I am committed to the project of not only expanding but redrawing the geopolitical boundaries that define what we call “world” or “global” cinema. I am also committed to new cinema histories that respond to the call to decolonize film studies and to students’ need to see themselves represented—on screen and in the classroom. These have been the guiding principles in all areas of my work at California State University Long Beach.

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My interest in research developed from a desire to design electronic systems that function reliably in the real world, especially in settings where accuracy, security, and equity directly affect human well-being. Early work in integrated circuits and sensing systems showed me that performance in controlled environments does not always translate to diverse users, constrained devices, or adversarial conditions. This realization has guided my research program toward building hardware and algorithmic solutions that are inclusive, secure, and deployable on low-power platforms.

Research focus and contributions: My research spans biomedical circuits and systems, wearable and flexible sensors, low-power machine learning, integrated circuit design, and hardware security. A unifying theme across this work is the co-design of hardware, signal processing, and algorithms to address real-world constraints such as limited power, user variability, environmental noise, and security threats. 

A major area of my work focuses on wearable and physiological sensing systems. I have led and collaborated on projects involving photoplethysmography (PPG), electrocardiogram (ECG), impedance sensing, pH sensing, temperature sensing, and pressure sensing. These efforts include CMOS readout circuits, integrated analog front ends, flexible and tattoo-based electrodes, and additive manufacturing techniques for low-cost biosensing platforms. Several studies address long-standing accuracy limitations in optical and electrical biosensors, particularly those arising from skin pigmentation, temperature variation, and motion artifacts.  

Complementing this, my group has developed robust signal processing and machine learning pipelines for physiological data analysis. These include lightweight algorithms for real-time fall detection on low-power Bluetooth-enabled sensors, biomarker extraction from noisy PPG signals, and multi-modal data fusion for continuous monitoring.

My work has been supported by National Science Foundation and state-funded grants, including awards focused on inclusive lab-on-chip technologies, secure wearable communications, and global access to biomedical platforms through additive manufacturing. 

Impact on 91��Ƭ�� and the broader community: At 91��Ƭ��, my research directly contributes to hands-on, publication-driven training for undergraduate and graduate students. Students in my lab gain experience across the full research pipeline, including circuit design, PCB fabrication, signal processing, machine learning, human-subject experimentation, and hardware security analysis. Many of these projects result in peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, strengthening the research profile of the campus while preparing students for careers in industry, academia, and national laboratories. 

Beyond campus, this work addresses pressing societal needs. Improving equity in physiological monitoring supports fairer healthcare technologies. Developing secure, low-power systems strengthens trust in wearable and embedded devices used in medical, industrial, and infrastructure settings. Open, low-cost sensing platforms expand access to diagnostics and experimentation, particularly in resource-constrained environments. Collectively, these efforts aim to ensure that emerging technologies are accurate, secure, and accessible to all users. 

Looking ahead 

Future directions include expanding inclusive calibration techniques to additional sensing modalities, strengthening real-time machine learning on ultra-low-power hardware, and advancing secure-by-design methodologies for biomedical and cyber-physical systems. Through continued interdisciplinary research and student mentorship, my goal is to advance engineering solutions that combine technical rigor with real-world impact. 

When I introduce myself in terms of what my specialty is, I often say I am a “condensed matter experimentalist”. Condensed matter physics is one of the largest fields of study in physics, focusing on the macroscopic and microscopic properties of solids and liquids. Experimentalist means that I conduct various laboratory activities such as fabricating samples, operating devices, and taking measurements. I got interested in experimental research because I love hands-on experience of making an actual system with which I can take real data and explore an interesting physical phenomenon.  

At 91��Ƭ�� my research group has been focusing on the study of magnetic thin films. Magnetic thin films are magnetic components created by depositing material layers ranging from nanometers to micrometers thick onto substrates like silicon. They are critical components in modern technology, such as data storage, spintronics, and sensors/actuators used in aerospace, automotive, and medical devices, etc. My group fabricates various types of magnetic thin films and characterizes their magnetic switching behavior. Recently we fabricated nanopatterned magnetic thin films using nano/microsphere template generated by nanosphere lithography method. Using this self-assembled monolayer template, we were able to extend planar 2D structures into the 3D space by tailoring the geometry of an object, for example, local curvature. Curved magnetic surfaces can provide a way to alter conventional or to develop novel functionality in the physical system. A variety of interesting physical functions in nanoscale surfaces and structures tend to depend on particle shape, spacing, and size. Using a modified nanosphere template, we investigate the magnetic switching behavior and image the magnetic domain structures of these curved magnetic nanostructures. The broad range of modified physical properties due to these curved architectures not only provides rich physics but also offer potential applications. 

Since 2021 we have been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) PREM (Partnership for Research and Education in Materials) award. I serve as Co-PI for the project. This multi-million-dollar grant helped grow the materials research community in our department and college including undergraduates, graduates, faculty members and collaborators from the Ohio State University, our partner institution in this grant.  

My research lab has provided extensive research opportunities and thesis topics for graduate and undergraduate students for the past few years. I believe the interesting and challenging scientific research projects provided an invaluable opportunity for the students where they can develop hands-on skills and a deep understanding of the physical phenomena. I am looking forward to continuing research on magnetism and providing the opportunity for our students to explore their interest and get trained to contribute to the professional community. 

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Amanda Tuttle
M.S. in Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology 
Thesis advisor: Dr. Leilani Madrigal 

Playing Through the Phases: How Menstruation Affects Mental Toughness and Emotions in Cis Female Collegiate Athletes 

Menstruation and its effects are treated as culturally taboo topics. This project examines the understudied question of menstruation’s effects on cis-female athletes and is predicated on the idea that it is important to understand all the characteristics that affect athletes’ development and performance. The study uses quantitative and qualitative survey data from 311 subjects to analyze participating athletes’ mental toughness, emotions throughout their sport and menstrual cycle, feelings while on their periods and the support they receive (and want to receive) from their coaches. Athletes included current cis-female collegiate athletes of 23 various sports, 21.9% cross country and track field, 16.8% soccer, and 9% volleyball, ranging from NCAA Division I-III, NAIA, community college, and recreational club.  Results showed athletes use mental toughness to buffer the experience of emotional instability. Additionally, many athletes expressed the fluctuations of emotions, high levels of fatigue, and negative thoughts while on their period. Furthermore, some athletes did not feel supported by their coach and did not feel coaches were accommodating towards their menstrual cycle. Participants expressed wanting and needing greater consideration, acknowledgement, and understanding about their menstruation from their coach. There was a desire for more education about menstruation for coaches and for athletes. With this research, the hope is to better understand and inform players and coaches of the mental, physical, and emotional fluctuations that these athletes endure throughout their sport, and their menstrual cycle. 

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Ambi Thompson
M.A., Department of Political Science
Thesis advisor: Dr. Matt Lesenyie

A HOME FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM  

The American Dream and its celebration of economic mobility have long functioned as a cornerstone of U.S. political culture. However, during a time of rising housing costs, childcare expenses and generational economic insecurity, do such financial pressures undermine popular confidence in opportunity and institutional fairness? A Home for the American Dream is a replication and extension survey that examines public attitudes toward upward mobility and whether Americans continue to believe that hard work still leads to opportunity. 

This investigation examines whether economic conditions shape (1) belief in upward mobility, (2) perceptions that economic and political systems are “stacked,” and (3) the criteria individuals prioritize when defining a “good home” (e.g., financial stability, family structure, cultural alignment). An exploratory component assesses whether adoption exposure predicts greater certainty in evaluations of child placement and welfare policy. By distinguishing material economic strain, subjective economic outlook, and experiential exposure, this project clarifies how separate mechanisms influence multiple domains of public opinion and contributes to scholarly debates on economic precarity and the structure of political attitudes.  

Methodology  

Data were collected in December 2025 through an anonymous Qualtrics survey administered to 197 undergraduate students (18+) at California State University, Long Beach. The survey replicated established measures of belief in the American Dream and extended them to examine economic conditions, institutional perceptions, and normative definitions of a “good home”. Key measures included financial optimism, housing and childcare concern, perceptions that economic and political systems are “stacked”, selection of family criteria (e.g., financial stability, shared cultural background), adoption exposure, and respondent ideology and parental status.  

Analyses were conducted in SPSS using complementary statistical approaches. Chi-square tests evaluated bivariate associations between economic conditions, exposure, and outcome variables. Ordinal logistic regression models assessed predictors of ordered outcomes, including belief in the American Dream and perceived institutional distrust. Binary logistic regression models evaluated predictors of dichotomous outcomes, including prioritizing shared racial or cultural background in defining a “good home,” and selecting “Don’t know” in child welfare questions. Regression models included ideological orientation and parental status as covariates to isolate the independent effects of material economic strain and subjective economic outlook. Model fit statistics and proportional odds tests were evaluated to ensure appropriate specification.  

Findings  

Financial optimism significantly predicts belief in the American Dream. Respondents with higher levels of optimism about their personal financial future are more likely to affirm that hard work still leads to upward mobility (χ2 = 22.92, p < .001). This relationship remains significant in an ordinal logistic regression controlling for ideology (p = .014), indicating that subjective economic outlook independently shapes mobility belief. Institutional distrust is associated with material economic strain, as greater housing strain increases the likelihood of agreeing that economic and political systems are “stacked,” (p = .044) even when controlling for ideology and financial optimism. Financial optimism does not independently predict institutional distrust (p = .723), reinforcing that material strain and subjective outlook operate through distinct mechanisms.  

Housing strain is also linked to normative boundary preferences in defining a “good home”. As housing strain increases, respondents are more likely to prioritize shared racial or cultural background as a defining criterion (30.5% among low-strain respondents vs. 47.9% among high-strain respondents; p = .041). In contrast, financial optimism does not significantly predict this cultural criterion, further distinguishing the effects of material strain from subjective outlook in shaping moral and institutional attitudes. Adoption exposure is associated with lower levels of informational uncertainty across child welfare attitudes. Respondents without adoption exposure were more likely to select “Don’t know” when evaluating both child placement outcomes (20.0% vs. 11.8%) and welfare policy preferences (31.7% vs. 23.9%). Although exploratory, these findings suggest that experiential proximity to adoption corresponds to greater attitudinal certainty.  

Conclusion  

The findings demonstrate that different dimensions of economic experience correspond to distinct attitudinal outcomes. Financial optimism is associated with stronger belief that the American Dream still holds, whereas housing strain predicts greater agreement that economic and political systems are “stacked”. Housing strain also increases the likelihood of prioritizing shared racial or cultural background in defining a “good home”. These results indicate that subjective economic outlook and material economic strain structure different domains of belief and evaluation.  

The exploratory analysis shows that adoption exposure corresponds to lower levels of uncertainty in child welfare responses. Respondents with adoption exposure were less likely to select “Don’t know” when evaluating both child placement and welfare policy questions, suggesting that experiential proximity is linked to greater attitudinal clarity. By replicating established measures of mobility belief within a university sample and extending them to assess material strain and experiential exposure, this study contributes to scholarly debates on economic precarity and public opinion by clarifying how emerging adults interpret opportunity, institutional fairness, and social boundaries under contemporary economic conditions.  

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References 

Hochschild, J. L. (1995). Facing up to the American Dream: Race, class, and the soul of the nation. Princeton University Press. . 

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Melanie Sandoval   

My research interests are a product of my lived experiences growing up in an immigrant household and learning about my familial history, particularly about my parents’ migration journeys from El Salvador to the United States. When I was introduced to Ethnic Studies in high school, I was also introduced to the idea of scholars using academia as a conduit to social justice and activism for the first time, completely captivating me and inspiring me to make a similar political commitment. I enrolled at 91��Ƭ�� in Fall 2022 as an Anthropology major and quickly decided to continue pursuing Ethnic Studies by adding a major in Chicano and Latino Studies. This decision completely transformed my university experience as the department offered a supportive peer network through the Chicanx Latinx Studies Student Association, intimate seminar courses that allowed me to facilitate individual research projects, and perhaps most impactful, intentional professors who connect students to external resources and educational opportunities.  

Dr. Abigail Rosas introduced me to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) during my second year and encouraged me to pursue the questions I had about Central American studies through formal research while receiving preparation to pursue graduate school. I was granted admittance into the two-year track option and have since been working on a research project that outlines an intellectual history of Central American studies by analyzing the complex interrelationship between Central American scholars’ lives, the foci of their research, and the historical contexts of their work. I use Antonio Gramsci’s distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals as a theoretical framework to understand the role scholars assume within Central American communities when producing autonomous, counterhegemonic narratives with the intention to benefit the working-class within and beyond academic institutions. This project was completed under the mentorship of Dr. Steven Osuna who exposed me to the rich body of existing scholarship within Central American studies and provided guidance and support throughout the entire research process from conceptualization to execution. I am grateful for both Dr. Rosas and Dr. Osuna for helping me fall in love with research and providing stellar examples of how a professor can truly impact their students’ lives, something I can only strive towards in the future.  

MMUF led me to several additional research opportunities including a research lab with Dr. Lauren Heidbrink and admittance into the CSU Sally Casanova Scholars Program. Each of these academic communities have contributed to my academic progression and shaped my commitment to using education as a conduit to social justice greatly. Through Dr. Heidbrink’s research lab, I was able to connect with Long Beach community leaders while supporting mutual aid efforts and build lasting relationships with a network of activists who are committed to immigrant justice. Through Sally Casanova, I received financial support, guided mentorship, research opportunities, but most importantly, an understanding of how impactful academic communities committed to uplifting working-class communities truly are. Overall, I am very fortunate to have been met with such compassion, patience, and wisdom throughout my research journey at 91��Ƭ�� and intend to maintain the relationships I have fostered as I continue my journey within academia as a graduate student.  

 

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Vincent Miramontes-Andrade
UROP-HRPG Faculty Advisor: Dr. Belinda Daughtry
BUILD/UHP Faculty Advisor: Dr. Nancy Hall

Since my start at 91��Ƭ��, I have been part of the University Honors Program (UHP), which gave me the opportunity to enter research very early on. During my second year, I was accepted into the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program Health-Related Peer Group (UROP-HRPG), where I was able to work closely with Dr. Belinda Daughrity, analyzing the different perceptions that college students hold about autism. During this experience, I was able to research how first-hand experiences with an individual with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) can influence the amount of accurate knowledge an individual holds about ASD. Through participating in UROP-HRPG, a passion for research was instilled in me, which only made me want to continue conducting research. 

Entering my third year, I was fortunate to be accepted into BUILD as an NIH BUILD Scholar during the Summer of 2024. Through BUILD, I had the opportunity to work closely with Dr. Nancy Hall in her Phonetics Lab. My first project focused on annotating spectrograms, or visual representations of speech acoustics. Primarily, my tasks included identifying and segmenting /r/ and /l/ sounds in children’s speech. While doing this, I conducted my own study titled "A Case Study on the Development of Liquid Sounds in Spanish-English Bilingual Children." I was also fortunate enough to be selected to present this project at the 2025 Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Students in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Following this experience, in Fall 2025, I began my Senior Honors Thesis titled “Spanish-English Code-Switching: An Electroglottographic Analysis” using an electroglottography (EGG) machine, which enables imaging of vocal fold movements. Using this machinery, I am conducting a study examining how the timing of laryngeal movements (such as Voice Onset Time, VOT) changes as speakers switch between Spanish and English. My Senior Honors Thesis project is actually the first EGG project conducted in the Phonetics Lab, and it has been a great experience learning to use the new equipment and its software!  

Most recently, through the assistance of BUILD, I earned a competitive undergraduate research assistantship through the Purdue Summer Research Opportunities Scholar Program (SROP) during the summer of 2025. I spent eight weeks working directly under Dr. Arianna LaCroix to learn functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods. In my short time in the Aphasia Brain Injury Communication and Cognition (ABC) Lab, I completed my own research project broadly investigating the connectivity patterns across the attention and language networks in adults with chronic aphasia. I also presented this work at a campus-wide research symposium. My time in the lab was additionally enhanced by community experiences, as I participated in multiple community-based stroke support group meetings led by Dr. LaCroix’s lab. Here, I listened to the lived experiences of stroke survivors and their caregivers through a discussion-based seminar, seeking to identify the gaps in what stroke survivors needed to close the research gap. This experience was truly transformative as it allowed me to see myself at an R1 institution someday. 

With my end goal being to become a clinician-scientist in the field of Speech-Language Pathology, I am honored to announce that I will be continuing my education at Purdue University, where I am an incoming Clinical Masters of Science in Speech-Language Pathology student! This accomplishment is not entirely personal, as I credit much of my success to the mentors and experiences I have had within the UHP, UROP-HRPG, and the BUILD program. As a first-generation student, navigating higher education seemed daunting at first, but with the support of these programs, I have been able to overcome the obstacles that come with being first-generation. I hope my story serves as a testament to the positive effects of entering into research early during your undergrad! So if you are given the opportunity to experience research, take it!